“If I do, do I get to take you out to dinner?” he asked, and she bit her lower lip.
“Kyle Barlow, are you asking a tipsy girl out on a date?” she asked, and he nodded. “Because if you are, I like Thai.”
He nodded.
“Good. Then Thai it is,” he said.
She looked at him for a long second before she spoke again.
“Are you really going to knock down two glasses of iced tea just so you can sit across me in a restaurant over some soup?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Whatever it takes to make it happen,” he said before he ordered three iced teas.
And as Natasha sat there looking at him down two glasses of iced tea just so she would talk to him, she could already feel herself warming up to him. And maybe it might have been the different approach that he had taken despite the cliché beginning, but she knew she was going to see him again. Even if it was not just over Thai, she knew that she wanted to see him again. And just like that, she and Kyle had begun what would be the determining factor in every relationship she had from then on.
Falling in love with Kyle was easy maybe because he made it so easy to be around him. To him, Natasha was not just another “bangable” woman. To him, she was a woman who deserved to be treated with respect. And he never even gave her the impression that he wanted to take her in a restaurant bathroom or even a motel. But the one thing that stood out about Kyle was how he looked at her. Like she was the only one in his world. The only other person in the room except for him. And maybe that was what she really got to her. The respect.
And now that she was back, that was all she could think about. Her life. Her normal life before everything changed.
She had just started packing up a box when she heard her phone ringing, the noise echoing through the apartment. She rushed out to the living room and got her phone out of her coat. She felt her disappointment wash over her when she saw Travis’ name on the screen. She had been waiting to see if Matthew would at least text her back after she had sent him a message telling him that she got home safe. But he still hadn’t said anything.
She exhaled loudly as she answered the phone.
“Travis,” she said as she leaned against the wall.
“Good, you picked up.”
“I was not trying not to pick up or anything like that if that is what you were suggesting,” she pointed out.
“Well, I am not suggesting anything of the sort. But I am assuming that you are back home, yes?”
She shrugged.
“Yes. I literally walked back into my apartment a few minutes ago.”
“Good. Then this will not be considered intrusive,” he said, and she shook her head.
“What are you talking about?” she asked just as she heard the front door open. “What the hell…”
“Hey, welcome home,” Travis said, smiling as she looked at him, surprised. “You can hang up now. I’m in the house.”
She hung up and gently put her phone down on the table next to the door.
“I am happy to see you and everything, but I am really having a hard time trying to understand why you are here and how you even found out I was going to be in the house at this time.”
“Well, you never signed out of your computer and I have been getting a whole lot of your email alerts.”
She raised an eyebrow over the other.
“You have been getting a lot of emails?” she asked. “Have you been going through my messages?”
“Well, I had to make the company look like it was still functional so I sent a few potential clients emails telling them that I would get back to them. Just to make sure I got that raise once you came back from Italy.” He handed the file he had in his hand to her. “I have two, maybe three, promising accounts, but you have to make the final decision.”
She shook her head and even though she wanted to ask more questions, she was too tired and she still had so much to do.
“Well, thank you,” she said. “But I am not going to be able to check this out until tomorrow.”
“Really?” Travis had a surprised look. “Usually, I can’t get you to leave the office fast enough or even look away from your computer screen.”
She took a long deep breath.
“Well, that was before Italy,” she said. “Now, I am someone new who is set on packing up this place.”
Travis shook his head.
“Okay. Two things. One, yay. But two, and most importantly, are you saying that you are cleaning up this place as in cleaning up, cleaning up?”
“If you want to help, grab a box and be careful folding Kyle’s shirts,” she said before she walked down the hallway to the spare room.
Travis took a long minute before he followed her down the hall.
“Wait, wait,” he said when he caught up with her. He walked round her and stood in front of her. He looked into her eyes and bit his lip. “Are you finally packing up Kyle’s stuff?”
She took a long deep breath as she looked around.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I think it’s about time.”
He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Tasha, I have been trying to get you to do that for years.”
Natasha nodded.
“I know. But I was not ready to at the time,” she said. “But it is about time. I have been kind of putting off the inevitable for too long.”
She walked back into the spare room and began to slowly put all of Kyle’s old shoes in the big box in front of her.
“But unless I heard you wrong, I thought you said something like you just got in, right?” he asked, and she nodded.
“I did.”
“Then shouldn’t you be resting up or something? I mean, Italy is what? An eight-hour flight away?” he asked, and she shrugged.
“Actually, it is a ten-hour flight,” she said just as she heard her phone sound. She looked around and shook her head. “My phone. Where is it?”
Travis still had a stunned look on his face.
“Probably on the table by the door. Back in the living room if I am not wrong,” he said in a confused tone.
She walked back to the living room and grabbed her phone from the table. This time, she was relieved when she saw that the text she got was indeed from Matthew. A smile played on her lips when she read his text.
Hey. I’m glad you got back home safely. I am prepping for a meeting with this kid in Beijing. I’ll check in a little later.
Her smile slowly faded as she held the phone in her hand. That was not a text from someone who had been bedding her for the last few days. It was more business-like, if anything. The kind of text you would send to an employee. She leaned against the wall gently and bit her lower lip. It was like she was taking a stake to the heart all over again. The first time was back in Italy when Matthew had told her that he was planning on taking another trip, and judging by the way he had told her, it was like he did not really care about what she had to say about the issue. Or about her feelings. She sighed loudly as she contemplated replying to the text, but considering how she was feeling, she knew that anything she tried to type at that moment would be more of a bitchy rant which was frankly worse than any update text. She took a long deep breath and switched off the phone.
“It is not worth it,” she thought to herself as she walked back to the spare room.
“Are you okay?” Travis asked when she stood at the doorway.
She took a minute before she finally nodded.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Actually, I have not been this okay in a long time.”
Travis was still not convinced.
“Are you sure?” he asked, and she nodded as she pushed her phone into her pants pocket.
“Oh, yeah,” she said in a soft voice. “And I think I need to do something right now to officially kick this whole moving on process off.”
She walked into her room and walked up to her closet. Travis was following her closely, and he watched as she op
ened the closet and pulled a hanger from the back of the clothing rack that was carrying a mesh laundry bag. She carried the bag to the bed and gently laid it across it before she opened it. Travis sighed when he saw what was in the mesh bag.
“Tasha,” he said in a soft voice. “That’s your wedding dress,” he said when he saw the perfect dress she had intended on wearing all those years ago.
“No, Travis. This was my wedding dress.” She looked up at him. “The wedding I was supposed to have back when I was engaged to Kyle. And since that is no longer happening, I think it is better to just let go. After all, I have put on a few pounds. There is no way I am going to fit myself into this gorgeous dress unless I cut it up and wrap it around my boobs.”
She slowly ran her hand down the fabric before she finally zipped up the bag. She took a long deep breath as she picked it up and carried it out to the spare room and put it in a box.
“Tasha, I love that you are finally doing this, but are you sure you want to get rid of that dress? Because I might have not known a lot about your life before, but I do know that you loved that dress,” he said, and she nodded.
“I did. I still do, but it’s time to move on,” she said as she looked up at him.
“Let me go get a bottle of wine,” he said. “I have a feeling that we are going to need it because clearly we have a lot to talk about.”
She smiled and nodded.
“Yeah, you do that,” she said before she turned to get more clothes. She took one of Kyle’s old shirts and began folding it. She could not help but put her face in the shirt and inhale deeply. She still had her nose buried in the shirt when Travis walked back in.
“Is it still there?” he asked, and she looked at him. “The scent. Because if I am not mistaken, I think that is what you are doing. Looking for Kyle’s scent in his old clothes.”
She shook her head and put the shirt down.
“Honestly, I think it is no longer there, but maybe it still is. In my head,” she said, and Travis poured two glasses of wine.
“Come on. Let’s talk,” he said as he handed her one of the glasses. “About Italy.”
She took a long deep breath.
“Why do you want to know so much about Italy?” Natasha asked, and he shrugged.
“Well, let’s see.” Travis sat down next to her and took a sip of his wine. “You are doing something that is years overdue even after I have tried countless times to get you to do it and that this is only happening after you took an impromptu trip out of the country.”
She shrugged as she sat down next to him, sipping on her own wine.
“And what is so strange about that?” she asked, and he forced out a laugh.
“You,” he said. “You are the odd piece of this puzzle…I mean, you hardly ever clean your sink without putting up on the schedule. You are a regular Bree Van De Kamp.”
She frowned.
“Who the hell is Bree Van De Kamp?” she asked.
“The perfect supermom from Desperate Housewives,” Travis said, and she shook her head.
“You did not just compare me to that redhead picture of perfection,” she said.
“Well, you kind of are,” he said as he looked at her.
She smiled and took another long sip of her wine.
“Well, if you must know, I was with Matthew Leander,” she said, and Travis’ eyes grew wide.
“Matthew Leander, the travel blogger? As in the Big Ideas client?”
She took another sip and shook her head.
“Matthew Leander, our former client. Maybe we might have more business in the future, but right now he is just a man I met at work.”
“So, wait. You went to Italy for a few days and you came back out reformed and everything,” he said, and she smiled as she took a long sip of her wine. “Wait, did you sleep with him?” he asked, and she shrugged before she took another sip. “Wow. Way to go, Natasha Bailey.”
“You know, I have spent the last few years wallowing and not really giving myself a chance to get out there and see what is out there for me,” she said. “And when I did, I realized that at some point something was going to have to change. I needed to start living again, and Matthew showed me that I could do it.”
Travis looked at her for a long time as she sipped on her wine slowly.
“I need to ask you this and believe me this comes from a good place,” he started, and she shrugged before taking another sip.
“Okay, shoot.”
“Are you clearing out Kyle’s stuff because you feel that you are finally ready or are you doing it to make room for Matthew?” he asked, and she took a long deep breath.
She had expected a question like this would pop up sooner than later, but now that it had, she did not have the same answer she always thought would come up. She bit her lip and shook her head.
“Actually,” she started. “I am making room for me. It is time to let Kyle go. Besides, I am sure this is exactly what he would have wanted for me. And his parents are mourning the loss of their son too. I think it is about time they got some of his stuff. I mean, I could keep a few photos and maybe a shirt or two, but the rest has to go.” She took another sip of her wine. “It’s time.”
He raised his glass and nodded.
“Well, kudos,” he said.
Chapter 11
Ever since he got out of Italy, Matthew had been feeling some type of way. He did not know it at the time, but he missed the time he had spent with Natasha. And even though he did not want to admit it at the time, she had touched a part of him that he didn’t know he had. A part that proved to him that he had not just been having innocent fun with Natasha. There was so much more to what he felt about her. And having Missy around him on his latest leg of his tour had proven that little point a little too well.
By the time he was finishing off his tour in Paris, he could not help but wonder if he should just pull the plug on his working relationship with Missy because she was getting on his last nerve. And to think that all this unpleasantness had come as a result of him being too weak when Missy first threw herself at him in what he thought was the two of them being drunk, but it was clear now, all this years later, that sleeping with him was a calculated move. One that has been in the works for a long time.
It had been eight weeks since his tour began, and now that he was on his way back to Boston, he was wondering what he had to do to get Missy out of his life for good without any legal repercussions. But eight hours in the air trying to figure out how he was going to get out of the pickle he was in was hardly enough for him to get a plan in motion. And by the time he walked back into his penthouse, he hated himself for considering all of Yolanda’s offers about her crazy family back in Mexico.
“Yolanda, are you home?” he called out when he walked into his place.
He waited by the door for an answer, but the house was quiet. A little too silent actually. It was almost peaceful…no, it was actually peaceful. He slowly made his way to the living room and looked around. There was no sign of any freshly baked goods or deep fried delicacies. There was also no sign of life in the penthouse. It was almost like Yolanda had taken a day off, something she never did without telling him. He made his way to the kitchen and opened the fridge to get a bottle of water, and just as he was reaching for the bottle, he saw a Tupperware with a post-it note on it.
“Hm…maybe Yolanda is actually not here,” he thought as he reached for the post-it note.
Matthew, I had to rush to my sister’s in Laredo, and I should be back by the time you come back on Thursday, but if you get home earlier, I left you a casserole.
He frowned and took a long deep breath.
“Since when does Yolanda leave me post-it notes?” he wondered out loud as he got the bottle of water and made his way to the living room.
“Shit. My phone,” he thought to himself as he reached for his phone in his pocket. He switched it on and that was when he got all the voice mails that Yolanda had been leaving him before she ob
viously finally decided on the post-it.
“I guess that’s that,” he thought as he put his phone aside and took a long sip of his water. “At least I am alone and in peace,” he thought as he took another sip.
He sat down and sighed loudly as he switched on the TV. But even as he sat there sipping on the water looking at what was probably his all-time favorite television show, he just could not focus on simply watching Friends. He was still thinking of what he was supposed to do about his situation. The fact remained that the last eight weeks had been pure hell because if it was not one thing, it was another. She had been the same old Missy. The same one he had been trying to avoid ever since the first time he realized just how big a mistake sleeping with Missy was. The first time and all the other times after that.
His tour might have been hell, but it was not just because Missy had been around throughout the tour. It was also because he had realized that what he felt for Natasha was a little more than what he would have wanted. When they first started out, he had hoped that Natasha would be a close friend. A close fun friend and maybe even a fling, but spending time alone with him had made her realize that that was not all she was to him. He wanted to continue living his life being one of the world’s best travel bloggers, have a home, and still be with Natasha. And that was hard for him. Trying to figure everything out. Trying to figure that situation out was somehow harder than anything he had ever imagined.
He was still sipping on his water when he heard the door open. He sighed loudly and smiled. This was just what he needed. Yolanda back in the house. She always had a way of making him feel better about himself and his mistakes.
“Thank god you are back, Yolanda. I kind of have a lot to talk about with you,” he said as he muted the TV.
He began walking towards the kitchen, but he stopped before he got there when he realized that it was not Yolanda who had just walked in. He rubbed his temple and shook his head.
“You really need to give me my spare key back,” he said as he looked at Missy who was in a black chinchilla coat and black boots. He could not help but think that she probably looked like she had just stepped off a 1980s time travel machine judging by the look she was rocking.
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