I exhaled. He wasn’t leaving—not yet anyway. I forced myself to sound as cheerful and supportive as possible. “Alex, that’s great. Congratulations.” I wrapped him in a tight embrace, savoring the spicy scent of his cologne and hoping this wouldn’t be one of the last times I had the chance to do so. “You must be so excited.”
He pulled away, running a hand through his thick flaxen waves. “In shock is more like it. I never thought I’d get this far.”
“It’s no surprise to me. You’re a rising star using unusual teaching methods to make literature relevant in a digital world. Why should they not want you to speak at Oxford?”
“It’s more than speaking. I’d be teaching there for a full term. I’m not sure what they’ll end up assigning me to, but I applied for both teaching my methods to other teachers—probably graduate students, mostly—and applying them in a class for undergraduate students.”
I furrowed my brow, trying not to show my dismay. “So how long would you be gone?”
“The terms vary a bit, but they’re around eight weeks each.” He readjusted so that he was facing me full-on. “I know this must be a shock for you. I never expected I’d be leaving someone behind.”
I schooled my features into the picture of support. “Don’t worry about me. It’s only two months. If I waited this long to find you, I can live a few months apart from you. This is an opportunity of a lifetime, so don’t you dare think about backing out now.”
Alex took my hand and finally noticed the unclasped bracelet balancing on my wrist. He secured it then kissed my knuckles. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” My voice brightened as I spoke. Genuine hope that he was successful in his interview bloomed in my heart. “I’ll make you a deal—when you’re off teaching in England, I’ll finally contact that editor friend of yours. That way, while you’re gone, we’ll both be doing something toward our dreams. And who knows—if I can get the time off from work, maybe I can even come visit you.”
He grinned at me. “It’s a deal.”
I stood. “All right then. We’d better get downstairs. We have more than the turning of the year to celebrate tonight.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
January
Ever since I was a teenager and Angela Chase, the main character on the teen drama My So-Called Life, said she equated the ticking of the 60 Minutes clock to the end of the weekend, I’ve hated Sunday nights. But none quite so much as this one.
Not only was I facing the first morning of the new regime at work, but Alex was leaving for the conference too. I was so nervous that not even two glasses of wine could steady me. Alex, on the other hand, was the definition of calm and collected, watching TV as if this was any other night. It was driving me crazy. Finally, I kicked him gently in the ankle.
That got his attention. “Ow! What was that for?” “How can you possibly be so calm? Your interview is tomorrow morning. Why aren’t you freaking out?”
“Because you’re doing that enough for both of us.” He grinned and pulled me down next to him, pinning my hands behind my back and covering my face in kisses.
By the time he came up for air, I couldn’t help but smile back.
“I was going to wait to give this to you, but it looks like you need it now.” He fished a long, thin rectangular block out of the pocket of his tan wool sweater and presented it to me.
When I looked closer, I realized it was one of those weekly pill boxes that older people keep their daily medications in so they know if they took them or not. “You’re giving me drugs?”
“No. I’ll leave it to you to medicate yourself. Open the one for today.”
I popped open the lid on the far left marked with a capital S for Sunday. A small folded piece of paper jumped out at me, leaving a bed of dark chocolate Mini Kisses behind. I opened the page and read. “‘This note entitles the bearer to a single wish fulfilled.’”
Alex leaned over and whispered a few racy suggestions in my ear.
My face flushed in response. “I’m up for that.”
He pried my fingers from around the pill box. “And that’s just the beginning. Each day has a little surprise in it to help you get through the week since I won’t be here to help you in person.”
I placed a hand on the side of his face and kissed him. “This has to be the most thoughtful thing anyone has done for me. How in the world did you think of it?”
“I could lie and say it was my own ingenuity, but I’m man enough to admit I found it on Pinterest.”
“I think it’s very sexy when a man is willing to admit to being crafty.”
“Oh, you’ve seen nothing yet. Just wait until Valentine’s Day. There’ll be crafty things all over this apartment.”
“Should I start calling you Mr. Stewart?” I giggled.
“Perhaps not, but that does conjure a lovely mental image of you in only an apron.”
Biting my lip to hide a grin, I waited until Alex turned back to the TV. Then I bounded to the kitchen, grabbed the apron that hung on the oven door, and shed my clothes. A moment later, he had his wish.
I crooked my finger at him. “About that desire you were going to fulfill?”
“I think I said ‘wish,’ but I won’t argue over semantics.” He wrapped his arms around me, palms resting on my bare rear end.
“Oh, this sounds like the plot to a romance novel,” I said, pulling his sweater up over his head. “The naughty cook who needs a lesson from the hot English professor.”
He gave me a wolfish grin. “I like the way you think.”
He carried me to the bedroom and made sure I didn’t have any time that night to worry about what the next day would bring.
The last thing Alex said to me before leaving wasn’t “I’ll miss you.” It was “Tu me manques,” which his French aunt had taught him. It translated as “You are missing from me.”
High on that bit of romance, as well as medicinally sedated, I was ready to take on anything Nick threw my way. That was until I actually saw him. One look at his smug expression across from Miles and me at our first weekly briefing made me want to rip off his face.
“Welcome back and happy new year,” Nick began. “We’ve got a busy year ahead of us, so I’m going to need you both to bring your best work each and every day.”
My phone vibrated in my lap. I peeked at it to find a text from Miles that said, We do that every day, asshole. I pressed my lips together to choke back a giggle.
“Annabeth, I know you were upset about being pulled off the U of Chicago account, but don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of other meaningful work for both of you. I want you two to be the lead creatives on a project we just got celebrating more than a century of local Chicago music. In a former life, I used to be a musician. I also spent a few years as manager of a few local bands, so this project is near and dear to my heart, which is why I’m entrusting it to you.”
My phone buzzed again. More like you don’t have a clue how to handle this.
Nick cleared his throat. “Do I have to take your phones away?”
Chided, we both set them facedown the desk.
“As I was saying, I’ll be meeting with the organizers of this summer’s music festival tomorrow, so I’ll know more then, but in the meantime, I’d like to see what kind of ideas you have to promote this kind of event. Let’s meet back here tomorrow at nine to discuss, all right?”
I raised my hand. “I have a question. Are we contributing to the promotional strategy for this event or only functioning as a writer and designer?”
For a moment, Nick was thrown by my question. But like a consummate politician, he recovered his line of messaging. “Well, the three of us are a team, so you are part of the overall plan in that way. But as to your primary duties, they’ll be limited to creating materials.”
“But you still want our promotional ideas?”
“Yes. Three heads are better than one, right?” He chuckled.
By the time the meeting ended, I
was quietly seething. Miles tugged on my sweater, directing me toward the parking garage instead of heading back to our cubes. With a chirp, he unlocked his car—a Christmas present from Mia—and shoved me inside.
It was eerily quiet and still.
“Let it out. No one will hear you in here,” Miles said.
“Ugh! He’s just so—just such—ugh! We’re not really working on the account, but he wants our ideas? We don’t get to talk to the clients, yet we’re supposed to figure out strategy for him? Seriously?”
“He’s in charge now. Right now, we don’t have anything to go to Laini with, so we have to do what he wants. But give him time. He’ll hang himself. They always do.”
I punched Miles in the arm. “How can you possibly be so calm about this?”
Miles adopted his best Samuel L. Jackson look, cool and slick. “I told you; I’m quietly planning his demise. We could give him a list of bands that aren’t even from Chicago, but that would be too obvious. No, we need to do our jobs like perfect little soldiers so that when he goes down, he has no one to blame but himself. So put on your best Pollyanna attitude and get back in there. It’s only four months.”
“Come on, April,” I chanted under my breath.
“Trouble in paradise?” Mia asked over lunch the next day.
My daily instruction from Alex’s cure-all medicine box had been to take her out and have some girl time to help take my mind off of work.
I looked up from my phone. “What makes you ask that?”
“Well, for one, you haven’t been this quiet since you two started dating, and two, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Alexander the Great since before Christmas. Did everything go all right with your parents?”
She’d been in Paris for Christmas with Miles, and I’d forgotten I hadn’t brought her up to speed on everything that had happened since then. “Miles didn’t tell you?”
She considered for a moment, a tiny furrow forming between her brows. “Well, he tried to, but you know how much guys listen, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. I feel like I got the story, but it was riddled with bullet holes.”
I quickly filled her in on Christmas, including my mom’s frosty reception of Alex, Nick’s unexpected visit, our whirlwind trip to Denver, and Alex’s interview. “I talked to him last night, and he was on cloud nine. He really thinks he’s going to get it.”
“That’s great!” Mia’s eyes were shining. “I mean, it sucks for you, but it’s really great for him. Does he know when he’d need to leave?”
“No, not yet.” I huddled closer to the indoor fire pit, suddenly chilled. “Trinity term starts in April, so I think he’ll still be here for my birthday. Speaking of, will you be here for my big thirty-fifth bash, or are you off to London for Fashion Week?”
Mia’s face hardened. “No, I’ll be here. I didn’t get a single callback for London. Can you believe it? Some of the designers had the nerve to call me old. One even suggested I start doing catalog modeling. Ugh. That’s the kiss of death.”
I really wasn’t in the mood to appease her—she was thirty now, the equivalent of ninety in modeling years—but if I didn’t, there would be hell to pay, and I didn’t want to foster anger on her part. I cooed and said the appropriate flattering things, but I did notice that she skipped dessert when the waiter inquired about it.
“Anyway,” she said, picking up our previous thread of conversation as we walked back to my office, “a few of the designers who favor me are doing runway shows in mid-to-late spring, so I’m hoping to show all those bastards at Fashion Week what they’re missing.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Funny you should mention spirit. Miles says you’re showing an awful lot of it lately with Nick. What’s up with that?”
I shrugged. “He’s an ass who only wants me for as much as I can further this farce of a career he’s trying to build.”
“That’s not what I’ve been hearing,” Mia sang, obviously wanting me to take her bait.
I bit. “And what would you know about Nick?”
“Well, he’s really good friends with one of my friends’ boyfriends, Terrance. Terrance says Nick won’t shut up about you. He says Nick’s still in love with you and claims Nick told him that leaving you in Rome was the worst mistake he’s ever made.”
I snorted. “I wouldn’t disagree with him there. But the rest is bullshit. He’s outwardly hostile to me. Miles too. Why in the world would he treat me that way if he actually liked me?”
I wanted to believe I was right, but yet, I wondered. It was the same thing Nick had told Alex. But then again, Nick was a really good liar, so he could have just been sticking to his story.
When we stopped at the corner, behind a throng of people waiting for the light to change, Mia grabbed my shoulders. “Annabeth, do you remember in grade school how the boys would pull on your ponytail or pinch you if they liked you? This is no different. He just doesn’t know how to relate to you since you’ve been apart for so long, and now that he’s your boss, it makes things all the more awkward.”
I leaned in to sniff her breath.
She backed away, looking at me as if I had just grown three heads. “What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if you’re drunk. That’s the only explanation as to why you’re trying to make me believe Nick has a crush on me.”
Mia held up her hands defensively. “I’m just passing on what I’ve heard. I thought you might want to be prepared in case he does anything.”
“He’s my boss.”
“He used to be your best friend. Crossing lines didn’t bother him then. Why should he start caring now?”
I shook my head. “You are insane.”
“Believe what you like, Pookie, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
February
To Whom It May Concern,
Another year has come and gone, and here we are, me writing this letter to you, you reading it at some unknown date in the future. It’s been exactly a year since I vowed to do everything in my power to meet you. It’s weird to write this and wonder if I’ve made good on that. I think so. I think I know exactly who you are… but yet, there’s no way to know.
All there is is waiting, waiting to see your face at the altar, to slip a ring on your finger and promise you forever. Our wedding kiss will be the sweetest in history because that is the moment we’ll both know for certain.
My eyes drifted down to the silver ring on my right hand. Exactly a year ago today, I’d met Alex. Could it possibly be him? Was he the one I had been writing letters to all these years? It certainly felt like it, but I was well aware that I was in love and that made my judgment less than impartial. Damn it. Why did this have to be so hard?
I picked up my pen, trying to recapture my train of thought.
Marriages can break; the wrong people can wed—it’s no guarantee, but it’s the best we’ve got. I have to believe that when we do get married, it will be for life. We’ve certainly had ample time to make our mistakes with other people.
So I keep writing, trusting in the universe, whatever gods or forces govern love. It can’t just be a series of chemical reactions in our brains. Something that can bring forth life or drive people to the most atrocious of crimes can’t be explained away by chance.
But why the wait? I ask myself that question every single day, wondering if today is the day. What if we’ve been through a series of near-meetings over the years, times when our paths just missed crossing? I can easily imagine us passing one another at the grocery store, neither noticing because I was looking at my shopping list and you were examining the label on a can of baked beans. Or us being one row apart at the bookstore, hands on opposite books, but one of us decided not to pull the book off the shelf, so we didn’t see one another through the gap.
I shake my head as I write this, knowing you have all the same questions. I can’t wait for the day we can talk and discover the answers. Until then
, I want you to know that I’m still as sure as I was the day I wrote the first letter that you’re out there. You are my other half, the twin of my soul I’ve been searching for through countless lifetimes.
“Hey, baby,” Alex whispered in my ear, bending down behind me to kiss my earlobe.
I set the pen down to squeeze the hand he’d placed on my shoulder. “Hi. I’m glad you’re home.”
He squatted next to me so that his eyes were level with mine. “You sound upset.” He reached for the letter. “What are you writing?”
I snatched it out of his reach. “No, don’t. You can’t read this.” Not yet.
His forehead creased. “Why not?”
I sighed, not wanting to explain my tradition to him but not seeing any way around it. “Promise you won’t laugh.” I folded the letter and put it in the envelope I had decorated with a big thirty-five earlier.
He crossed his heart. “I will not laugh no matter what you say.”
I turned in my chair to face him, bringing his hands onto my lap and covering them with my own. “I have this tradition, something I’ve done every year on my birthday since I was sixteen.” I searched his eyes, not sure what I was looking for but not finding any indication that I couldn’t trust him with this, my deepest secret. “Every year, I write a letter to my soul mate, the person I know is out there somewhere.”
Alex didn’t blanch or grimace. He didn’t scoff or roll his eyes as Mia had. Instead, he smiled softly, eyes twinkling with something that looked like admiration.
“It helps with the loneliness,” I babbled, unable to stop talking now that I had revealed myself to him. “I’ve been single a long time, and I just want whoever I end up with to know that he’s been anticipated and loved since long before I saw his face, that I love him for more than what he looks like or does for a living or the money or power he may or may not have. I love him for him.”
Been Searching For You Page 17