Parisian Nights

by Louise Bay

  With Haven it was going to be different. I’d wanted more from the moment I first met her. I couldn’t seem to get enough. But Elemental Energy was just kicking off. It needed my time and attention as well. The timing sucked, but I would make this work. She’d crashed into my world, and I wouldn’t let her go.

  She grimaced. “Sunday night I cook for Luke and sometimes Ash. I’d invite you but—”

  “Let’s leave dinner with the family to next weekend, okay?”

  She nodded in agreement.

  “Monday?” she asked.

  “Monday? At the morning meeting?” That seemed so far away. I wanted to keep her naked and with me between now and then.

  “Well, yes and after work? You could come over and I could cook.” She yawned.

  “Let’s order in. That gives us more time.”

  “I like that idea.” She smiled at me.

  Her defenses were low, and I wanted to keep her like this, to see every layer of her, but I could tell she was sleepy. “You’re tired,” I said as her heavy eyes drifted shut.

  “You’ve worn me out,” she said.

  “Sleep, baby.”

  By Sunday morning I was aching to see her again. She’d clearly had a good time with Ash on Saturday night. I’d enjoyed the evidence through a series of drunken texts telling me all the things she wanted to do to me, and then the Sunday morning messages apologizing.

  At two o’clock my phone vibrated.

  “How’s the hangover?” I asked, answering her call.

  “A little better. Sorry about those messages.”

  “Don’t be sorry. And we’re going to try the thing with the whipped cream.”

  She laughed. “Okay, but not in my bed. It’ll ruin my sheets.”

  “Practical to the end.”

  “How is your work going? Am I interrupting?” she asked.

  “No, it’s good to have a break. I’ve been working since five.”

  “Tell me. What have you been doing?”

  I grinned into the phone. I liked that she was asking me about work. “Hal is transferring the first tranche of investment tomorrow, so I need Eric, our computer whiz, on board as soon as possible. To speed things up I think I’ll have to fly out to see him face-to-face.”

  “That’s sounds great. When do you go?”

  “Tuesday,” I said carefully. I wasn’t sure how she was going to react or what I wanted her reaction to be. I needed her to be cool about it, but I’d also like her to miss me a little. “I should be back Saturday morning. I’ll know more when I get there.”

  “Okay, so we’ll have to make the most of tomorrow night then.” That was the answer I’d been hoping for.

  “Do you want more coffee?” Beth shouted from the kitchen.

  “No, I’m good, thanks. On the phone,” I replied.

  “Sorry, are you not alone?” Haven asked.

  “It’s just Beth,” I said. “She’s been keeping me hydrated all morning.”

  “Oh, she’s come round to look after you?”

  “She lives here. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t think I did. Say hi to her from me,” she said. It was a reminder of how much we had to learn about each other. The pull I had toward her made me believe she knew everything about me that she needed to, but that couldn’t be true after knowing each other such a short time.

  “I will. She wants us to go to dinner, the three of us. When I’m back?” There was nothing I wanted to hide. I wanted to show her everything, offer myself up to her. I wondered if she could do the same in return.

  “Sure. Anyway, I should go and start on dinner.”

  “Okay, I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

  “You too.”

  Eleven

  Jake

  I got into work early on Monday to grab a few minutes with Haven before the meeting. But she wasn’t at her desk.

  I wandered across the office to say hello to Robert.

  “Morning, Harry,” Robert said as I walked in.

  “Hey. I need to talk to you about timing. Things have started to ramp up with Elemental Energy.”

  “Okay, let me catch up with Human Resources on where we are with the new guy. How was Paris?”

  “It was good. Really good.” I couldn’t help the shit-eating grin stamped across my face.

  “And the Haven and Sandy dynamic worked?” he asked.

  I nodded. “It did. I think because they are so different, completely opposite really.”

  Robert laughed, and I lent him a tight smile. “I knew it. You were right. We needed someone challenged in the looks department. Sandy could never have seen Haven as any kind of rival or threat.”

  Robert was a good friend, but at the moment I couldn’t think of him as anything other than a total douche. I ignored my instinct to defend Haven. She and I hadn’t discussed how public she wanted to be with what was going on between us, and I knew she was fiercely private at work. Hell, we hadn’t discussed anything. My heart sped up. If I defended Haven, I was sure to give away my feelings for her, and I didn’t want her to be mad for telling her boss about an intra-office relationship, so I just rolled my eyes and tried to ignore his comments about the woman I saw my future with.

  Haven

  I stumbled from outside Robert’s office into the nearest meeting room and collapsed onto the chair. My heart was beating so quickly I thought I was going to throw up. My vision blurred, so I closed my eyes and placed my head in my hands. What had I just heard? I had wanted to catch Robert before our meeting, but when I got to his office, Jake was already in there, the door ajar. I hesitated, not knowing whether I should interrupt, and overheard them talking about Sandy and me. Replaying it in my head created a fresh wave of nausea and I clasped my stomach, willing myself not to throw up. I’d had about all the humiliation I could take for one day.

  I’d opened myself up to Jake completely. Had it all been a game to him? Was I just a conquest? And apparently, not a particularly attractive one. Had he wanted Sandy all along? None of it made sense. A sharp pain twisted through the center of me. I wanted to run and hide. I needed my people; I needed Luke and Ash.

  One thing was clear—I should have never let him so close.

  Twelve

  Jake

  The cab pulled up in front of Haven’s apartment. I leapt out and pushed some cash through the window to the driver. I kept my eyes fixed firmly on the door to Haven’s building in case she went in or out. I had to convince her that the conversation she’d overheard between Robert and I wasn’t what she thought it was. My heart had turned itself inside out when I’d received her text saying that she never wanted to see me again, that she’d heard Robert and I discussing her. I didn’t know exactly what she thought she’d heard—or what she was thinking. All I knew was it felt as though she was slipping through my fingers. She hadn’t answered my calls, or responded to my texts.

  I climbed the stairs to the door, then stopped. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t even know if she was home. Was I supposed to force my way in and pin her down until she listened to me? My mind whirled. I liked order and logic. Normally I could read people and predict how they would react in a million different scenarios. Haven tore right through any theories I had about her and people in general, changing direction every time I thought I had her figured out. It was exhausting and invigorating at the same time. But this felt dark. Like her trail had gone dry. I should have set Robert straight when he’d talked about picking Haven for the Sandy interview because she wouldn’t rival Sandy’s movie-star glamor. I shouldn’t have stayed quiet, but I’d been trying to do what I thought Haven would want me to do—keep our relationship private.

  I pressed the buzzer and held my breath, waiting for a response. Relief and shock made my stomach flip when I heard the intercom pick up.

  “Haven, it’s Jake. We need to talk.”

  The intercom went dead but it wasn’t followed by a buzz of the door being release
d. I pressed again. No response.

  I tried to recall exactly what Robert had said to me and precisely how I’d replied. But the memories seemed muddied from pulling them out and trying to rerun them. I could understand why she’d be upset with Robert; he’d been a prick. And I got that she might be angry with me for not defending her, but did it justify her not wanting anything to do with me? Why wouldn’t she at least talk to me?

  I was pacing outside her building when I saw her brother, Luke, approach. His eyes bore into me and he wore an expression that said he wanted to rip my face from my body.

  “Has she spoken to you?” I asked.

  “Don’t speak to me, mate, or I might have to punch you,” Luke replied.

  “I need to understand why she’s so upset, what she heard. I need to talk to her.” I’d lost my normally balanced, cool exterior as panic started to rise. If her brother was over here in the middle of the day, Haven must be really upset. I hated to think of her in pain and the idea I’d caused it, directly or indirectly, made me feel as if my gut was rotting. It was the last thing I wanted. I couldn’t lose her.

  Luke entered a code into the panel next to the intercom and pulled the building door open. “Save it. I’m not interested. I’ve been encouraging her to open up and have some fun for the longest time, and then some wanker like you comes along and fucks her up. I don’t know what you did, and I don’t care. The only thing that I could make out through her tears were the words ‘pity fuck’ and if you think you’re too good for Haven, then you don’t know her at all.”

  He let the door slam in my face. For a second I was catatonic as what he’d said sank in. Shit. Pity fuck? My gut twisted and I felt as though I might vomit. She thought I agreed with Robert? Surely she knew better than that after Paris.

  Questions flew through my head like boulders. How was I going to get her to speak to me? Would she believe me? How was I ever going to get her to trust me? I was due to go to Palo Alto tomorrow, should I cancel? But then I would probably lose the key to the future of Elemental Energy. Maybe it would be good to give Haven some space. Would I ever see her again if she refused to speak to me? I was no longer needed at Rallegra, so it wasn’t as if I’d bump into her at work.

  The rot in my gut started to spread.

  I dialed her number again and it went straight to voicemail, so I typed out another text.

  Jake: I’m sorry. Please let me explain.

  My head should be buried in Elemental Energy, but instead I was trying to figure out a way to postpone my trip. This was why I’d always dated girls like Millie. Women who required financial, rather than emotional investment. They were easy to predict, easy to keep happy and easy to keep at arm’s length. Haven was oil to their water.

  I tried her phone again. Straight to voicemail. There was a sense of relief at the thought that Luke was with her. Hopefully, he would be able to provide some comfort to her.

  After a sleepless night, I decided to go to Palo Alto. Haven wasn’t responding to me and I being away would give her some space. I couldn’t exactly set up camp outside her apartment building and I could call her from wherever I was. And I would email her. Try to explain when I could think more clearly. I just didn’t know how to make this right. I’d never cared enough about anyone but my family to have to deal with a situation like this. Hurting Haven had hurt me. Her pain had become mine.

  Haven

  “If you’re not going to help chop those vegetables, then get out of my kitchen or pour me a glass of wine,” I told Ash as I prepared Sunday dinner. It was a ritual Luke and I’d had forever, and Ash was frequently a part of. Rituals and traditions between us had become more important since our parents had died. And Sunday dinner was the most important of all because it felt as though it was what we’d be doing—congregating, sharing, spending time with each other—if our family were still whole.

  Ash went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine.

  “A normal girl would go dressed to kill if she thought she were going to see her ex for the first time,” Ash said.

  “What can I say? I don’t want him to think that what he’s done has affected me in any way.” But Jake had affected me in every way.

  I had cried non-stop for twenty-four hours after I’d overheard Robert and Jake’s conversation. I wasn’t sure which stung more, that Robert thought my best qualification was my unattractiveness, or that Jake had agreed with him. On the rare occasions something got under my skin and created a chink in my armor, my floodgates opened and I temporarily drowned. I wept for everything that had ever gone wrong. I wept for my carefree teens and twenties that had been ripped from me. I wept for my parents who never got to have the lives they dreamed of. I wept for Luke, who had given up his dreams to get a reliable, well-paid job so he could take care of me. And then I wept for the poor, the dying and the hungry. On the rare instances I mourned, everyone’s grief and sorrow became my own.

  Luke and Ash were the people who could pull me to safety. Order me into the shower. Make me laugh. Show me the absurdity in my reactions and overreactions. And just as suddenly as it started, it would stop. The chink would heal over. Life would go on.

  I was fine.

  The knots in my stomach had disappeared as I read Jake’s email, explaining Robert’s view, how he had decided who would take the article before Jake and I met, and how Jake had never shared Robert’s viewpoint. I believed him. But at the same time, that didn’t alter the fact that the whole situation had metaphorically thrown a bucket of ice water over me. Whatever we had, or might have had, had been tarnished. The heartbreak reminded me why I didn’t really date. I had enough people in my life that I loved and cared for, and I needed to hold on tight to them. The thought of falling for someone, properly letting someone in and then having it disintegrate—having them leave—was too painful. It was much better to clutch onto the people that would never willingly go anywhere.

  Luke and Ash had been constants in my life since before my parents’ deaths. There was no possibility they would leave me, and that’s what I needed. That was enough.

  “So you’re going to go dressed like a puritan?” Ash asked.

  “I’m going to wear what I always do. Nothing has changed.”

  “His email though, Haven. It made my insides melt.”

  “Yes and I replied. I told him it was fine, that I believed him and there were no hard feelings. But you get that things are different, don’t you? I can’t see him in the same way. Hearing that conversation changed things for me.”

  “I’m not sure I do get it. He likes you—really cares about you. And you like him. Just because you had a road bump doesn’t mean you give up.”

  It isn’t a road bump, it’s a wake-up call. I was grateful that I hadn’t fallen deeper before I’d come to my senses. If I’d lost Jake once he’d become really important to me, it might just have finished me. I couldn’t lose anyone else.

  “I need you to drop it. It’s done,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  I had to put a stop to the conversation. Part of me couldn’t wait to see him at our Monday morning meeting—I was desperate to hear how his trip to the US had gone but I couldn’t think like that now. We weren’t anything to each other anymore. Talking about him, thinking about him, made it worse—made the feelings about him bigger when all I wanted to do was have them disappear as if he’d never existed.

  “Can you get that?” I asked her when the door buzzer went. “It’s likely Luke.”

  “As long as I can leave Emma on the doorstep.”

  I rolled my eyes. She wasn’t a big fan of Luke’s girlfriend, Emma, mostly because she was jealous. But also because Sunday nights with Emma were different. The three of us were a unit and Emma’s presence altered the dynamic. “I’ll get it, you freak.”

  When I opened the door, Luke leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, handing me a bottle of wine and a bag, which I hoped had stock cubes and broccoli in it. “Hey,” he said.
/>   “Where’s Emma?” I asked.

  “She’s not coming.”

  I pursed my lips at him and he gave me a gentle shake of the head. His heavy eyes told me he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “All the more for us.”

  “How are you feeling about work tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Fine. Why shouldn’t I?” I replied.

  “You know, you’ll see Jake. I’m just asking.”

  The truth was I didn’t feel fine, but I desperately wished to. I wanted to be over him. I hated myself for looking forward to seeing him. I needed that part of me under control and back to normal so I could prove to myself I was back to Haven pre-Jake, that he hadn’t got under my skin. It was done. We were over before we began.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door to the conference room, relieved to find I was the first one to arrive.

  I set my pad, pen and Diet Coke down as I took my usual spot and then smoothed the stray wisps of hair back into my tight bun. I can do this.

  Within a few minutes, people started filing into the room and filling chairs. I kept my eyes on my to-do list, waiting for the seat opposite to become occupied with too-long legs and a wicked smile. I waited. And waited. But the chair remained free.

  Robert arrived and called everyone to order. Had Jake deliberately avoided what had become his usual seat? I glanced down the table and then across. He wasn’t here.

  He’d been due back from the US on Saturday. Where was he? His calls had slowed from all day, to three times a day, to a single call since my reply to his email. I had told him that I accepted his apology and that I understood that it wasn’t him that had picked me over Emily. And that was all true. I had added that it was also the case that I didn’t want to continue things between us, but I hoped that we would still be friends. I had to protect myself, and that meant I couldn’t have Jake in my life. Jake had the ability to pierce my armor and he had to be kept at a distance.