by Cassie Cross
Alexandra sighs. “You must really love him.”
The comment is so unexpected that I let out this surprised half laugh, half cry. “Yeah. I do.”
“You seemed like a cute couple when I saw you together at the benefit,” she offers.
Well, that’s a punch to the gut. “We weren’t together then, and we aren’t together now. But…” I shrug helplessly. “I want him to be happy, and this would make him happy.”
She nods, but stays completely quiet.
“I’m sorry if you feel put on the spot. I knew this was a long shot, and I don’t expect to leave here with an answer. I just wanted you to reconsider, to make you see past the person who screwed you over in a business deal, to the person he is outside of all that.”
“And what makes you think I could be persuaded to do that?” Alexandra sounds genuinely curious, there’s no heat or hardness in the words at all.
“When I met you at the benefit, I really needed a boost of confidence and a friendly face. And you, a complete stranger, gave me both of those things without even knowing that I needed them. So I thought you might be the kind of person who would be open to what I had to say.”
“Throw in a dress like the one you wore at the benefit that night, and I might have to reconsider.” She’s joking, trying to ease the tension and take the spotlight off of what I just said to her, I can hear it in her voice.
Still, I reach into my bag, pull out a business card, and slide it across the table.
“If you want a dress, I’ll make you a dress.”
She takes the card, tapping the edge of it with her finger. “Only if I sell Oliver the house, right?”
I shake my head and give her a soft smile. “This is a no-strings-attached offer. That dress made me feel beautiful, and every woman deserves that. Consider it reciprocation for the confidence boost.”
She laughs. “Will do.”
“And if you’re still not willing to change your mind, no hard feelings.” I say it because it feels like the right thing to say, not because I particularly mean it (although I really want to mean it). “I understand why you’re angry.”
With a weak smile, Alexandra nods. “Thank you.”
Silence hangs in the air for a few seconds.
“So,” I say, grabbing my bag and standing up. “I won’t take up any more of your time. Make sure you call me for a fitting, okay? And if you do decide to sell your house to Oliver, overcharge him and I’ll make you something else to wear on the vacation you can take with the extra money.”
That gets a loud, genuine laugh out of her. “Will do.”
I walk over to her side of the table and shake her hand. “Thanks for taking time out of your day and seeing me. It was good to see you.”
“You too,” she says, looking down at my card.
“I look forward to hearing from you.”
I walk out the door and smile at the receptionist on my way out. I’m not sure if I’ve convinced her to change her mind, but I gave it my best shot.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Friday night, I’m sitting at home, going through my emails. I’m sorting through a few offers from some brands who’d reached out to me wanting to be featured on our site. I respond to the things that I think we have a use for, asking if they’ll send me some samples so Marisa and I can try them out before we post to make sure the quality is there.
I’m in the middle of making some notes about what kind of spreads we could use these items in when there’s a gentle knock on my door. I put my laptop to the side and walk to the door. When I look through the peephole, I see my brother on the other side, looking nervous.
I unlock and open the door.
“Hey,” Ben says, all subdued and quiet. “Can I come in?”
I stand to the side and let him walk by. He comes to a stop just inside the living room, his hands shoved in his pockets. I don’t get angry with my brother often, but when I do it’s usually a blowup that lasts for days. It always takes one of us a little longer than it probably should to reach out and make things right.
I’m still hurt, but the anger has dimmed to a flicker. Whatever Ben has to say for himself, I’m ready to hear it.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I’m not gonna stay long. I know you’re pissed, and I’m not gonna make any excuses. I know I was a dick, and I know I don’t have any say in your love life. I think I project a lot of the guilt I still have about the way I treated Marisa the first time we dated onto Oliver, and that isn’t fair to either one of you.”
“Oliver isn’t you,” I remind him. Not to be shitty, but because it’s true. My brother has made some mistakes, but they’re his mistakes. Oliver shouldn’t be blamed for them.
“I know that,” he replies, nodding his head. “Oliver is a good man, and a great friend. You guys would be lucky to have each other.”
“That’s how I thought you were going to react when you found out about us,” I admit with a bitter laugh. “I thought Oliver was just being a little ridiculous and paranoid.”
Ben looks at the ground. “I’m sorry that I butted in, and that I hurt you. I’m doing my best to make it right.”
I look at my brother, all contrite and sincere. He’s never handled rifts particularly well, and this one doesn’t seem to be any different. The exhaustion and sadness etched in his face makes me want to help him feel better about the situation.
“What you said to Oliver in Thailand, and your reaction the other day didn’t help things, that’s for sure. But I think there are some other issues with Oliver that would’ve broken us up eventually.”
He nods like he agrees, and I have to fight back the urge to ask him if he’s talked to Oliver. “I think he’s working on that.”
Those words ignite a faint flicker of hope in my chest, but I don’t dare let it grow. I don’t want Ben to say anything else that might give me more of that hope, only for me to wind up disappointed. So, I change the subject.
“Maybe you could bring me lunch on Monday?”
He grins. “That sounds good.”
I step forward and wrap my arms around his waist. He presses a quick kiss to the top of my head. “I love you, Felicity.”
“I love you, too.”
About five minutes after Ben leaves, when I’ve settled back onto the sofa and into my emails, there’s another knock on my door. Knowing my brother, he probably remembered something he wanted to say, and had to come back and do it in person because he’s just that kind of guy. I walk to the door with a smile, not even bothering to look and see who’s there before I open it.
“Did you decide you needed to grovel some more?” I tease.
My heart stops when I see Oliver standing there. His hands are clenched at his sides, his jaw tense, his face as irresistibly gorgeous as ever.
And he’s wearing my favorite henley.
“Oh,” I breathe. “I thought you were Ben. He was just here.”
“He was?” Oliver looks down the hall as if my brother is going to materialize out of thin air.
“Yeah, but I don’t really have the square footage here for you two to get into another brawl, so hopefully he doesn’t come back.”
Oliver shoves his hands in his pockets, and looks down at the ground.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Can I come in?”
I think about it for a few seconds, then step aside to grant him access. I close the door behind him, and take a few tentative steps into the living room. “Do you want to sit down? Can I get you something to drink?”
Oliver hangs his head. “Please don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Treat me like an acquaintance.”
Irritation flares in my gut. “I’m sorry, I’m not really sure how I should be talking to the man I’m in love with who thinks being with me was a mistake.” It comes out more bitter and angry than I’d intended, but I am bitter and angry. And hurt and a lot of other things. No sense in hiding it, I suppose.
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and presses his lips together. Part of me hopes that he’s going to apologize, to say something that eases the pain and emptiness that I’ve felt since he broke up with me. Another part of me hopes that he doesn’t say anything at all.
That’s the part that gets its wish.
The silence stretches on to the point where it feels awkward, something that’s never really happened between the two of us before. Desperate to break it, I say, “Why don’t you sit?”
“I should probably…” he trails off, but stays standing.
Yeah, it’s probably better if neither one of us gets too comfortable. He looks so uneasy that I wonder if I should offer an olive branch of sorts, like telling him that we can go back to the way things were. But we can’t, and I don’t think it would be healthy to fool myself. I can’t go back to seeing him as a friend, to ignoring the fact that I’m in love with him. I can’t forget what it felt like to touch him, to kiss him, to hold him in my arms. There isn’t any going back to the way we were before for me.
I hate this silence between us, hate the distance, hate the weird energy that’s replaced that magnetic thrill that I always felt when I was around him.
That we had so much and lost it so quickly makes me so frustrated, sad, and angry.
“I, uh…I wanted to come here and thank you. In person.”
That surprises me. “What for?”
He gives me a genuine smile. “Alex agreed to sell me the house. We made a deal this afternoon.”
Even though I only did it the other day, I had completely forgotten that I’d gone to her to plead Oliver’s case.
“She told you that I came to see her?”
He shakes his head. “She didn’t have to. She told me I was an idiot for whatever I’d done, and that I was lucky to have someone like you.”
I can’t disagree with her. “I didn’t tell her anything personal, she just said she thought we looked like a cute couple at the benefit. I told her we weren’t then, and we aren’t now.”
Oliver looks like I’ve physically punched him. “I’d give up the house if I could go back in time and undo this.”
“Undo what? What little bit of time we actually got to be together, or the mess you made of things at the end?”
He stares at me, his lips slightly parted, his breaths ragged. He looks like he’s fighting some kind of battle with himself, trying to figure out what he wants to say, where he wants to go from here.
We’re just standing here staring at each other when my phone rings. Usually I’d ignore it, but I’m desperate for some excuse to get away from this tension, to have a few moments to unscramble my thoughts and get away from this pull I always feel toward Oliver when I’m around him.
I pick up my phone and see Marisa’s photo smiling at me. “Hello?”
“Felicity!” She says urgently, with a frantic edge to her voice. “Look at the comments on today’s post.”
I rush to my laptop and log onto our site’s dashboard. I click on the “comments” section and look through the most recent ones. There are hundreds of replies, lots of praise for Lyla, but so many—more than I ever could’ve imagined—are various versions of “Where can I get that white wrap shirt?”
“I knew this would happen,” Marisa says, sounding almost as excited as I feel.
I let out a giddy laugh. I can’t believe it. “Oh my god.”
“What happened?” Oliver asks, walking up and placing his warm hand on the small of my back before he quickly pulls it away, like I’ve burned him.
“Is that Oliver?” Marisa asks excitedly.
“Can I call you back?” I don’t want to have to get into the details about his visit right now. I already have too much to process as it is.
“Yeah, yeah,” she says quickly. “You better, or else I’m going to keep calling you until you answer.”
I laugh. “I will, promise.”
When I hang up, Oliver asks again. “What happened? Is everything okay?”
I carry my laptop over to the counter near where he’s standing, and scroll through the comments so that Oliver can see them. He scrolls for a while, his eyebrows knit together.
“This shirt they’re talking about…did you make it?”
I nod, still feeling so overwhelmed.
“I thought you were against putting something up on the site, or did you change your mind?”
“I had a shoot with a photographer who didn’t like the clothes I’d picked out. He liked what I was wearing and asked me to give it to the model, so I did. I…didn’t really think about this as the endgame at the time because I just wanted it to be over. I think it’s probably time for me to stop putting conditions on my life, and let whatever happens, happen.”
He scrolls down through comments I hadn’t even seen, and I can’t wipe the smile off of my face. This giddy thrill is fluttering around in my stomach, making it feel like a colony of butterflies has taken up residence in there.
I press my hand against my chest as if that’s going to stop my heart from racing.
Oliver pulls himself away from the computer, gives me a beatific smile, then wraps me up into a hug.
I can’t help but hug him back, getting lost in the warm familiarity of his arms, the way he smells as I bury my face into his neck. He holds on tightly, like he doesn’t want to let me go, and even though I should, I don’t want him to.
Ever since we broke up, I feel like a piece of me has been missing. Not talking to Oliver, not telling him about my day, not sharing the good things that happen in life with him…for a second, that piece is back. I feel whole and happy again.
My traitor mind plucks at this moment of happiness by pulling up its favorite rerun, I think we made a mistake.
For my own wellbeing, I pull away from him.
Oliver doesn’t quite get the message, or maybe he just can’t help himself either, because he cups my face, his thumbs tenderly stroking my cheekbones as he looks at me with such want in his eyes.
He wants to kiss me.
I want him to kiss me.
It would be so easy to push up on my toes and press my lips to his, to forget about everything that’s happened, to just love him the way that I always have and hope that’s enough to see us through.
But I deserve more than that. I deserve honesty and commitment from Oliver, I deserve him being with me in spite of his fears, not him pushing me away because of them.
So I take a step back, even though I hate the flash of hurt in his eyes when I do it.
“Sorry, I’m…” Oliver takes a deep breath, then plasters a fake smile on his face. “We should go out and celebrate or something, this is great news. We finally both got…”
“What we wanted?” I finish for him.
“Yeah,” he replies roughly.
I would love nothing more than to go out with him and celebrate, to have fun and forget about everything and celebrate the good stuff in our lives. That’s what I would’ve done with my friend Oliver. I’m not really sure what to do with this new guy, this ex-boyfriend I’m still in love with that I still ache for. But I do know that going out with him will leave me wanting more, and I have to protect my own heart.
“Celebrating sounds fun, but…I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
His face just falls, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Probably not.”
“I have a lot of research I need to do if I’m gonna start a business,” I say, trying to be lighthearted. It utterly fails. “I’ll talk to Ben about it. Maybe I can convince Caleb to give me some startup cash.”
His jaw clenches, and damn it. I can tell I’ve hurt him, but I just don’t know how to navigate this…thing between us.
“Yeah, they can probably help you.” There are a few beats of awkward silence. “I should go,” he says, nodding toward the door. He looks like leaving is the very last thing he wants to do, but I can’t ask him to stay.
I walk him to the door.
“I’m really glad you got the house.”
He gives me a sad smile. “Only because of you. And…I’m really glad your dreams are coming true. If I can do anything to help, you can…well, just let me know.”
I nod, feeling tears pricking at my eyes. “I will.”
He takes a few steps forward then turns around. “Goodnight, Felicity.”
I give him the best smile I can manage. “Goodnight.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I spend a good chunk of my weekend replying to the comments on the post about Lyla Kettler, letting them know that I’m the one who made the shirt. So many respond, saying they had no idea I actually made clothes, and asking if I had a brand in the works and when it would be available to purchase. Their enthusiasm gets me excited about the next step in this venture, even though I have no idea what I’m doing.
Seeing something I made so loved by people makes me happier than I thought it would. Before, when being a successful designer was something I’d just imagined for myself, I wasn’t able to conjure up what kind of feeling would accompany that acceptance. I couldn’t possibly have come up with this level of contentment and fulfillment without experiencing it.
I go over to Ben and Marisa’s apartment for dinner on Sunday, to get some advice on what first steps I should take to get this thing off the ground. Ben thinks we should talk to Caleb when he returns to town from a business trip to China. He also suggests calling Oliver, but I don’t want to do that.
I mean, I do want to talk to him about it. Desperately, really, but I’m not ready to be just friends with him yet, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep going back to each other; we’ll never be able to move past this if we don’t get a little bit of space and closure first.
Marisa seems like she wants to argue with me on that, but I stand firm. She mentions talking to Eloise again, and this time I agree. I’m not going to let any of my weird hangups keep me from getting somewhere with this clothing line. Marisa tells me she’ll give Eloise a call first thing in the morning, and I leave Ben and Marisa’s apartment excited to get to work sketching some new designs.