by Lucia Jordan
After we finished a drink and some small talk with Kate and Nick, I walked Brooke out to the stretch limo that was waiting for us in front of the apartment. I hadn’t even thought about the connection that Brooke would draw between the limo and the incident that had set this whole thing off. As soon as I caught sight of the repulsed look on her face, it immediately hit me.
How could I have been so stupid?
I didn’t know whether I should apologize and admit that I hadn’t even thought about the association of the two events or if I should just ignore it and move on with the evening. Since my track record seemed to prove that ignoring things didn’t work, I opted to come right out and say something to stop the silence murdering the evening before it even got started.
“Brooke, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t even think about the limo.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said as she got in the car.
This was already off to a less than perfect start. I sighed and walked around to the other door.
When we got to Plethora, the line was out the door. I waved toward the bouncer, and he motioned for us to come on ahead and opened the corded-off area to let us inside. It helped when you were the wealthiest man in the city. We rode the elevator to the rooftop and then stepped out into the bar. I was hoping that the impressive sight of this place would help take Brooke’s mind off the limo.
“Have you ever been here before?” I asked her.
“Of course not,” she said. “This place is privately reserved for people who run in your social status circle.”
She was right. Strike two.
I held out my arm for her to take and walked her over to one of the coolest spots in the bar to sit. I needed to make this evening breathtaking.
Plethora had an urban-bohemian feel to it. The sofas and chairs were low to the ground so that it almost felt like you were sinking into them, and the low coffee tables near each seating area adorned with piles of mismatched candles of various sizes. Overhead, there were silk canopies in bright colors that reminded me of an Indian market and strands of twinkling white lights. There was also an abundance of greenery and hanging plants that filled in the spaces in-between. The bar itself was packed, and even the cozy areas such as the one we were in, were getting filled quickly. A waitress came by with a cocktail menu, and Brooke’s face seemed intrigued when she looked it over.
“Wow,” she said as the waitress waited to take our drink order. “There are so many incredible looking concoctions on here. Can you just pick one of your favorites for me to try?”
“Absolutely!” the waitress smiled. “And will you be having your usual Mr. Rollins?”
I saw Brooke’s eyebrows raise as she waited for my response. In light of not seeming like a snobbish elitist, I told the waitress that I’d like her to “surprise me” as well. I thought that I almost saw Brooke laugh a little.
The air up on the roof was cool since it was autumn and the breeze seemed more noticeable this high up. Brooke didn’t bring a jacket, and neither did I, so I had nothing to offer her to help keep her warm aside from my arm to hold onto her, and I was afraid it was a bit too soon still for that. So instead, I just looked at her loose, gray T-shirt blowing against her body in the breeze and the way that the deep neckline fell against the top of her breasts. I needed to talk; I just didn’t know where to start.
“Why didn’t you tell me about what happened in the limo?” Brooke lunges right in with her question.
I was actually glad that she just dove straight into it and kept me from having to figure out how to gently maneuver the conversation. I was dead-awful at being gentle with discussions. Contract negotiations I could be a whiz at all day, but relationship talks made me feel as though I was completely incapable of intelligent thought.
“I didn’t tell you because I was hoping it wouldn’t be a big deal,” I answered honestly.
“How could you possibly think that a picture of my boyfriend, who also happens to be my boss, drunk in a limo with some woman trying to put her hand on his crotch, wouldn’t be a big deal?”
The waitress came back to deliver our drinks before I could answer Brooke’s question. “Here you go,” she said as she set down two glowing blue drinks with dry ice steam wafting off the top of them. “This ought to make your evening more exciting!”
Ugh, I didn’t need any more excitement. I just needed my girlfriend to come back to me and to come back to be my assistant at work again.
Brooke picked up her cocktail and sipped it as she waited for me to respond. “Oh my gosh, this is delicious,” she said under her breath.
That made me happy, at least, before getting back to the difficult conversation at hand.
“The reason I didn’t think it was a big deal is that nothing happened,” I said to her. “Brooke, honestly, nothing at all happened that night. I had too much to drink that I’ll admit. The cocktails there were probably about as potent as this blue thing here is. There were several of us in the limo, and to be honest, everything was kind of swimming and fuzzy in my head. The woman in the picture put her hand on my lap just before that picture was snapped. I pushed her off immediately, but it was too late because the camera had already gotten a shot of it.”
“Why would she do that?” Brooke asked.
“Because she has been trying to get with me for years, and she’s annoyingly persistent.”
“I saw you leaving the office with that same woman the other night.”
I had to stop and think to remember that, and then I knew what Brooke was referring to.
“Her name is Chelsea, and she had stopped by the office simply to be a pain in my ass again. As I said, she’s really damn persistent. I walked her out and called her a cab as soon as she got there. She was trying to get me to go out for drinks with her, and I declined. If I hadn’t had walked her out, she wouldn’t have left. I ended up sticking her in a cab and going right back inside the building because I had more work to finish that night.”
I could see on Brooke’s face that she wanted to believe me but wasn’t quite sure if she did or not yet.
“Why didn’t you just talk to me and tell me that before you left for Spokane then?” she asked.
This cocktail was going down way too easily.
“I don’t know,” I answered. That was a weak reply, but I really didn’t know. “I guess I just figured that if it bothered you that much, you’d ask me about it. And since you didn’t, I figured it would all just blow over. I was planning to talk to you about it when I got back. I just got so consumed in making sure that the project contract was a success that I focused on the Spokane trip and took for granted that you would be here when I returned. I was wrong to have assumed that.”
The servers at Plethora had eagle eyes, and as soon as the waitress noticed that Brooke’s glass was empty, she came to ask if she wanted another cocktail, to which Brooke eagerly said yes.
“This time,” Brooke said to her with a smile. “Make it another surprise, but something of a different color, please.”
“You got it!”
“Feeling adventurous tonight?” I asked, pleased that she was at least enjoying the bar, if not my conversation.
“A little.”
“Okay, it’s my turn for a question now,” I said. “Why did you break up with me over a text? And then, even worse, why did you block my number so that I couldn’t even reach you?”
Brooke looked like she had just taken a blow to the gut. I wasn’t trying to jab back at her; I just really wanted to know what was going through her mind when she and if she really hadn’t ever wanted to see or hear from me again.
“I admit, that was a really shitty way for me to handle things, and I’m sorry,” she said.
I instinctively reached my hand out to touch hers resting on top of her lap. I think it surprised her a little, and to be honest, it surprised me too. But once it was there, I didn’t pull it back.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” I said. “I�
�m the one who caused this whole problem to begin with.”
“I still shouldn’t have broken up with you over text,” she continued. “That was, admittedly, a ridiculous way to handle the situation. I was just hurt and upset, and I knew that if I didn’t block your number, then at some point, you would eventually try to call or message me.”
“I tried to call and message you the very minute your text came through,” I said as the waitress put another round of drinks down on the table. This time they were pink and fizzy. She didn’t stick around, though; I was pretty sure she could see that we were in a deep conversation.
“Did you really never want to hear from me again?” I asked.
“It wasn’t that,” Brooke said as she looked out into the sea of people at the bar. “I just knew that if you tried to, I wouldn’t be able to go through with trying to leave you.”
“Then don’t,” I said as I turned to face her and take both of her hands in mine. “Brooke, I don’t want to be broken up from you. I want you to come back to me and be my girlfriend again, and I want you to come back to Cubed and be my assistant too.
She didn’t answer me, although I guess I didn’t ask her a direct question. The night seemed to be getting better than how it had started, though. We eased up on the conversations about the incident in the limo and about the breakup over text, and instead, we sipped on intoxicating cocktails and talked about everything from her new space living with Kate, to the Spokane project, to even some people watching around the bar. We were having fun, and things were starting to feel like they were getting a bit back to normal. The waitress kept a rainbow of cocktails coming, which I was sure would end up not being a great idea, but at the time, they were delicious.
I was just so relieved to be with Brooke again, and she looked so beautiful up here under the twinkling lights and the stars on the rooftop, that I began to feel myself getting consumed by her. Before I knew it, we were both sharing the same sofa cushion with the sides of our bodies pressed against each other, and we were laughing as if we hadn’t been apart.
The residual sparkles from the cocktail that lingered on her lips were irresistible, and even though I didn’t intend to be too forward with her in the midst of trying to recover our relationship, I couldn’t help myself. I leaned forward and kissed her, and as my tongue slid into her mouth, my hands slid onto her shirt, and I felt like I was in heaven being able to hold her body in my hands.
Brooke, however, didn’t get swept up by the same magical feeling that I did. Instead, she pushed me off of her and stood up, spilling the rest of her cocktail onto the ground. People stopped to look in our direction, including the waitress who was grabbing a handful of napkins and rushing over to the table. Brooke looked at me with a hurt fury on her face and then stormed off to the elevator. I got up and rushed after her, throwing a wad of cash down onto the table to cover the drinks.
“Brooke, wait!”
I managed to get into the elevator with her just before the doors closed.
“What’s the matter?” I shouted.
“How dare you!” she yelled through teary eyes. “How dare you bring me out on this date tonight for some cheap hook-up.”
“This place was far from cheap,” I said sarcastically. I meant that in a completely different way than how it came out. When I heard that comment leave my lips, I also heard Max telling me what an asshole I sounded like.
“Ugh!” she screamed as the elevator reached street level, and she raced out to the road to hail a cab.
“Stop! What are you doing? I’ll take you home in the limo.”
“Screw your limo,” she spat at me as she got into a stopped cab.
I stood there as I watched her leave and was completely dumbfounded and speechless about what had just happened. I was such an idiot. I completely blew the date by letting my physical desire get the better of me. But it wasn’t what Brooke thought. I wasn’t trying to just “hook-up” with her. It was because of how I feel about her that I got so swept up at that moment and was so happy about feeling like I had her back again. Max was right, about both my feelings for Brooke and about how not to handle all of this.
I walked over to the limo and had the driver take me home. On the ride, I called Max.
“You look like shit,” he said over the video chat.
“I’m beginning to think that is your new greeting for me,” I said, feeling completely defeated.
“It’s going to be until you stop looking like shit,” he said. “What happened?”
“I blew it with Brooke.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, again. I don’t know what to do to fix the situation,” I said. “But I am more sure each passing moment that I have to win her back, Max. I need to.”
“All right, man, well, get home and get some rest and let’s talk about it in the morning. Until then, don’t do anything else stupid.”
9
Chapter Six (Brooke)
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said to Kate as she badgered me all morning at work about how my date with Tim had gone the night before.
“Well, I can tell by your face that it sucked,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s why I don’t want to talk about it,” I said again.
Kate stood between me and the coffee grinder, where I was trying to brew a fresh pot of coffee.
“I’m not moving until you tell me what happened,” she insisted.
“You’re going to get us both fired.”
She shrugged and held her ground.
“Fine,” I relented. “We had a few drinks at the bar, and he tried to kiss me and feel me up.”
Kate looked like she was waiting for the punchline. “Wait, that’s it? That’s all that happened?” she said when she realized that I had nothing else to say.
“Yeah, Kate. That was enough. We were supposed to be talking and working things out. Tim just wanted an easy hook-up.”
“I don’t know,” she said as she shook her head. “I think maybe you’re reading too much into that. He’s a guy, he’s attracted to you and has feelings for you, and you guys were drinking and making up. It doesn’t seem that awful to me that he would try to make a move. I mean, he didn’t push you or anything, did he?”
“No, of course not. I got up and left.”
“And what did he do?”
“He chased me to the elevator and then apologized.”
Kate gave me side-eye as I gently pushed her out of the way of the coffee grinder so that I could get work done.
“Girls,” the manager said as he came out of his office. “There’s just been a huge corporate order that needs to be made and delivered within the next hour.
“Cool,” Kate says. “I’ll deliver it; I could use some fresh air. Where’s it going to?”
“The Cubed office building just around the corner. But Brooke is delivering the order. She was specially requested.”
“Oh no,” I said, immediately wondering what kind of game this was that Tim was playing at. “I’m not delivering that order.”
“Yes,” my boss said. “You are. They were very clear about the request. The customer said that either you deliver it or they’ll cancel the order and place it elsewhere. Lord knows why they want you of all people to deliver it, but that’s the deal.”
“Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” I said sarcastically. “But then just let them go elsewhere, we have other orders.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me,” he said with a sterner tone than before. “This is a giant corporate order. Either you deliver it as promised, or you can pack up your apron and go home.”
“Shit,” Kate said under her breath.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “Kate, help me brew the coffee.”
As Kate and I brewed the thirty coffees that Tim had ordered, I wondered how the hell I was even going to carry this much coffee up there.
“He requested you specifically so that he can see you again,” Kate said. “It’s pretty clever, actu
ally.”
“Kate, can you please stop siding with him?”
“I’m not siding with anyone; I’m just observant.”
“Well, you’re supposed to be siding with me,” I said gruffly.
“Oh come on,” she said as she put her arm around my shoulder. “You know I always side with you.”
She went into the back room to grab a carrier cart to load all of the coffees onto for me and then held the door as I left to go deliver the order to Cubed. I was mad that Tim was forcing my hand at this. It really wasn’t cool for him to involve my job. Sometimes I felt like he was really making an effort, and other times I felt like he was just parading around his ego. I thought that we were starting to talk things through a bit last night, and it wasn’t like I didn’t want to touch him too…God, I wanted to touch him badly. But just like the last time, I felt like he wasn’t really getting it. He just expected things to be easy and surface-level, and I wanted more than that. As much as I missed him and wanted him, I knew that I needed more. I wanted him to really listen to me and to be able to trust him and know that he cared about how I felt.
I pushed the button for the elevator when I reached the front of the Cubed office building. I couldn’t think about this anymore right now. I just needed to deliver this coffee and get out of here and back to work.
When the elevator doors opened onto the main office floor, I saw Max working alongside Tim on their planning table. I remembered what it was like to lay out the 3-D models on that table. I missed this job.
There was also a new assistant hovering around Tim and watching to see and anticipate what he needed next. That must have been my new replacement. I hoped she didn’t fall for him as I did. The thought of that actually made my skin crawl with jealousy, which then proceeded to make me mad.
“Brooke!” Max said as he walked up to me and gave me a hug. “I’m glad to see you.”
Max smiled at me. I always really like him. He was a good guy and a good friend to Tim.
“You need to get out of that apron and get back up here on the planning floor,” he said. “We need you.”