He continues organizing his bag and eventually murmurs, “I’m good.” There’s a brief pause before he informs, “Boyd prepared you an omelet with turkey sausage, turkey bacon, veggies and cheese, home-fried potatoes, and uhhhh…freshly squeezed orange juice.” He still doesn’t given me eye contact even through that lengthy description. “Oh, and there’s a fresh pot of coffee on. I asked him to put one on for you instead of using the Keurig. I didn’t know what kind of condition you’d be in this morning.”
It was nice that he asked Chef Boyd to prepare hangover food for me, but something’s strange. He’s off—we’re off. I start to bounce around, in my head, logical reasons why. The loudest cause can be me disappearing during his signing party last night. I have vague memories of how he burst into the private party room during my tête-à-tête with Dawn. But I thought we’d made good on that in the limo. It can’t be because of my confrontation with Dawn, he already knows about that. I can’t think much beyond that because my recollection of last night is fuzzy.
After grabbing his bag from the chair, Azmir stands to face me. He finally meets my eyes as he informs, “I have a meeting in the San Fernando area this morning. Shouldn’t be all day. I’ll reach out to you when I’m done. Manny’s on duty today. Let him know if you need something right away.” Then he turns on his heels to exit the kitchen from the other doorway leading into the great room.
“Azmir?” I ask, my mouth annoyingly dry and now my nerves are frayed. He turns to look at me. “Is there something wrong?”
I see the cogs churning in his mind when he furrows his brows rapidly. His head turns back to the doorway he was heading to before reversing back to me.
I start to grow impatient. There’s something thick in the air between us and I need to know now. “Are you going to spill it, or do what you’ve asked me not to do, which is internalize it?” I try keeping the sarcasm from my voice. The struggle increases by the second.
Deciding whether to answer or not, he thumbs his face from his jaw to his bottom lip then cocks his head to the side before relenting, “You told Dawn about the baby…” His gaze falls to my abdomen region, “…our baby?”
That’s the absolute last thing I expect to hear. My neck slightly jerks, I’m barely able to process his implication. I can recollect our heated exchange, even remember feeling victorious after leaving Dawn in the room alone and being whisked away by her favorite fixation—Azmir. However, the specifics are a blur.
“I recall being somewhat explicit with her…in an a roundabout way of telling her to back off—”
“Back off of what?” he asks irritably. And before I can even answer, he bites out vexingly, “You know what…don’t even answer that. I don’t care to know what caused that little catfight between you two last night. Hell,” he sways his neck. “I even got off on hearing you be so aggressive and staking your claim. But what I will absolutely not tolerate,” he speaks vehemently as he pivots toward me, but maintains a distance that causes a pang to run through my belly. “…is you brandishing our loss as a goddamn weapon to fight with someone who works for me.” His eyes are sharp as his index finger points towards the floor.
I want to speak, to defend myself, but he’s that quickly snatched my confidence straight from my throat as he continues, “That loss may not have weighed much for you emotionally, but your feelings of it isn’t the only to be considered.”
That knocks the wind from my lungs. “You don’t think I was affected by losing a baby?”
“Were you?” Azmir’s eyes widen. “You treated it as someone would a fucking cosmetic routine they didn’t want anyone to know about, but wanted the world to see the aftermath of. You went in for surgery, did your time recovering without telling a soul, and never gave it a second thought.”
I can’t believe his demeanor, his underlying accusation. My first intention is to react aggressively; to come out of my corner swinging with a nasty verbal defense that somehow would involve me asking him why he would keep a woman he clearly knows is after him as a business associate. The dirty fighter in me wants to compare that to the likes of Brian Thompson still working with me at the firm. I want to spew so much that it would make him feel as shaken as I am now. But I don’t. I don’t out of sheer fear. Azmir is livid. Beneath the surface, he is a boiling volcano ready to erupt.
“Losing that baby was a painful experience for me, Azmir,” I grit through my teeth in an attempt of keeping the tears at bay. “It wasn’t an in-and-out procedure for me in spite of how you may have perceived it.”
He cocks he head to the side again, bringing his tongue back to his molars, contemplating my words. After an abbreviated pause he returns, “Oh, yeah?”