Ten Days of Perfect (November Blue #1)

“You need to really take time to think it all through. These are tears of confusion, love, sorrow and betrayal. Self-betrayal. You’re feeling like no matter what you choose - if you have to choose - you’ll be betraying the other half of yourself. Your free spirit and your practical spirit have worked together beautifully your whole life, and this is the first time they’re at odds with each other. It’s a bitch.” Mom nailed it.

They stayed for another hour, told me they were headed back on the road, but would be back through next weekend. I told them that I wanted them to meet Bo, but I wanted them to meet him only if we were meant to be together; I knew they’d love him instantly and I didn’t want to give anyone false hope. I assured them that there would at least be a decision between the organizations by then.

My mom interrupted me, “Don’t let your job decide this, Ember. You need to decide this. Work through it and commit with reckless abandon. Even if the decision happens before your organizations decide what their positions will be, commit.”

Being with Bo for the week was no longer the issue; the mist hovering over my mom’s eyes told me she knew this was about the “after.” She knew me well enough to know I was planning to decide after our organizations did. She knew, too, that it wouldn’t be my decision, and I could blame someone else for the rest of my life for whatever happened. She was good.

I kissed them good-bye and told them to call me when they got back into town. I scuffed to my bedroom and collapsed onto my bed, begging my pillow to absorb my tears. Maybe I’ll cry out a solution, I thought as I fell asleep with my clothes on.





Chapter Nine

Emptiness rose with the sun on Thursday. Not the emptiness that comes from heartbreak, but an emptiness that left me with a clear head; free of confusion. Evidently, my subconscious had worked it all out overnight, and today’s meeting between me, Monica, Bo, and David Bryson would be one hundred percent professional. I would focus on the collaboration only, try to set my swelling feelings aside, and see how that felt.

I texted Bo before I headed to work.

Me: Looking forward to meeting David today. Is noon still good?

Bo: Good morning, noon is perfect-see you then.

Me: Don’t think I’m being weird today.

Bo: ?

Me: I don’t want to screw things up for either one of us. I’m going to play it safe around you. Wait-David doesn’t know anything does he?

It occurred to me he could very well have shared things with David as I had with Monica.

Bo: Guys don’t “do that.” No worries, you’ll make it up to me later.

Me: :) A smiley-face was all I could manage. What if I couldn’t make it up to him later?

The absence of Monica’s car erased thoughts of Bo. She was usually at work before me. Once I settled in to my desk I heard the main door shut.

“Mon?” I wasn’t used to being in the building alone.

“Yea, coming,” she said rather weakly. When she entered my office and took off her sunglasses, I saw the puffy-eyed evidence of a night, and likely morning, spent crying.

I’d seen this look before; when she came back from break in college. Grant broke up with her then. They’d been together since high school, and he broke up with her just as Adrian and I started sleeping together regularly.

“Monica, what happened?” I leapt to my feet and flew around my desk to give her a hug. She resumed sobbing in to my shoulder.

“Josh…” she inhaled with that uncomfortable cry-stutter and continued, “thinks he wants to take a break!”

That was all she could manage before she silenced a wail into my shoulder.

“Jesus, Monica! What the hell? When did this happen? What did he say? I was just there last night…” I ceased my barrage and sat us down in adjoining chairs.

Monica grabbed a tissue off of my desk, sat back, and took a long, slow, breath.

“After you left last night,” her eyes welled with tears as she struggled to continue, “we were cleaning up and he still seemed weird, like when you were there. I followed him to the living room and he plunked in to the chair and just sort of sat there with his head in his hands.” She closed her eyes tight, as if she was trying to wake herself from a dream.

“What’d he say, Mon?” I didn’t want her to replay all the gory details as she sat broken in my office.

“Ember he couldn’t even look me in my eyes! He said that he loves me ‘so much’ but he felt like there was some connection missing. He said that watching you talk about Bo and how you are when you’re with Bo . . . ”

“Me and Bo? He hasn’t spent much time with me and Bo, Mon.”

“I know, Em, and that’s what I told him.”

“And what’d he say?”

“He said that when he talked to Bo last weekend it shook him up.” Apprehension stole her tears.

“He talked to Bo? About us? When?”

“After the second night that he played at Finnegan’s, when they went inside to settle up. Josh asked him to be careful because you’d been hurt before.”