I swear to everything, I want to jump up in the air and raise my hands over my head in victory while I celebrate. I can’t help the smile that fills my face. “I’ll take it.” I nod. “I’ll wait for your text.”
I start to walk out of the room, ready to escape while I can, and then I stop suddenly. I turn to her. “This isn’t like a trick, right?” I look at her, getting lost in her eyes, wondering what she’s seen in the past two years that I haven’t. Wanting to know all the memories she’s made. Well, maybe not all the memories. I don’t want to know shit about who she dated.
“What isn’t a trick?” she asks.
“That you say what I want to hear and then never contact me.” I put my hands on my hips.
She rolls her eyes at me. “You know where I work.” She raises her hands toward the walls, and I can’t help but throw my head back and laugh. Like real laughter that I haven’t had in a while. “How far do you think I can get before you realize I’m not contacting you?”
“You got that right,” I tell her in a way that she has to know she can run but she can’t hide. “See you later.”
I jog down the steps to her office, making my way to my car. Once I get in, I pull up her name, and instead of texting her, I call her. I’m more surprised than anything that she actually answers instead of sending me to voice mail. “You just left,” she says instead of saying hello. “I literally still see you outside.” She walks out of the door, standing at the top of the stairs. I just look up at her, wishing I could take the elastic out of her hair.
“I know.” I laugh, my finger tapping the steering wheel. “I was just wondering how much longer you think you will be?”
“What?” she says into the phone while still looking at me.
“If you aren’t going to be long, I can wait for you,” I tell her, and she just shakes her head.
“I have an appointment in thirty minutes, it should last maybe an hour. I will text you when I’m done.” All I can do is stare at her. “I promise I won’t ghost you.” I’m about to say something when she continues. “At least for today anyway.”
“I’ll wait for your text, then,” I say into the phone, and she turns to walk back into the office. “You look beautiful, by the way.” She stops mid step, never turning back around. I couldn’t not say it. It’s been at the tip of my tongue since I first saw her again, which makes me the biggest asshole ever.
“I’ll talk to you later.” That is all she says before the door closes and the line disconnects. I pull out of the parking lot and head toward my house. My body is filled with nerves and what feels like endless energy. Even though my body is exhausted from the game we played against LA, I feel like I could run a 5k.
Pulling up the phone feature on my screen, I call my father, who answers after one ring. “Hey,” he says, “how’re you doing?”
“Um,” I say nervously. “Do you think you can come down this weekend?” I ask.
“Of course.” He doesn’t even wait a second before answering me. “I will, however, have to bring your mother, or else I won’t be able to return to this house,” he says, laughing. “Apparently, according to her, I will lose some precious body parts that I would very much like to keep.”
I laugh, knowing how hard this must be for her. “Yeah, bring the whole family,” I tell him. “We can even do family lunch at my place on Sunday.”
“Are you sick?” my father interrupts me. “Did you get hit in the head?”
I laugh again, twice in less than an hour, this must be a record. “Nah,” I reply, leaving out that I’m hoping Sofia also joins us so they can meet her again. “Just miss you guys.”
“Okay, I’ll make a few calls,” he says.
“Put out a few feelers,” I mimic my uncle Matthew.
He laughs. “We’ll catch up this weekend, yeah,” he says. “Now I’m going to go and make your mother happy with the news.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I tell him as I park my car, “for everything.” He says he loves me before he hangs up and I get out and walk into my house and wait for her to call me. I was kidding before, if she doesn’t call me—I know exactly where I’m going tomorrow morning.
sofia
“As you can see,” I say as we walk into the big venue space, “we can accommodate up to a thousand people.” The bride and groom look at me with big eyes. “There are walls that retract on both ends.” I point at the walls of the slide, making the space bigger. “Or we can make it more intimate by closing two more retractable walls.” I point over to the side where two more walls are now open but can be closed.
The bride walks around the space, taking it in as I stand to the side giving her time. My head has been in a spin since they walked in. I’m trying not to think about the reason it’s in a spin, but that reason showed up ten minutes before the couple arrived. I had no time to compartmentalize it. I can still hear his voice. “You look beautiful.” I wanted to turn around and throw my phone at his car, but I refrained and pretended it didn’t get to me. What the hell was happening to me? I went two years perfectly okay without him, and now it’s as if no time has been lost. “Would we be able to come back with our parents?” the bride asks excitedly.
“Of course,” I answer her. “We can even do a setup with tables so they would get the look of it.” She looks over at the groom, who stares at her with such love in his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think that if this is what you want”—he smiles even bigger at her—“then this is it.” He looks over at me. “What do we need to do next?”
I nod at them and proceed to tell them the next steps. They sit in my office as we go through a couple of things. It’s after seven by the time they leave and I lock the door, walking back to my office to finish the paperwork. I sit down at my desk, looking down, knowing I can do this in the morning and I’m just stalling at this point.
When I got the text on Saturday, I ignored the pull to answer him right away. I put it down and walked away, spending the weekend with my family. Riding my horse, catching up with my cousins, going to the bar on Saturday night, and two-stepping until my feet hurt. I drank way too much, which ended up with the memories of him that I locked away coming out in full force. Sunday was spent at the family barbecue where I laughed more than I have in a long time. That night, I decided I was going to ignore the text and pretend that it didn’t happen. I even deleted the thread so I wouldn’t be tempted to answer him. In my head, there was nothing to talk about even though, according to my mother, I needed closure.
I stare at my phone for what seems like forever. “What if I don’t text him?” I wonder. “What is the worst that can happen?” I lean back in my chair and look out the window at the darkness. “He shows up tomorrow and forces you to talk to him in front of the girls.” I close my eyes and decide to bite the bullet. Might as well get this over with. I think of texting him, but then I would just be waiting on him to answer me.
I take the deepest breath I’ve ever taken before I press the button to call him. “Please don’t answer,” I beg the universe to help me out. One ring turns into two and my heart starts beating really fast. “I’m hanging up after three rings,” I mumble to myself as the second ring stops, and as soon as the third one starts, he picks up.
“Hey,” he says, his voice groggy, and it sounds like he was sleeping.
“You’re sleeping?” I say softly, my neck feeling warm as the nerves float through me. “I should have texted you instead.” The words come out of my mouth instead of staying in my head.
He laughs and something else goes on inside me, but I’m not going to pay any attention to it. “Were you hoping I wouldn’t have answered you?”
“No,” I say, laughing nervously. I know I’m lying and sadly I know that he also knows it was a lie. “Why don’t we do this tomorrow?” I try to push it off.