“That was amazing,” Archie cried, tugging me against him as we melted into the crowd of other tough mudders. “Incredible!”
Giddy, I laughed along with him as I felt our sloppy sweaty bodies crush together, happy to have finished, happy to have reached out for him, happy to have taken that small step that, although seemingly easy as pie, was impossibly hard for me to do. I grinned up at him, reaching to smooth back his messy hair.
Grinning, he gazed down at me, a sense of deep and pure satisfaction apparent in his expression.
“Aren’t you glad you did it?” I asked, panting from exertion but feeling that crazy high that came when you pushed your body further than you thought was possible.
He nodded as someone popped a bottle of champagne and sprayed it down over the lot of us, smelly and disgusting and awesome. “I love you.”
I froze. He felt it. The world went away. Everything went away. It was me and Archie standing together in a vacuum of white noise and static. My heart stopped, my lungs stopped, and I became aware that the grin on my face began to feel painted on.
But before I could respond, before I could even think how I could respond, the world crashed back in.
“You filthy motherfuckers, I knew you’d finish!”
Natalie, running full tilt and smashing into both of us, picked me up and congratulated me on being the toughest asshole she’d ever known.
Yep. I really was.
Once again I was riding home with Archie, avoiding meeting his eyes or talking about anything of substance beyond how well everyone did in the race. We’d stayed for a while, celebrating with all the other participants, drinking a few beers, enjoying a few actual hot dogs after all that wiener talk. Leo volunteered to drive back so Archie could have a beer or two, but that made it all the more difficult to continually keep someone else inside our conversation, preventing an actual conversation where I’d be in over my head and completely out of my depth.
No one in my entire life had ever told me they loved me. And I didn’t really know quite how to take it in. Roxie and Natalie loved me, this I knew. Technically they’d told me, but usually in the vein of I love you but you cannot wear those pants, or I love you but quit stealing all the popcorn, or I love you but there’s no way on earth Henry Cavill isn’t the sexiest man on the planet. All joking aside, no one had ever looked into my eyes, punched through my chest and wrapped their hands around my heart and said I love you.
But then what happens next? I know the romance-novel version. I say it back, there are two or three more paragraphs of schmaltz and then poof, the end. I know the rom-com version, usually starring a Julia or a Sandra. The music swells, very often a song written expressly for the movie, there’s some laughing followed by some kissing and very often every single problem these two people have been experiencing for the last ninety minutes is blasted away by love conquering all blah blah blah feelings.
What the hell are you supposed to do when you hear these words for the first time and your first instinct is to vomit? This is why romance heroines were never as fucked up as I was, because, my God, what a terrible story that would make.
The bottom line was I was terrified to get off this bus when we got back to the Mountain House because then I’d be alone with Archie and this time there was no way he was going to let me off the hook. I’d avoided Archie the entire way back, sitting with my girls or with everyone in a big group, drinking beer out of the pony keg Oscar had thoughtfully provided, passing around sloppy Solo cups and congratulating ourselves on being tough mudders. But now it was getting quiet. Everyone was pairing off, taking a nap or playing games on their phones, the interference our friends had been unknowingly running was disappearing. And here he comes, sitting down across from me at the back of the bus, alone at last.
Would he want to talk about what he said? Would I need to say it back? Could I say it back?
“Hey, Clara, quit working yourself over so much, you’re off the hook, okay?”
Whoa. What?
I blinked and looked up at Archie, smiling ruefully.
“How’d you do that?” I asked, eyes wide and more than a little terrified. Was I cracking up?
“Not hard to tell what’s going on in there,” he said, tapping my temple. “Just don’t let it freak you out too much, okay?”
“Okay?” I squeaked. “I can’t, you know, I mean . . . I—”
He shrugged. “I said what I needed to say. You can say nothing. For now. Okay?”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it. What’s the catch?”
“Silly girl,” he murmured, scooching across the aisle and sitting with me in my seat. “No catch. Just sort through whatever is going on in there, and we can talk later.”
I didn’t deserve this guy. I mean it, I really didn’t deserve someone this understanding. And actually, not to put too fine a point on it, but how in the hell could he understand me so well when for the first time, I didn’t even understand me?
Chapter 20
The email came in at 4:37 p.m. on a Friday with a company-wide header. “Excited to announce blah blah blah merging with The Empire Group blah blah blah leading the industry in blah blah blah a partnership for the ages blah blah blah some senior-level positions have been combined blah blah blah . . .”
Wait a minute. What senior-level positions? With my heart stuck in my throat, my eyes scanned the rest of the email quickly, searching for information that would tell me whether or not Barbara had been—
My phone rang. Her name popped up on the screen.
“Not you,” I said, by way of greeting.
“Yes, me,” she answered with a watery sigh.
“The hell?” I sat down hard on the chair I was near, not caring that I was in the middle of the lobby or that a few guests walking by heard me and raised an eyebrow. I was ready to raze this mountain if what I was afraid of was really true. “They can’t do this! How could anyone ever think you of all people are replaceable?”
“It’s already done, kiddo. Technically I wasn’t fired, my job was eliminated and I was given the option of either taking a step down with a significant salary decrease or taking the severance package and going on my way.”
“What great choices.”
“That’s what I said, right before I took the severance and told them to shove it.”
“You didn’t,” I replied, not shocked at all.
“I sure did,” she fired back. “I helped build this place, brought in half the clients and more than half the staff. Truth is, I was thinking about retiring in a few years anyway, but it just boils my water that I’m not going out on my own terms.”
“Well, if you told them to shove it, you kind of are, right?”
She huffed out a chuckle.
“So . . .”
“So what does this mean for you?” she asked, knowing where I was going.