His jaw ticked. “I don’t like lying to my friends.”
I cleared my throat, hating the way he made me feel guilty for trying to surprise our friends with an awesome party. I was doing a good thing, I reminded myself. It wasn’t even really lying. “Then don’t lie. Tell them you have a surprise for them. It will be the truth.”
“That will ruin the night.”
I placed my hands on my hips, mimicking his stand-offish pose. “Forget I asked. I’ll figure it out.”
“Now you’re mad,” he accused.
“I’m not mad.” I was totally pissed. “There’s nothing to be mad about.” Except that he was being unnecessarily difficult when all I wanted him to do was shoot Killian a text that said, hey come over here for a minute. “I thought it would make more sense coming from you, but it’s not a big deal.”
He stared at me for a long moment before he said, “Do you have a coat?”
“What?”
“A coat,” he repeated. “Did you leave it in the kitchen?”
“Er, no.” Trying to recover from conversational whiplash, I explained, “I didn’t wear one. I came straight from work.” I also hated coats. Sure, it was frigid outside and my car would be an icebox by the time I left, but coats always got in my way. I had a long, cashmere duster on over my rosy pink blouse and gray trousers, and that was enough for me. Plus, my office was hot as Hades in the winter and even if I wore a sweater to work, I usually shed it before lunchtime.
Ezra scowled at me but didn’t press the coat issue.
“So we’re good for Friday?” I asked, hoping to wrap this up. I had an exciting night of eating supper alone and washing my hair ahead of me that I was anxious to start.
“What decorations are you going to use?”
Another topic shift and I felt dizzy trying to keep up with him. I just wanted to go home, heat up a cup of soup, and binge watch bad reality TV. “Nothing too extravagant,” I told him. “Lilou is pretty enough. But I wanted to grab some flowers for the tables, and I have some pictures and stuff I want to display.”
“I have a florist,” he volunteered. “You don’t need to worry about flowers unless you want to.”
“Oh, it’s not a big—”
“She’s used to the space,” he continued. “I’ll call her now.”
Translation: Don’t bring your crappy carnations into my pristine sanctuary.
“I don’t want to add to your plate,” I offered weakly.
He moved around to the back of his desk. Picking up his cell, he started scrolling through his contacts. “Did you have a specific flower in mind?”
“Vera loves peonies,” I heard myself say. “But it’s February so I was going to see what was available.”
He nodded, absorbing the information. “Color scheme?”
“Red,” I told him. “I found these vintage spice racks that are flat with slots in them. I was going to use them as centerpieces.”
“Here, write down your email address and I’ll send you the florist’s info. You can drop off the spice racks before Friday and she’ll handle all the details.”
I numbly picked up the white pad of paper and scrawled my email address for him. I should have stood up to him more, and told him I had the flowers and the decorations covered. But I was intimidated.
Severely intimidated.
He took the notepad back and inspected my email address as though I’d given him a fraud. He looked up at me and I could see wheels spinning in his head. He had something to say and it was anybody’s guess what that was.
“There’s one more thing,” he said.
A nervous flutter trembled in my stomach. “What is that?”
He opened his mouth to answer just as the cellphone in his hand went off. He glared down at the screen and let out an impatient sigh. “I have to take this,” he murmured.
I could recognize a brush off when it was aimed directly at me. “No problem. I’ll see you Friday. You have my email if you need anything else.”
I turned to look at him as I walked away. He glanced up at me from across the room and I was once again hit with how attractive this man was. Usually, personality meant more to me than looks, but Ezra apparently didn’t need a sparkling temperament for me to find him striking. I wanted to paint him. I wanted to capture that consternated expression on his face by immortalizing it on canvas.
His thumb swiped over his phone, answering the call before I’d left the office. “Bye, Ezra,” I whispered to his stoic face. He didn’t respond.
Turning around at the door to his office I fled Lilou, his part of town, and this whole entire day.
Chapter Three
I grabbed a bottle of wine on the way home and uncorked it as soon as I walked in the door. My sixth-floor apartment on the edge of downtown was cute, mostly affordable, and close to work. I had moved in two years ago when I finally trusted that my salary at STS wasn’t going to suddenly disappear.
It was supposed to be this big landmark of adulthood. I had a full-time job and my own place, yay! Except mostly it felt lonely. And I wasn’t one of those girls that needed people around me all the time. I liked space. I liked privacy. But there was something about living alone that had started to feel… isolated. Like it wasn’t my choice anymore.
I was thinking about getting a cat.
After my promised cup of soup, I tried watching something on Netflix, but I couldn’t settle on any one show. I set down the remote when I’d spent forty-five minutes scrolling through the endlessly mediocre options. There were only so many times a girl could binge watch The Office without demanding her very own Jim Halpert from the universe. And nobody wanted bitter Pam walking around in real life.
My afternoon played on repeat in my head, until I’d poured myself another glass of wine and given up trying to dissect why getting the project I wanted badly felt so very empty. Black Soul would be a huge step forward for my career. I’d already spent weeks mentally devising an advertising plan that was both relevant and original.
This was the thing that was going to solidify my place at SixTwentySix, gain respect from my coworkers and make Mr. Tucker finally remember my name. But now that it was go time, I second guessed my life goals. Was this really living the dream? Could I really spend the rest of my life making social media packets for people that didn’t understand the proper use of hashtags?
Sidenote: #iateasaladforlunch is a useless hashtag.
Second sidenote: #hashtag— also useless.
But you try explaining the term “searchable content” to anyone not carrying a millennial card. And yet I always got stuck with outdated clients that refused to grow their business with the “pound sign.”