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“What?” Danny asked.
“How much do you want?”
“For what?” Danny asked. “The beer?”
“For this shithole,” I said, putting the mug down. His face turned to stone, and he leaned on the bar with both hands.
“I’m not sellin’,” he said.
I pulled open my wallet, taking out a ten and one of my business cards. I sat the card down on top of the ten and looked him square in the eye.
“You might want to consider it,” I said and left.24AmandaI might have been getting too accustomed to working at the hotel. So many of my strict routines had already gone by the wayside, and I was getting comfortable with a more relaxed approach to getting my work done during the day. I was still waking up far earlier than I needed to but gone were the days when I felt like I absolutely had to get up and get started the second my eyes snapped open.
Instead, I had learned the joy of wriggling down deeper into the covers, cuddling close to Tom, and drifting for a while. He seemed to not be able to get enough of getting up earlier than me. The whole time we worked together, he was used to me already having a good chunk of my day done with by the time he even got into the office. While he never got angry with me or said it aggravated him, now that he was the one getting an earlier start some days, I could see it made him happy.
I was more than willing to give him that little victory. If he enjoyed starting his day first and surprising me with coffee and chocolate croissants, who was I to deny him that joy?
That thought made me laugh to myself as I got ready to work for the day. Tom had just left to work out getting the down payment to the real estate agent for the new property, and I had a full slate of tasks on my to-do list. If we were back in California, that would mean I needed to put on business clothes, do my makeup, and make sure my hair was styled.
In Oregon that meant putting on my new favorite stretch pants and a lightweight sweater, foregoing heels for thick socks that warded off the perpetual chill of the hotel air conditioner, and curling up in the chair in front of the desk. It wasn’t something I would do if I was expected to be on video calls during the day, but when it was just phone calls and computer work, I felt like I could pull it off.
If someone told me I would be uprooting my life and going to Astoria for an indefinite stretch with Tom, I would have immediately felt on edge. I could only imagine the anxiety I would feel thinking about everything that would have to change and how much I would have to adapt in order to keep up with what I did on a day-to-day basis. Not only that, but everything I would miss and how disconnected I would feel from life.
It made sense. I was accustomed to my life. I liked my home and spent a lot of time with Emily. But now that I had been in Astoria for a while, I was realizing just how much I wasn’t fitting in with that assumption.
Yes, I missed my best friend. It would have been nice to have her there to talk to and spend time with. Yet, she was really the only thing I found myself actively missing. I would never mention that to Landon, of course. He was a good guy, and we maintained a good friendship. But I was happy in Oregon. I was enjoying the change of scenery and the different pace of life.
I really liked Ava and could see myself forming a close friendship with her. It was even nice being around Tom’s brothers and mother. I never had a big family to spend time with that way, and they made sure I felt welcome and comfortable.
Of course, how my relationship with Tom was developing didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the situation. I was definitely happy to keep that going.
I was just getting ready to settle in to respond to a long list of emails when my phone rang. It was the partners in Paris wanting to set up another meeting. I got it all arranged and added it to the calendar. Doing that gave me a strange little dip in my mood. It was like a sharp reminder of the reality that was still outside of the Astoria bubble we were living in.
At some point, we were going to have to go back. Everything here in Astoria would be taken care of, and it would be time for Tom and me to go back to California and resume our normal lives again. Only, I didn’t know what that meant. Would it be a normal life like the one we left to come here? Or would there be something different now?
