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“And you know that for a fact?” she asked.
“Well, no, not for an absolute fact,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said, mirroring my response. “And that’s because you didn’t talk to him about it. You don’t actually know how he was feeling or what was going through his head when he said that to his brothers. Maybe he just wasn’t ready to talk about it with them. Or, he didn’t want to divulge any details to them, and that was the only way he could think of to divert the conversation. You said the two of you hadn’t had any sort of conversation about what was going on between you.”
“We hadn’t,” I said.
“So, put yourself in his shoes. Do you think you would have just opened up to them and started spilling out details about what was going on between the two of you without having had that conversation? Maybe he realized it would have been inappropriate, and he wanted to have some discretion and tell you both talked it through and knew you are on the same page,” she said.
“Was it inappropriate for me to tell you what was going on?” I asked.
“Well, no,” she said, shifting a little in her chair as she realized she’d been caught up in a logical fallacy. “Telling me is completely different.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because there’s only one of me,” she said quickly. “And there’s like thirty of them.”
“Not quite, but I think I might see your point.” I shook my head. “No. It doesn’t matter. Even if he was just trying to have some courtesy and not give out all the details, he didn’t have to respond like that. His brother asked him what was going on between us, not if we had been naked together. There are any number of ways he could have responded that would have not been embarrassing, but also would not have been that. No. He meant what he said.”
My phone rang, and I reached into my purse to get it. Glancing at the screen made me roll my eyes.
“What? Emily asked. “Who is it?”
I turned the phone toward her to display Tom’s name. “Who do you think?”
I tossed the phone back into my purse and set it down.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
The phone went silent, but that only lasted for a few moments before the ringing started up again. We ignored it through that cycle, but by the third, I rolled my eyes again. Emily gestured toward my bag, her eyebrows raising sharply.
“You need to answer that and find out what’s going on,” she said. “People don’t just call on repeat for no reason. He is still your boss, you know. Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with your awkward departure. It could have something important to do with your work, too.”
As noble as that sounded, I didn’t believe for a second she was actually concerned about me missing a work call. Especially not when we were having drinks. She was adamantly against anything professional related going on when we were supposed to be having a girls’ night.
Considering this was the first of those we’d been able to have in almost two months, it just seemed like a very convenient shift in philosophies for her to be so encouraging of me taking a work call now.
“I’m pretty sure I know what this is about,” I said. “And I will call him back in the morning during normal work hours just in case it actually is about work.”
“Fine,” Emily said with a slight pout, taking a sip of her drink.
“Besides, he really needs to be focusing on everything that’s going on there, anyway. It’s getting complicated, and they need to get it sorted out so he isn’t so stressed. Then he’ll be able to actually focus on work again,” I said.
Emily nodded. “Alright. I can see where you are coming from there. But it doesn’t change my point.”
“What point? That I should answer the phone and talk to him about what happened?” I asked. “Or that I should have stayed in Astoria longer to talk about it?”
“That you are obviously completely in love with him and need to just admit it,” she said.27TomMy stomach grumbled and churned, but I wasn’t hungry. Or at least I wasn’t in the mood to eat. Nothing sounded good, and nothing seemed like it would sit on my stomach well anyway. I’d rather just inject caffeine into my veins and keep moving along without stopping. At least that way I wouldn’t have to confront the thoughts bouncing around in my head.
Then, I was on my way to sign the papers to buy the new building. This was something in the positive category. It was actually even genuinely exciting, but no matter how joyous the situation might have been, in the back of my mind it was joined and ruined by thinking about Amanda and how I managed to fuck up every single thing about our situation, when it was going better than anything I had ever experienced in my entire life.
