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Tom swallowed, an indecipherable mix of emotion crossing his eyes. “You weren’t stressing me out, Amanda. Well, not at that point, anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Tom reached across the table to grab onto my hands. I wanted to pull them away, but his touch warmed a place in me that had gone cold.
“You weren’t stressing me out at all while we were in Astoria together. Not at any point in those two months did you cause me any stress or difficulty. But over these last couple of weeks, I’ve been worried sick about you,” he said.
“Why were you worried about me?” I asked.
“Because you won’t talk to me. I’ve called you. I’ve emailed you. I’ve done everything I could think of to try to get you to talk to me, and you just won’t.”
I shook my head slightly. “I just didn’t think there was anything to talk about.”
“How could you possibly think that?” he asked.
“There’s nothing going on between us,” I said, sliding my hands out of his reluctantly. “You shouldn’t worry. If you needed to talk about something having to do with work, I would have been readily available. I am your employee and that’s all. You made that very clear. We just can put it behind us and not dwell on it.”
The waitress came by with very full plates and set them down in front of us. I noticed he had already ordered me my favorite thing on the menu. The gesture was sweet and caring, and the tingle of tears made me grab the glass of ice water sitting in front of me and drown it away.
“Amanda,” he started when the waitress walked away.
“It’s okay,” I said again. “And everything here is okay, too. There’s still plenty of time in the day for you to go back and be there to handle everything you need to be handling. You need to go back to Astoria and take care of things there. I’ve got this. You don’t need to worry. Not about the company. And not about me.”
Tom eyed my food, which I hadn’t touched. “Is there something wrong with your lunch? I thought that was your favorite.”
“It is,” I said. “And I really appreciate you ordering it for me.”
“Then why haven’t you eaten?” he asked.
“I’m just not hungry,” I said. “And I really should be getting back to the office. There’s a ton for me to get done leading up to these meetings this week. And you should get to the airport.”
Tom looked drawn and a little bit confused as he nodded and gestured for the waitress to come over. He asked her to bring a couple of boxes so we could package up the food. I went back to the office with several containers in my hands, knowing Tom was heading for the airport to go home again.29TomI arrived later than I expected due to some delays with the flight and made my way right back to the hotel. I hadn’t bothered to check out, so I was able to just go right to my room, and it was as I left it. I flipped on the box fan and changed out of my clothes, getting a quick shower and crawling into bed.
When I woke up the next morning, the alarm still had a little time on it and I hopped out of bed anyway, dropping to the floor to do some push-ups. I could have stayed in the bed, but without Amanda to snuggle with in the early morning hours, my desire to stay recumbent was at an all-time low. A quick set of morning exercises and I was ready for the day. I stopped at the same corner shop for coffee but forewent the chocolate croissant out of bitterness and headed to the new bar.
It had only been a day, but I could see that my brothers had been hard at work. A moving truck was parked outside with the ramp down, and I could see new kitchen equipment ready to be loaded in. A few men in blue coveralls were moving stuff around back there, and I assumed they must have hired professionals to get things situated easier while they took on other tasks. Opening the door, I saw what some of them were.
Ava was right beside the main door, painting the wall right beside it, and her face lit up when she saw me. I gave her a quick hug as I looked around at the space. The bar had been polished, and a new top had been laid over it, the old one lying on the floor in front. Various new décor littered the walls, and streaks of paint in competing colors were on various spaces of the walls.
“You guys are already hard at work, huh?” I asked.
“We are,” Ava said. “We all agreed this wall over here needed some color to cover up the marks here, so I went ahead and took that over. We’re trying to decide between several colors for that wall if you want to weigh in. Jordan and Tyler are replacing the bar top and have been extraordinarily loud in the process. And Mason is over there hanging some of the stuff we found at the thrift store. You said you wanted the bar to have a uniquely Oregon history feel, right?” she asked.
