“I’m sorry, but Mr. White no longer works here,” the woman said with a tight smile.
The bottom dropped out of Javier’s stomach. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re his date from the other night,” the black man said. “Marcus Abara.” He offered his hand. “I recognize you.”
“Yes, I am.” Javier shook his hand. “You’re saying that Desmond quit?”
Mr. Abara looked just as confused as Javier did. “I would have thought he’d told you by now.”
“No, he did not,” Javier said, panic starting to rise in him.
“He came in on Monday morning and tendered his resignation, effective immediately,” Mr. Abara said. “We’ve been scrambling to fill the gap ever since then.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Javier said. “I won’t get in your way, then.”
Mr. Abara said a polite goodbye, and Javier marched straight back to the lifts, taking out his phone. He did what he should have done from the start and texted Desmond, “Did you quit your job?”
Three dots didn’t appear until Javier was back on the ground floor, retracing his steps out the door and over to the station.
“I did,” Desmond replied at length. “It was the right thing to do.”
“Oh, baby,” Javier said, then quickly texted. “Can we talk?”
Best-case scenario, Desmond would call him, they would discuss a place to meet, and they would spend the rest of the day talking things through.
The best-case scenario didn’t happen.
“I’m not in London at the moment,” Desmond replied.
Javier blew out a breath through his nose and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at his phone. A horrible, sticky feeling crept down his spine. Desmond was avoiding things, avoiding him. Once again, he’d left him behind while he’d gone off to cope with his problems, or probably not cope with them, on his own.
It was most likely an instinctive reaction, Javier told himself as he walked on, fighting to tamp down the anger that pulsed through him. After years of Matthew, running was probably the only thing Desmond knew how to do. Javier wasn’t going to be able to help anyone if he chose to feel hurt every time someone he loved reacted based on their history of wounds.
“Okay,” he texted back. “Call me as soon as you’re home. I really want to be with you.”
He hit send before he could second-guess whether he was coming on too strong.
Desmond replied with a smiley face that looked a little too vacant.
It was the best he was going to get in the moment, he knew. And if he was honest, he had a hell of a lot of work of his own to tackle before he would be in the right headspace to try to salvage a relationship.
All he could do, all both of them could do for the moment, was muddle on as best they could and hope something eventually worked.
eighteen
. . .
“Really, darling, you don’t need to continue to stay here on my account,” Desmond’s mum told him across the breakfast table on Saturday morning as she slathered a crumpet with artisanal marmalade. “It’s been days now.”
Desmond glanced mournfully up at her from the old-fashioned newspaper his father still received every day. He’d been trying to hide in the headlines to escape the twisting guilt of his own life choices.
Who was he kidding? He’d been searching the financial section for snippets about his refusal of the Lundy Prize and about his sudden and shocking departure from Pickering Jones.
Quitting his job had ended in more trauma than he’d been anticipating. He’d done exactly what he’d intended to do on Monday morning. He’d dressed in his most distinguished suit, driven himself to Canary Wharf instead of having Hassan take him, and he’d gone up to Harry Pickering’s office first thing to tender his resignation.
Harry had nearly choked on his coffee when Desmond informed him he would be packing up his office and leaving immediately.
“You cannot be serious,” Harry had told him, color rising from his neck to his face.
