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I try to keep it light. “I’ll survive.”
“He seemed so into you,” she muses. “I was so sure…” She trails off. “Are you okay? Really?”
“Of course,” I say brightly, resisting the urge to tell her everything. “I’m just, you know, trying my best not to think about it.”
She sighs. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow night. I love you, sweetheart, and give Laurie a kiss for me.”
After the call, I change into my nightwear and settle in bed with a book about writing style. I plan to read until I fall asleep, and hopefully be too tired to dwell on Landon. I’m a few minutes into the book when Laurie arrives. She comes straight into my room and drops onto the bed beside me, still wearing her clothes from the office.
“Rough day?”
She sighs. “They’re all rough these days.” She stares at the cover of my book for a minute. “I had dinner with Brett.”
I allow myself to hope, even though her demeanor doesn’t point to an ecstatic reunion. “So, what happened?”
“He told me he saw you at lunch.” She looks at me. “What did he say?”
I shrug. “That he loves you.” I
look at her, “and he really does.” She looks away and I continue. “He’s miserable when you guys fight, and he’s afraid that because you guys have been together for so long, you might have a subliminal desire to break up, which is why you pick fights with him.”
“That’s the part that pisses me off,” Laurie declares, rising from the bed. “He told me the same thing. How can he think that in my subconscious or wherever, I really want to leave him? Like I don’t know my own freaking mind?”
Her temper is getting the best of her. “Laurie, he’s just telling you how he feels.”
“But why should he feel like that?” She frowns. “I don’t fight about ‘little’ things. Letting a co-worker at the gym flirt with him is not a ‘little’ thing. It’s a big deal to me.”
I drop my book. “Maybe make him understand? Tell him how it makes you feel?”
She sniffs, and buries her face in her hands. “I’m tired of fighting,” she cries softly.
Me too. I’m sick of fighting all the feelings tearing me up inside. I wish there was a way to escape, to forget. I sigh, remembering the conversation with my mom. “How do you feel about a black-tie cocktail art-thing on Thursday?”
“Your mom?”
I nod.
“Where?”
“Some historic mansion. They’ll pick us up.” I grin. “So now, we can worry about what to wear and not think about men for tonight at least.”
She looks grateful. “That seriously sounds great.”
WE stay up late, considering and dismissing clothes from our wardrobes, and for a while I manage to forget the numbness inside. We end up going to bed around midnight, after finally deciding on which dresses, shoes and jewelry to wear, and in the morning, we both have to rush to make it out early.
By the time I’m done with the morning meetings with the other members of the writing team, and an intense editing session with Mark, I start to think that maybe it’s time to congratulate myself. I’ve actually managed to go through the whole morning without tormenting myself about Landon. Maybe it’s because I’ve been really busy, but it gives me hope that I can get over him, that maybe with time, I’ll stop thinking about him at all.
I’m still having those thoughts when the package arrives late in the afternoon. It’s a delivery from the Swanson Court International, and the sender is Tony Gillies, Landon’s assistant. Inside is a gilt-edged envelope containing a full access invitation to the grand reopening of the Gold Dust Hotel.
I stare at the back of the invite, at the image of the hotel embossed in gold leaf on the smooth velvety stationery. I close my eyes, suddenly weak with yearning. All of a sudden, my mind is flooded with the memories that week in San Francisco, when it was just me and Landon, and I’d slowly and completely fallen in love with him.
I’m not going to walk away from this.
But I am, and I have. Why was it so hard for him to understand and accept that I want to move on? Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?
Why does everything have to be about what he wants? What about me? I want a chance to get over him, to move on with my life.
I pick up my phone without thinking and dial his number. I wait as the phone rings, my anger slowly plateauing when he doesn’t pick up.
