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39
SARA
Three weeks in, and I was still stuck in a cruel loop. I waited every day for it to be different, but every day it was the same.
From the moment I woke up every morning in my little flat, I felt disoriented.
Some days, I jolted up from bed, my heart pounding at the prospect of being late for June Magazine. Other days, I rolled over expecting to see out my hotel room window overlooking Biarritz.
Those mornings were obviously worse. They never failed to start my day off all wrong, throwing me off so badly I’d have to sit at the edge of my bed for five minutes, taking in my surroundings so I could fully grasp where I was.
I blamed my dreams.
They were so damned vivid, and they refused to let me forget either New York or Biarritz, or the man who, at this point, felt like another one of my fantasies. Even after particularly good days at work, I’d come home, have dinner, watch some TV, then sleep and promptly dream again about him. It was ridiculous considering how many wonderful new things I had going on.
For starters, the job at Una was good. Great, in fact. I adored Grayson and all the other women at the office. We brought each other snacks and coffee, and stuck notes and doodles on each other’s computers. We helped each other with research and writing, and we waited for one another to walk out of the building at the end of the day. At the bar after work, we happily continued talking shop because we genuinely loved what we did.
It was a stark contrast to the competition and cattiness that June Magazine fostered among its staff, and it was technically everything I’d ever dreamed of in a job.
I even had my mother staying in London indefinitely. She didn’t tell me how she afforded the hotel room so close to my studio. She didn’t talk about how much it cost for Dad to fly in and visit us last weekend, and she told me not to ask, so I didn’t. I was just grateful to have her, and to feel some sense of home since there was so damned much I missed about being back in New York.
I missed Lia, obviously. Even at my busiest at June Magazine, I still talked to her every day, and saw her at least once a week at our little coffee shop on 18th Street.
I missed my apartment in Little Italy. I’d lived there for so long, and had personalized every inch of it to my liking. Breaking the lease I’d had since graduating college at twenty-two was, as dramatic as it sounded, kind of horrifying. But Lia did her best to comfort me on that front.
“It’s okay, because when you move back, you can live with me,” she had said at the airport, acting as if her bright smile disguised the tears actively streaming down her cheeks. “Lukas will move into the Hamptons home full-time. He won’t even mind. And if he does, then tough. That’s what he gets for staying friends with that guy.”
She refused to say his name, like he was Voldemort. She encouraged me to follow suit, and I did.
But it didn’t stop me from seeing him everywhere I went. In the busy streets, during the early rushes, I convinced myself daily that I saw him. On the tube, I fantasized that the wisp
of brown hair behind the trio of women was him. When my phone rang, at work or at home, I imagined I’d pick up and hear his gorgeous voice.
I was pretty sure my refusal to say his name was what drove me to dream of him so vividly. It was like my mind rejecting Lia’s idea to forget him. It felt as if it was working harder to produce images of him when I was asleep, unable to distract or defend myself.
Hence the disoriented mornings.
But I was only three weeks in. I told myself to wait it out till five. That was how long I’d been at his office, working his job, and sometimes going to bed next to him. Five weeks was apparently what it took for my body to adjust to a new reality, so in five weeks, I promised I’d check up on myself and make sure that I was doing just fine.
After all, he had probably already moved on.
He was probably working hard every day, and seeing Lukas and Emmett at night. While I had not even gone on a date, he had probably slept with at least half a dozen new women.
It killed me to think about, which I hated, because that meant I still cared. It meant I still pined for someone who didn’t want me. It was the same as pining for approval from the kids who tortured me in high school, and the girls who ruined my life in college. It was completely fucking wrong, and against everything I stood for in order to respect myself.
So I made myself hold out.
Five weeks, Sara. It was my magic number, and the star of my new fantasy that someday soon, everything would fall into place and be perfectly fine.
40
SARA
“I heard a thing,” Lia said cryptically as I dried my post-dinner dishes. Polishing a plate, I narrowed my eyes across my tiny kitchen counter, at the stool I’d put my phone on. We were on speakerphone, but Lia’s voice was oddly hushed.
“Can you talk louder?” I asked.
“No. I’m at Lukas’s office. He was in the conference room, and I was right outside the door when I realized he was talking to Julian.”
