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7 - ADDISON
So, tomorrow he’s taking you to look at a house and then you’re having lunch?” Jenna asked, portioning out the barbecue and passing it down the table as I filled in the gaps from the earlier group text.
With Olivia well into her second trimester and food-aversion phase, Jenna suggested we come to her and Mark’s house and finish the leftovers from a picnic with his brothers last weekend.
“Yep,” I said, taking an ear of corn on the cob before pulling the coleslaw closer. “I need to put in the hours at the office anyway, and since we, you know, are supposed to be dating, it makes sense if he picks me up. Plus, I’m not ready for my mom to meet him, not until we figure out what we’re doing.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. But does he know you’re dating?” Annaleigh asked, nudging me with her elbow.
“Ugh, nope. But he has a favor to ask me. So maybe we can exchange favors or whatever.”
“Or whatever is right,” Olivia said around a mouthful of potato salad. “A little tit for tat, quid pro quo.”
“Oh my god, stop. It’s bad enough I have to ask for help.”
“Why is it bad? From what I saw this morning, Mr. Tall, Pale, and Blond is clearly into you.”
“Mister who?” Annaleigh asked, taking a drink of her IPA.
“Oh. Simon’s part Viking vampire from True Blood, plus the other white-haired vampire from Buffy, and rounded out with the actor who played that guy from all those movies I love.”
“Oh, those guys,” I said with a laugh.
“Shut up. Pregnancy brain is real.”
“It’s a very real thing, and oddly, your description is spot on.” I patted Olivia’s leg and pushed her orange juice closer, watching her eyes light up like she’d forgotten it was there. She had finished half the glass by the time Annaleigh made it to the fridge to refill it for her.
“Are you worried he’ll say no?” she asked, leaving the juice on the table.
“Not really. It’s more like I’m worried I can’t see the endgame. I’m not used to the unknown.”
“Have you decided on the endgame you want?” Jenna asked, taking one more roll, then pushing away her plate.
“It hasn’t changed, but assuming they’d just hand everything over was stupid.”
I laid my fork on my plate after pushing the same bite of barbecue around and finished my iced tea, looking up to find three pairs of eyes focused on me.
“Not to ask a stupid question, but are you happy now? And if not, will taking over the company make you happy?”
Annaleigh asked the question I’d thought about all afternoon. I had a hundred different answers, each failing to fulfill the hollowness in my chest. “I don’t know the answer to that, y’all, but I want to keep moving forward. I’m going to put in the hours and the work to prove to my parents and myself that this is something I can do.”
“That’s smart,” Jenna said. “Take time to think and work through your decision.”
“I agree,” Olivia added.
“Me too, and we’re here to support you,” Annaleigh said. “As long as you tell us about your secret life moonlighting as a fanfiction writer because we don’t know what the hell that is. So tell us all the things.”
“Didn’t you used to do that in college? After he—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Jenna. And yes, that’s when I started writing,” I said, pushing my plate away and laying my head on the dining room table with a sigh. “We almost finished the entire night without anyone bringing it up.”
There was just something about writing your own little world of whatever the fuck you wanted that was like a balm to my soul and downright freeing. It wasn’t like I hid it from the girls, but I never openly shared it with them either. I guess it was past time I did.
“Almost,” Olivia said, leaning in closer. “Now spill.”
I’d taken my heels off because the clicking noise they made walking up and down the office hallway pissed me the hell off. Perhaps I should have stopped and sat down at twelve-thirty, but there were only so many times I could reapply lip gloss or peek between the curtains. Not that I had any idea what kind of car Simon drove, but it was Sunday, the parking lot was empty, and something told me it’d be black. Call it intuition.
Between going over the specs for the house, second-guessing my decision to spend a forty-minute drive alone with him, and trying not to get irritated because my green pantsuit clashed with my pink toes, my hair was in danger of crackling with the amount of nervous energy I had. The growl of an engine pulled me away from my inability to coordinate an outfit, and surprise, a black sedan with black rims sat in the front spot beside my convertible.
