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“Did I–?” he asked as I rubbed my hands over my eyes and through my hair, trying to shake free from whatever spell his scent and his smile had placed on me.
“No,” I said, “No, Charlie.”It isn’t you, it’s me,I couldn’t say.I am not this person. I don’t belong here. I’m scared. I can’t.“I have to go.”
“Ella,” he said, as I dressed haphazardly, shoving my socks into my pockets and my feet into my still-laced sneakers. “Wait, we don’t have to–”
“No, Charlie, I’m sorry, but–” I said, opening the door. “I can’t.”
* * *
For the second week in a row, I showed up late at the office on Monday morning.
At least last week, I had had a travel mug of coffee, thanks to–
Charlie.
I hadn’t been able to sleep last night, tossing restlessly under the bedsheets, which felt too hot, then too cold, then too hot again. I had been replaying the dinner, my questions and his answers–me thinking he was talking about hisbitewhen he was talking about hisknot, of all things–of all the non-issues he could have thought I had an issue with, he had to pick the thing that had me pinching myself when I caught myself daydreaming at work.
Most painfully of all, I replayed again and again his sweet vulnerability, the quiet confession in his bedroom that I had nearly missed, my mind fixating on his knot, his bite:I’ve never been with an omega like this. In his bedroom–his childhood bedroom, I realized during rerun number eight million, in the house he and his brothers had grown up in. Hisfamily’shouse, hispack’s. The thought had nearly brought me to tears.
And then I had left him, without even an explanation.
Because whatwasmy explanation?
I like youtoomuch.
I like your family, too, but I’m scared because I don’t know what that means, not really, and I’m too scared to ask, scared that I might want to be a part of that, but I don’t knowhowto be a part of that, because everyoneIknew had gone, and…
I don’t want you to leave.
I had gotten up, and paced, and finally plugged in my laptop, determined to work on something useful if I couldn’t sleep. I sat down at my desk to write, but my eyes caught on his forgotten tee shirt–I had washed and folded it to take back to him, but forgotten it in the rush yesterday.
I had squirmed in my seat. I knew–Iknew–it would help. But I didn’t want to do it. It felt like…
Like what he had said yesterday was all true: that he was an alpha, and I was an omega, andthat’swhy we worked so well together. Obviously, I knew it wasn’t the rest of it–we certainly didn’t have much in common when it came to family background, status, or net worth–but I had really thought that something,something, had been right with us. He was funny, and handsome, and despite it all–despite my leaving–I liked him.
I had stripped out of my Collingswood University shirt, feeling the cold air across my body for an instant before I grabbed his tee with a frustrated sigh.
The soft fabric had hung loose on my frame, but the scent of it–the faint juniper still present even through my detergent–clung to me, to my skin, warming me, comforting me like an embrace. I had crawled back into bed, and it was instants before I was awakening bleary-eyed but at least somewhat rested to the loud, blaring alarm from my phone, still on my desk on the other side of my small apartment.
So now, I sat at my desk on too-few hours of sleep, wondering how soon was too soon for a mid-morning trip to the coffeeshop, and trying to ignore the lump in my throat and the pit in my stomach that told me I had made a mistake in leaving him.
“Booker!”
My head snapped up, the pit in my stomach expanding to swallow up my heart, too: I could barely feel it beating as I stood and made my way to Editor Stevens’ office once again. My anxiety was on high alert after my restless night and my inner monologue was extra loud:I’m going to get fired,my subconscious screamed,and then what? You’ll have no boyfriend and no job, and no money, and no family, and– and–
* * *
“What do you mean, buying the magazine?” I asked, sitting numbly in the chair across from Editor Stevens’s desk. She shrugged, lifting her hands out like the emoji, then letting them fall onto her desk again.
“The magazine is being acquired.”
“But who–”
“That’s the thing, Booker,” she said, her eyes serious now. “These guys, they neverwantamagazine. What they want is a cash cow. I’ve seen it before: they scoop us up for cheap, then they cut and cut and cut until there’s nothing left. They’ll milk us dry, and then, when there’s nothing but a sad shell of a company, they’ll put us out of our suffering.” She mimed a gunshot, holding two fingers straight at me. I could practically feel the blow, landing in the meat and gristle of my chest.
“TheClarion…” The local newspaper. This is what had happened to theClarion, too.
“That’s right,” Editor Stevens affirmed. “They killed the paper, and now they’re coming for us. The fuckers; as if it wasn’t enough for them to get me stuck at this hellhole of a gossip rag.” I would have laughed on any other occasion. “Now they’re moving in on this too.”
