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But I was already walking away, all my things in hand. “Even if I believed you, I don’t think that sort of joke is funny.”
“Don’t be so sensitive,” he said, chasing after me. “I honestly didn’t mean it.”
The elevator doors opened and I got in. “Just like you haven’t meant any of the rude things you’ve said to me the last few weeks?” I laughed. “I don’t know what’s worse, you saying them just because you think it’s fun to hurt my feelings or you actually meaning all of it! Either way, I’m done trying to build a bridge between the two of us because I now understand you are always just going to burn it. So—I’m leaving. Have a good night. I will see you Monday.”
I hit the button to take me down to the parking garage and watched as David stumbled to find something to say before the doors closed and cut him off for good.
* * *
“You stupid thing, just work!”
I was yelling at the card reader that was supposed to unlock the door that led to the parking garage. I swiped my ID three more times, but the thing just kept flashing a red light at me and the door remained closed and locked.
“Damnit!” I leaned my back against the wall and sighed. I didn’t want to go back upstairs after I’d made such a dramatic exit. After a few more failed swipes, I cut my losses. I lived close enough that I could walk home, and then come pick up my car in the morning, so that’s what I decided to do. I walked over to the elevator to take it up to the lobby level, but when I hit the button, nothing happened. I pressed it again, but it didn’t even light up.
“This is just great!” I threw my hands up in the air and let them fall heavily down at my sides. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” Then, it hit me.
There was nothing Icoulddo except wait.
I was stuck.
ChapterTen
DAVID
What the hell just happened?
That’s all I could think about. As the elevator closed and Lily disappeared, all I could ask myself was what the hell just happened? It was a joke! I never cheated on anyone in my life, and if I had been with girls in the past who had boyfriends, it wasn’t something I did knowingly. I just assumed from the tone of voice I was using that she would understand I was completely kidding.
I sighed and walked away from the elevator, wondering how it was I always managed to say the exact wrong thing to that woman. The night we met, we had justclicked.But maybe that was because we only did a little talking. That’s what seemed to always get us in trouble when we have too much time to run our mouths instead of just jumping right in bed with one another.
Not that I had any plans of doingthatever again.
Sure, I thought about it.
Actually, I thought about it a lot. Every time I saw her, I ended up thinking about it, but still, I knew it was a terrible idea. Lily and I were a little toxic for one another, and that meant that any office fling we started up was sure to go down in flames. She promised me when I joked about firing her over the Mark case, that she wouldn’t come after me with a wrongful termination lawsuit. But what if she was let go because our romantic entanglement turned into a fiery, workplace mess?
Then she’d surely come after me. And she would take me for all she could, that much I could be sure about. It was generally just a really bad idea to get involved with her in any way that wasn’t strictly professional.
So, perhaps then, it was a good thing I seemed to bother her so much. As long as I kept saying things that upset her, I would be ensuring that any desire she once felt for me was stamped out for good. Then, hopefully, over time, we could move on from being office enemies, to two people who worked together but were otherwise indifferent to one another.
Back at my desk, I tried to read some emails, but I kept getting distracted. My mind wandered to the conversation I was having with Lily before we started arguing. It had been so nice to sit there and tell her about some of the things I’d been dealing with as of late. I didn’t have anyone in my life I could talk to about my dad in that way. My brothers were always there for me, I knew that, but there was also a lot of history there. They had their own complicated relationships with my father, and no one of us could remain unbiased. We always ended up letting our grievances get in the way of us helping one another.
But Lily not only didn’t make the conversation about her, she seemed to listen to what I had to say. She even went so far as to agree with me, in her own way, by making a joke about not looking forward to meeting my father. That was bold of her, to criticize the founder of the company like that, and to his own son, nonetheless. I liked that boldness, and I sort of wanted to see more of it.
Which was to say, I wanted to see more ofher.
When I tried to push those thoughts out of my head and focus once again on the task at hand, however, I realized it was a fruitless endeavor. I wasn’t going to get anything more done that night, so I figured I might as well go home and get a real night’s sleep for the first time in four nights.
I grabbed my work things and headed down to the parking garage level. When the doors of the elevator opened, I saw Lily sitting against the wall, resting her head back with her eyes closed. “What are you—”
Her eyes snapped open and she jumped to her feet. “No, wait! Don’t let the doors close!”
But it was too late, the elevator doors had already shut behind me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She sighed. “What’s going on is you just ruined our only chance of getting out of here.”
