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I look down at my hand, resting atop one of the documents from Exciteur. From her.
“You’re right.”
28
SOPHIA
I turn over in my bed and fluff up the pillow. I fold it over once, and then in the opposite direction, trying to get comfortable. It’s been an hour since I turned off the lights and sleep is still nowhere in sight. Funny, how that’s been a problem since the night of the Winters’ autumn ball.
My body might be tired, but my mind isn’t. It spins.The pleasant wine-buzz I’d gotten from drinks earlier with Jenna and Toby has disappeared, leaving me with a painful amount of clear-headedness.
I’d told them I was no longer dating Isaac Winter.We came to a mutual decision,I’d said.It’s best to stay professional.
Jenna had frowned at that. She’d worn a yellow blouse, her lucky color, in preparation for the date she had after our drinks. “Oh,” she’d said.
“You don’t think we made the right decision?”
“I don’t know,” she’d said, and looked at Toby beside her. “Maybe you did. But I was rooting for this.”
I’d had another sip of my wine and acted casual. “You were?”
“Yes. Well, not really because of him, because I don’t know him.”
“We know he’s deliciously handsome,” Toby had said. “So, that’s a pretty important point in his favor.”
Jenna laughed. “Yes, definitely. He has that aloof hotness, you know?”
“That’s exactly what it is,” he’d agreed.
Jenna had turned back to me. “But my point was, I was rooting for it because ofyou. I think it’s great that you’re dating again.”
“We’re just team Sophia getting some,” Toby said with a grin. “He was a means to an end.”
I’d rolled my eyes. “Jesus, all right.”
“Anyway, if it’s over, it’s over.” Jenna had held up her wineglass to toast. “Here’s to moving onwards and upwards. Hey, you can even download the app I’m using. We can become dating buddies!”
I’d wriggled my way out of that one. But their enthusiasm about the whole thing, about something I’d just wanted to breeze past, had gotten beneath my skin.
I turn over in bed again.
Maybe it would be easier to forget if I didn’t have to see his name every day.Winter,it says in my documents and on my project folders.Winter, winter, winter.
It’s not even my favorite season.
Damn him. Damn me. Damn all of it for happening, and leaving me alone with the memory of it, unable to enjoy its sweetness. Every day something happens that I want to talk to him about. Work, tennis, life, the city.
I’d been doing okay before Isaac.
Not great, maybe, but okay. Life was predictable and monotonous. But now that he’s passed, like a storm that’s breezed through a little town, everything feels out of place. There’s an absence now, a lack, where before there was just nothingness.
I turn onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. If only I’d never invited him into my apartment, and never let him sleep in this bed. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel his absence quite so strongly.
My buzzer rings. The loud, piercing sound jolts me into sitting. Then it comes again, buzzing loudly from my living room.
There’s someone calling from downstairs.
Milo gives an offended little meow beside me on the bed. His eyes glitter in the near-darkness as he watches me get up.
