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Amelia was struck speechless, giving Laila room to offer, “if I were you, young and full of potential, I’d take the vacation and leave all this behind me.” She didn’t have to verbalize the threat for Amelia and me to know what she intended to do if Amelia didn’t leave.
“Take some time to think about it, honey.” Laila smiled, her grin like a shark’s. “Just let me know what you decide as soon as possible, ‘kay?” And then she went back to eating her breakfast as though nothing had happened.
Amelia’s eyes darted to mine and I silently tried to tell her that we’d talk later. She appeared to get my message and left without another word. “It’s always so unpleasant when you have to let someone go, isn’t it?” Laila asked pensively. “She’s a sweet girl but having another feminine presence in the house is stifling my energy.”
I didn’t think she cared about my response, a notion that was immediately confirmed when she went back to scrolling through her emails as though she hadn’t just rudely discharged Amelia. While Laila was occupied, I began to think of what I would say to Amelia—none of my choices were good.
Chapter Fifteen
Amelia
AsIsatinmy office, trying to organize the paperwork I’d neglected while solely taking care of Josh, my obsessive mind kept returning to what Laila had said. I hadn’t expected someone who was so wrapped up in themselves to actually voice a complaint against another person unless they were truly upsetting them. And maybe I had—fuck, I knew I definitely had—but they were getting divorced so why was Laila getting jealous?
What had prompted her to be so snippy with me and essentially fire me at eight o’clock in the morning? Although it hadn’t caused me to burst out crying like some previous patients’ comments had, the underlying menace in her words was reason enough to leave. And Josh’s response, which had been to sit there like a bump on a log, had only added.
At this point, unless he showed me that there was a chance for us to have something other than him sneaking peeks at me, I was prepared to do as Laila instructed. Just then, I got an email from Josh:
Hey Red,
Laila will be at a meeting with her manager from 1-3pm. Please come back then so we can talk.
Josh
Typing out a quick reply, I flew through the rest of my work, praying that this would finally resolve itself one way or another.
On my way out, I nearly ran into Dr. Morales, who grasped my shoulders and said, “Hey, Amelia! How are you,mi chica?” His pet name for me would have awoken the butterflies in my stomach on any other day but now it just made me feel sick. Sick with worry, with confusion, and with anticipation that depending on how things went with Josh, that might actually be true.
Santiago and I had agreed that we weren’t doing anything serious by fooling around after-hours; still, I knew he’d only wait so long before asking me if we could take things further. Stuttering out a reply—“I’m good, Santi. Hey, I have to be somewhere, but I’ll call you later, okay?”—I slipped by him, guilt like lead in my bones as I turned my back on a good man to run to one who might not even want me in his life.
Josh’s mansion was as silent as a courtroom waiting for a verdict when I returned, toeing off my shoes quietly before making my way to his office. There he sat, glasses perched high on his nose as he wrote notes on something in red ink. It never ceased to surprise me how much menial work Josh did for his company, but I supposed it was one way he tried to show that he hadn’t lost touch with his employees.
I knocked softly and Josh’s eyes met mine. It was the first time in a month and a half that I noticed any gentleness in his gaze and it made my heart thump wildly in my chest. “Amelia,” he murmured, taking his glasses off and setting them to the side, making his features shift from sophisticated to boyish in a second.
“Why did you let her talk to me like that?” I blurted out, placing my hands on my hips defensively. “I mean, I know we aren’t getting along right now but that was way out of line, even by bratty, rich people standards.”
I watched him stifle a smirk at my phrasing before replying, “I didn’t say anything because if I had, she would have known…about us.”
“You think she doesn’t already know?”
“I don’t want to assume anything, especially since the divorce hasn’t been finalized,” he said, moving to stand and lean on the edge of his desk, arms crossed.
“And why is that?” I asked, pressing my fingers into the wound. “Why have you been acting like you still want her around when you’re ten minutes away from being single again?”
Josh sighed, his mouth forming a hard line. “Because maybe I do.”
I blanched, squinting at him like I hadn’t heard him correctly. “What?”
His arms flexed beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his neatly ironed shirt and instinctively, I knew I was about to hear something I’d been dreading ever since the night that Laila had come back.
“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder—”
“Oh, spare me your poetic nonsense, Josh! Are you or are you not over her?” I yelled, gesticulating wildly as though I could kill the very notion with swats of my hands.
“I don’t know,” he replied exasperatedly. “I thoughtyouloved me but then you decided that we’d be better off just fucking every once in a while or something.”
Glaring at him, I intoned, “youknowthat we can’t have anything serious while you’re my patient—it’s a breach of contract that could get me fired.”
“Right, and you solved that problem by running off to your boss while keeping me around to sleep with on the side,” Josh scoffed, running his hands through his hair and disturbing the perfectly styled chestnut locks, “I thought you were more mature than that but I guess you’re just like every other twenty-five year old I’ve met.”
