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Her voice is almost inaubible when she finally speaks. “Can you come to Amber, please? It’s… Tuesday…”
Nothing else matters in that moment.
I drive, heart in my throat, forgetting simple road rules, in my quest to get there. When I rush in, she's sitting at her dad’s private table at the back. She sees me, but doesn’t say anything, just picks up the tea cup in front of her, taking a sip.
“I’m here.”
“Can you sit with me please? I can’t do this alone. And I can’t not be here on a Tuesday at lunch time.”
"Of course.” I pull a chair from a different table, not wanting to take her father's chair and sit with her. She doesn’t say a word the whole time, or even acknowledge me. Just stares into space, wiping away tears, as she drinks one cup of tea after another.
But we sit, in silence, thinking about the man that brought us together, wondering where he is now, and what he can see.
At 2 p.m. she stands up. “I’m going now.”
“Okay. Kiara?”
“Yeah?”
“Why am I here?”
“Because I didn’t know who else to call. I needed someone here, and I knew you’d come.”
She walks away leaving me with a multitude of emotions I don’t know how to handle.
I'm back the next Tuesday. She's already there, same thing. Silence and tea. After an hour, she gets up, thanks me, and leaves.
The third week, the same thing.
I still make the daily phone calls and voicemail, but the hour every Tuesday is about her and it’s about silence. And I won't say another word until she does.
On the fourth Tuesday, before she leaves, she says, "This Sunday is the deadline for the offer for Watch. Don't forget. Don't not do it because of me. I don't want to be a part of any of your decisions."
For the first time since she left that night in London, my heart sinks to the bottom of my chest, burning any hope of progress to ashes.
During the family Wednesday meeting, I'm the topic of conversation and my love life, or lack thereof.
"You need to make a decision, Kylian. The girl or the company. You can't have both," Matthias delivers his painfully brutal view.
"Yes, you can. I'm evidence of that," Damien adds, only serving to confuse me all the more.
"Kingsley?"
"I have no advice to you, just this, whatever you pick, do it with your whole heart. This isn't something you can half ass. If you want her, go get her. If you want the company, submit an offer that they can't refuse. We're Baxters, we don't dilly dally."
All three of them makes sense to me, but I know who I'm going to be listening to.
On Sunday, 11 p.m. I press the doorbell at the Yin Estate. The newspapers tell me that Nathan is in Singapore and won't be home for a few days so I don’t have to worry about him kicking me out before I’ve done what I came here to do.
I hear the shuffle of her slippers on the floor as she comes to the door. How had I become so accustomed to the little things that she does in such a short time. How had my mind remembered every little thing and insisted on torturing me with it. My memory of everything about her is so vivid, I could create a hologram and it would resemble her perfectly. Except that I wouldn't be able to touch her, smell her, kiss her, hold her, fall asleep with her body against mine.
"Kylian," she says when she opens the door, even though I know she wouldn’t have opened the door if she didn't know who it was. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you. We don't have to talk. Tonight, I need to ask you to sit with me. Please."
Her brow furrows in confusion for a moment, but then she opens the door wider to let me in.
The house is dark and quiet. She’s kept the windows open, she must be cold. As if reading my mind, she wraps her cardigan tighter around her. We walk out to the patio and I sit in the chairs we'd sat in the day we'd had dinner here.
