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And every day, I curse his name for all the anger and resentment still inside of me, I thought.
“And your mom?”
“I just saw her this evening,” I said. “I go visit her a few times a week and play Backgammon with her. She’s happier at the retirement home than she ever was while I was growing up.”
Which isn’t saying much, I didn’t add.
“That’s good.”
I’d heard more than once that the Inuit people of Alaska have fifty words for snow. I don’t know if that’s true, but there should at least be fifty words for the different smiles that I’ve seen on Sloane’s face. Though she smiled almost all the time, it was never an empty smile and they all meant something subtly different. The smile she had now didn’t necessarily directly equate with pure happiness, though she did seem happy. Instead, it offered a kind of sympathy for my mother and me after living under my father’s control for so long and the comfort she felt in knowing that we made it out in one piece.
I wasn’t the most outgoing person, especially when it came to private details of my life, but her expression gave me confidence that I didn’t make a mistake in exposing a small part of my past to her.
We both paused in unison as the famous mirror scene began, where Harpo dressed as Groucho and mimicked his every movement. I could watch that scene a million times and it’d never get old. In fact, it seemed to only get better with age.
The scene was interrupted by a flash of light and an almost immediate rumble of thunder. Instinctually, Sloane jumped into my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. At the same time, the power went out in the apartment and the two of us stood there, frozen in place, doing our own version of the mirror dance, our heads bobbing back and forth.
I don’t know exactly what was going through my mind, but with our eyes locked as they were, I wanted to kiss her. I couldn’t remember the last time I kissed anyone — it had been so long that part of me wondered if I still remembered how to do it. But it wasn’t complicated. Nobody had to teach me when I learned the first time — I’d figure my way back into it on my own.
I was her boss, though. And everything I’d said to my mother before had been true. I’d be reprimanded for making any suggestion of kissing her and, for actually doing it? That would be the end of my career at Dynasty Realty. And I’d be lucky to find any other local agency to hire me.
At the same time, we only have so many days on this earth, and I knew I’d spend the rest of them in regret if I didn’t take this opportunity. And, with the way she was looking back at me, I got a clear impression that she wanted me to kiss her, too. It wasn’t in my head, right? She jumped into my arms out of fear, but what was keeping her there now?
“Sorry,” she said, still not moving. “I got scared by the thunder.”
Her lips were inches away from mine and I made a subtle move forward, cutting that distance in half, to see how she’d react.
“That’s okay,” I told her.
She didn’t recoil. In fact, she began moving closer to me, too.
It’s now or never, Wesley, I thought. Kiss her.
Okay, I thought. I’m going to do it.
There was a knock at the door.
“Ray’s Pizza!” came a shout from behind the wall.
The moment passed. I’d missed my chance.
She crawled out of my lap, and I stood up to go get my wallet.
As I walked to the door, I couldn’t even notice how hungry I was. I just knew that I’d had the greatest opportunity of my life right now and I blew it by waiting a split second too long to make a decision.
CHAPTER9
***SLOANE***
Was he going to kiss me?
My mind was still a bit foggy and slow from the wine, but I thought Wesley was about to kiss me after I’d embarrassed myself by jumping into his lap like that. I felt so childish, being afraid of the thunder like that, but then I immediately felt the exact opposite of that (adultish?) once his face was so close to mine.
I could have moved into the kiss a little faster, but I wanted to be sure. I already felt like I’d intruded on him enough that day, between dragging him to help deal with my clients and showing up unannounced at his house dressed in the tackiest outfit imaginable. Every day before work, I made myself presentable and, dare I say it, hot. But it would take a certain kind of someone to find me at all attractive in my sweatpants and well-worn shirt.
So, it must have been in my head. I have a nasty habit of projecting and just because I thought he was sexy; it didn’t mean the feeling was mutual. In fact, I wondered if he had the ability to find anyone sexy. He wasn’t like the other men at the office. While everyone else was acting professionally and biting their tongues, giggling at unexpected innuendos, it came naturally to him. For God’s sake, he didn’t even laugh at the heel in the ass story! That story could get a steel wall to crack.
But he did laugh at the Marx brothers, so there was at least a little life in him. If anything, I’d have assumed he identified most with Margaret Dumont, the woman who acted as comic foil to Groucho’s antics. She never seemed to understand the humor in any of what he was saying, which only made Groucho’s one-liner barbs funnier.
