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“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” Gabby rolled her eyes. “Sucks that Connor forced him on your project though. Braeden is so much better.”
“Gabby, Richard is brilliant and incredible at his job. That’s all I care about when it comes to the project. As long as he doesn’t flirt with me in the office when we work together, it doesn’t matter who is on my team.”
“Gross.”
She started acting like a petulant child about him, so I dropped the conversation.
“I’m not worried about Richard. Honesty moment? I’m terrified of Erik being here in nine days.”
“I’m sorry. I think I misheard you. What?!” Gabby’s eyes widened. It occurred to me that I had omitted that small detail from them.
“Your ex?!” Mason perked up from his papers immediately. I guess my laughable love life was more interesting than the Founding Fathers. “The former love of your life? The one that you left to move here? That Erik?!”
“The one and only,” I sighed.
My feelings were highly conflicted about seeing Erik again, especially in person. I unloaded my thoughts on Gabby and Mason.
On the one hand, the nerves of seeing my ex-boyfriend again threatened to be enough to knock me off my game, so I panicked over how I would react when I had to work and talk to him. I had no room for error on this project, so having him in the office with me made me want to vomit. He was good at his job, but this was the one person I dreaded having on my team.
On the other hand, three years is a long time, and there was the possibility that seeing him wouldn’t do anything to me. I had moved on. But I knew I missed my best friend and sometimes found myself craving the close friendship we used to share. There were a lot of good memories of growing up with him by my side that I could channel while he was here to overshadow how things ended.
Unfortunately, my brain couldn’t decide how to handle it right now and would have to wait until he stood in front of me.
“Honesty moment?” I said. “For a brief moment, the day before Connor sprung up the opportunity to move, I thought I saw a faint glimpse of color in the river behind his mom’s house during family dinner. We had been celebrating her birthday, and Erik was playing with his niece. I stared at him for a while, watching him with that little girl, and then I thought I saw the color. I never saw it again, so I think I just hallucinated, or the water caught the light in a weird way that I hadn’t seen before.”
“Oh…my…goodness!” Mason put the papers he was grading on the coffee table before he had the urge to throw them across the room in excitement. “Maybe…maybe…maybe you were finally truly falling in love with him! Your heart and brain were finally on the same page that you had chosen to be with him. But the next day, you already had one foot out the door, so the colors stopped! Especially if it was the day before Connor pulled you away from him!”
“Mason, I don’t think –” Gabby tried to bring him back from his romantic idealism and speculation.
“Maybe this is your chance to rekindle your love like one of those second-chance romance books or a Hallmark movie!”
Mason’s hopeless romantic nature was typically wasted on Gabby and me. Sometimes, hearing his unyielding positivity was a breath of fresh air. Gabby stopped him from continuing his rambling and interjected with her theory and belief of how the colors developed. It was a wildly accepted one that Mason never wanted to give any credence to.
Gabby preached her viewpoint every time the conversation came up. She believed that love was exclusively a choice and you had to be fully committed to someone to see in color. Many people thought the same thing, but no one could precisely determine what was true. Those same people insisted that you had to continually decide to love someone for colors to develop, regardless of any feeling.
Mason was on the opposite school of thought. He believed that love was closer to a magical feeling. He argued that once you met the right person, it would make sense why it didn’t work out with anyone else. Yes, there was a level of choice in being with someone, but he focused on the feelings.
My view on the subject was not as rigid as either of theirs. I believed it could be a perfect mixture of choosing someone and feeling love for someone. But as more time passed and my world continued to be muted in color, the less I knew what to believe.
“If you’re so right, then how come Blake didn’t see color when she chose Erik?” Mason taunted.
That was the question I always pondered when the topic came up and one that I asked Gabby often. I chose to love Erik for the two years we were together and had always felt different toward him than anyone else when we were growing up. I tried to fight for us; I tried to choose him.
“That’s an easy one,” Gabby scoffed. “Her passion for her job and career always outweighed Erik, so she never truly chose him. Then, you chose to stop being with him, so the colors didn’t develop. I don’t think you chose him. I think you settled for him.”
“This is all so easy for you to say!” Mason rolled his eyes. “You’ve always been able to see color. You’ve never had to wonder if the man you’re dating is just another loser or if your eyes will tell you he’s the one for you.”
I was always jealous of the people that were born seeing color. Although no one knew why it worked like that, most people thought it was genetics. Then, there were people that never got to see in color regardless of love. Most people were people like Mason and me who daydream of seeing what the world looks like with all of our senses.
“Being able to see color doesn’t mean it’s easy,” Gabby defended herself. “It means I have one less…check…when choosing who to love. I trusted my feelings before, and it still crashed and burned. My choice is based on various factors since it can’t be just based on my eyes.”
“That sounds almost too…logical…for you,” I eyed her skeptically.
“Choosing who you’re going to spend the rest of your life with should be a logical decision,” Gabby stood her ground.
“Whatever,” Mason sipped his drink. “I, for one, can’t wait to meet the man of my dreams and have my world erupt in color immediately.”
“Unfortunately, I do think love at first sight only exists in movies,” I sipped my wine.
