AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No. I was caught up in the moment. If anything, you used me. I will still pay for your continuing education, whatever and whenever that may be, and you will still have the internship. You should be grateful.”
“Grateful?” She barked out a surprised laugh. “I didn’t use you. You said all of that was normal!” He opened his mouth to respond, and she threw the picture she’d found onto his desk. “Here. Michael blocked you, that’s all. He’s still on LinkedIn, and he’s still on Facebook. If you hadn’t been too pigheaded to hire a lawyer instead of making Monica play paralegal, I bet one would have figured it out by now. I liked you, Bradley. That’s it. And I thought you liked me too. It’s okay to lean on people. You’re old enough to know that.”
Lainey left his office for the last time. She would never see him again if she could help it.
Chapter seventeen
Ithadbeenaweek since Lainey had even thought about going back to the office. She was done with Bradley Arnault and his ever-changing mood. She should have let herself be alone after Josh, she decided, and now was her time to do it.
On her way out the door, Jill stopped and looked Lainey up and down. “How are you feeling, Champ?”
“Like a champ,” Lainey responded, shoveling a handful of tortilla chips into her mouth and giving her roommate a cursory glance before training her eyes back on the television. Jill sighed and closed the door. She walked over and squatted, so that she could be on Lainey’s level.
“Maybe you should consider looking for another job now if you’re not going to go back to Arnault Enterprise,” she suggested melodically, stroking Lainey’s hair.
“No can do. I’m taking time to be alone. I never did that after Josh broke up with me. I just jumped right into something else. That was my problem, you know.” Her head tipped back to empty the rest of the bag into her mouth more easily.
“Was it? Because, Lainey, I think your problem is that you don’t seem to have an identity outside of whatever you’re being told to do. Maybe you should fight for something.”
“Like what?”
“Like a certain man who took care of you in more ways than one and had a moment of doubt about the ethics of your relationship?”
Lainey didn’t answer, her eyes still fixed on the screen. She considered it—what fighting for him would look like—and a pit formed in her stomach as she imagined him rejecting her again. Her head instinctually shook a little, and she pulled her legs and arms into her long tee. She felt swallowed inside it, safe from advice that left her vulnerable.
“I did. I saved him from his legal issue. He—if he had been proud, he would have reached out,” she whispered tightly, her chest constricting into a straw.
“Proud?” Jill repeated. Lainey said nothing. She’d said too much. She’d let out the child that was meant to stay in her ribcage. “Okay, well, will you do something for me?” She looked up at Jill, who meant no harm, and stared right through her but shrugged in agreement.
“Will you shower? I promise you’ll feel better if you do. Shower, and then sit outside in the sun. Just give it twenty minutes and see what happens.” She was walking to the door.
“Fine,” she croaked back.
“Great. Because you smell, Lainey, and that’s, you know, putting it nicely. And you’re getting it on the couch.”
Lainey smiled despite herself. She wasn’t wrong.
Feeling sorry for herself, she showered. Feeling sorry for herself, she got dressed. Feeling sorry for herself, she put her clothes in the washer. Feeling sorry for herself, she threw away the empty snack bags and bottles. She grabbed her laptop, set an alarm for twenty minutes, and went outside to look for jobs and sit in the sun.
She favorited a couple of receptionist jobs and stretched her legs out underneath her on the grass, arching her feet. Lying there languidly, she gripped grass with her toes, ripping the blades mindlessly. She noticed a figure blocked by the sun making its way up her driveway and thought for a moment it was him, Bradley. The mistake stabbed painfully through her chest, and she tried to reorient herself as she called out, “Hi! Can I help you?”
“I think so,” came his answer, his voice clear. A wave of ice-cold anxiety pierced and then passed through her body as she realized she hadn’t made a mistake at all and that Bradley indeed stood in her yard. She felt like she was going to be sick, nausea percolating just under the surface. She stood up quickly, her laptop under her arm, and headed for the door. “Lainey, stop. Can we talk?” She stood frozen. Barefoot and under the sun, he seemed to her a mirage of her own invention. This last week she hadn’t been herself; maybe she’d hoped herself into insanity.
“What time is it?” she managed to ask finally, shielding her eyes with one hand and squinting to face him.
“I don’t know. Around eight.”
“Why aren’t you at the office?” The question came out more accusingly than she meant it, but her tone earned a laugh from him.
“Perks of being your own boss. I don’t have to be at the office if I don’t want to be.” He shrugged and took a step forward. “So, could I come in?”
“Okay. Butwhyaren’t you at the office?” she repeated, annoyed at his dodging of the question. His shoulders raised defensively to his ears.
“I just—I’m not. I came to talk to you.” The answer hung there between them. Tiny dust particles caught in sunlight.
“So, talk.” Her laptop was across her stomach defensively, a shield from whatever may come. His eyes roved around with wild reluctance, and she relented with a halfhearted huff. “Fine, come in.” He followed after her through the grass and onto her porch.
“Good grass today?” She shot him a look over her shoulder.
