And still, she hadn’t called.
I sat down at my place and stared at my phone. Seven thirty. Eight o’clock. Eight thirty. Nine o’clock. Three hours had passed since I had gotten off work. Three hours for Olivia to call and get my address so she could get here for dinner.
But as the time approached nine thirty, I picked up my phone and stabbed at my cold dinner.
Olivia wasn’t calling. Which meant she wasn’t coming.
Maybe a little too much had changed over time.
5
Olivia
I felt terrible for blowing Brett off. In fact, it was all I thought about over the weekend. I sat there all Friday night staring at that email on my phone. Looking at his underlined phone number, waiting for my thumb to press against it. A couple of times, I almost had. But I kept going back to that one phrase in that email.
“Like the ideas you were running by Katherine earlier.”
Had he been inviting me to some sort of business dinner? Because I got the distinct impression it was personal. Then again, it wasn’t as if I needed to add anything else to my plate. Our past was bad, shrouded in arguments and tears and sleepless nights. The last thing I needed was for my relationship with my boss to fall apart after starting a new job simply because I let the past interfere with the present. I was nervous enough being around him, trying to figure him out after not seeing or speaking with him for five solid years.
But at the same time, being around him made me miss the fun times we’d had have together.
When we weren’t letting people wiggle their way in between us, we’d had a great time. We’d laughed until we cried. We’d shared sushi boats and eaten until we were stuffed and burping together. There’d been no pretense with us. I wasn’t expected to act like anything other than myself, and he sure as hell hadn’t acted like anything other than himself. We’d been good together. Our ambitions aligned, despite his need for money and success. At our core, the two of us had dreams. I’d wanted to have my own clinical practice, and he’d wanted to own his own consulting firm like his father did. Granted, his father was a legal consultant, a lawyer with his own firm. But he wanted to be like his father.
And rightfully so. His father was a good man.
I remembered the way he laughed with all his soul. The way he’d led me out onto the school golf course at night so we could look at the stars. The way he’d protected me at parties we went to, and the way he’d surprise me with little weekend getaways when school became too much. He’d taken care of me on campus when I’d come down with mono after he had graduated and gone on to figure out how to build his own business. He’d dropped everything and come to my on-campus apartment just to take care of me, to get me from class to class and pick up my homework, to keep me on schedule and take me to my doctor day in and day out.
He had done all that for me. Brett Greyson.
The man everyone thought was nothing but a cold-hearted asshole.
I pushed myself away from my desk. I needed to apologize to him for standing him up. I mean, I hadn’t really stood him up. He’d volleyed the ball back into my court, and I didn’t send it back. But I knew Brett well enough to know he had prepared for me to come to dinner that night. He had cooked for two, whether he wanted to admit it or not. I owed him an apology for not giving him a firm no like I should have.
I drew in a deep breath and smoothed my hands over my skirt.
I made my way out of my office and to the elevator. I waved at a few of the consultants who worked on my level, people I had introduced myself to and who I had already familiarized myself with. The full-time consultants worked on the ninth floor with me. They came in when I did and left when I did. The part-time consultants were the three floors below us, levels six through eight. I still had yet to completely get the lay of the land on those lower levels, but I was working on it.
I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the nineteenth floor, then tried not to throw up on the floor.
Brett had always made me nervous. But for some reason, I felt more nervous than ever. I felt each floor as they fell beyond my feet. I closed my eyes and tried to steady my racing mind. Would he be upset? Would my lack of appearance at dinner have any bearing on my work? Shit, I hoped not. I really hoped he wouldn’t be that much of an asshole to leverage my job for something like that.