I got in my car and called a cab. I watched as it pulled up, then a man got out and helped her into the back. I watched them drive off before I cranked up my car, then followed them to make sure Gloria got home safely. I watched as she stumbled into the apartment she called a home, and before she shut the door I watched her pick something up from the floor.
It was an empty wine bottle, and the last image I had of her was her tipping the glass up to her lips.
Sighing and shaking my head, I pulled away to try and find Libby. I traced the street she had raced down and took the first left her car had swerved down. But beyond that, I had nowhere else to look. The only thing I knew was that she lived on the south side of Chicago, but it would’ve taken me all night to scour half the damn place. Fuck. How the hell did Gloria find me at that place? What the hell had she been thinking?
I didn’t even get a chance to explain to Libby was the hell was going on.
I drove back to my home and whipped out my phone. I sent her a message through the app as well as a text message, but I got no response. I went back to her profile, trying to see if there was any information in there I could use to track her down. She probably needed some room to breathe, which was fine. I got that. But we needed to talk. I wanted to explain myself and see if she would give me a second chance at this whole thing.
I wanted to see if she would give me the chance to figure out why the fuck I couldn’t kick her like a bad habit.
I scrolled through her profile and came across where she worked. Not the safest thing to put in a profile, but it would work in my favor. I jotted the place down before I fell asleep, just in case she decided to delete her profile. The first stop I was making in the morning before I headed into work was to the florist. If she didn’t want to talk with me, the least I could do was send her something to apologize. I didn’t know how she would react, but it was the only avenue I had to get her to talk to me.
I rolled out of bed the next morning, got cleaned up, and called the florist I knew in town. I had a bouquet of white Lily of the Valleys as well as white roses along with an apology note. I wanted the florist to call me after they had been delivered so I knew she got them. But then it was out of my hands.
And still, I heard nothing from her.
The entire week, there was nothing. My text messages went unanswered, my phone calls went unreturned, and my messages in the dating app were read but not responded to. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t get her off my mind. The look of horror on her face when Gloria threw that glass of wine at me wasn’t how I wanted to remember her. It wasn’t how I wanted to end things with her.
So, I did the only other thing I knew I could do.
I picked up lunch for us and headed for her job.
I grabbed the food and buttoned my suit coat before I walked inside. There were a few people sitting in the waiting room waiting on their appointments as they looked up at me. I smiled and nodded my head at them, gripping the food tightly in my hand. Then I looked up and saw Libby sitting at her desk, her eyes trained on the computer in front of her as her hands flew across the keyboard.
And my heart stopped.
“Welcome. If you want to sign in and write down your appointment time, I’ll let you know when they’re ready to see you,” Libby said.
“Hey there.”
I watched her pause as she panned her gaze towards me. She looked tired. Her eyes were heavy and there was the faintest bit of red that still tinted them. She had been crying, and it boiled my blood. A woman like her didn’t deserve to cry. And there was a good chance she’d fallen asleep doing that, judging by the faint indentations that were still pressed into her cheek.
“I brought lunch,” I said.
“Smells good,” she said quietly.
“Would you like some?” I asked.
She sighed and I watched her eyes flicker off to the side. I looked over and saw the bouquet of flowers I sent her a few days ago sitting on a side table by a window. I looked back at her, waiting for her to say that one word. That one word that gave me permission to sit with her and talk.
“Okay,” Libby said. “Sure. Yeah. Come on back. Let me clock out for lunch.”
She rolled away from her desk and opened a door off to the side. I walked around the corner and came into the front office, my eyes studying her closely. She had on a pair of professional black pants that look like they’d been bunched up on the floor for days. She had on a white shirt with a light gray cardigan slung around her shoulders, and it was already falling off her body. She was thrown together, and that was putting it mildly. What was confusing to me was how the hell a woman could still shine the way Libby could in something like that.
There were women who wore ten thousand-dollar dresses to a single fucking dinner date and didn’t shine the way she did.
“What’s for lunch?” Libby asked.
“I brought steak salads and a side of macaroni and cheese from Boka,” I said.
“Ah, so I still get to know what their food tastes like,” she said.
“That was the intention. I’ve got two different drinks. Iced tea and Lemonade. Preference?”
“The lemonade sounds nice, thank you.”
I divvied out the food as she cleared off a spot on her desk. I pulled up a stool in the corner and sat down, watching the way she prepared her eating spot. She was self-conscious, that much was for certain. The way she cut up everything into small pieces before eating it. The way she delicately sipped at her lemonade. The way she chewed everything without the slightest sound.