Letting go of the desk, I sigh heavily.
How much does she mean to me?
We’ve spoken once via text, and I’m already thinking things like that.
Suddenly I realize she might be right, though her reasoning must be different from mine.
I need to back off.
I can’t walk blindfolded into something like this. I can’t let my reason be wrestled away by this confusing need.
It pains me as I write the text, but that’s proof I should write it. It shouldn’t hurt this much.
I think that’s for the best too
I almost stop myself. I almost throw my phone away.
Then I make myself click send because this woman doesn’t exist. Sure, her name might be Fiona. She might even be twenty.
But she’s not the woman who I’ve fantasized about for so long.
I’m starting to realize something.
Something I should’ve accepted a long time ago.
That woman doesn’t exist, and she never has.
I’m the one with the problem.
CHAPTER SIX
Fiona
I sit on the toilet seat, tears making the screen blurry. I haven’t broken into outright sobs yet, but the tears come in silent streams flowing down my cheeks.
I keep telling myself to stop crying.
We ended something that never existed.
Deep in my heart, I know I was hoping he’d fight for us. But that proves how skewed my thinking has become.
I wanted him to fight for us, as though there is an us, as though that means anything at all.
He doesn’t know me. I don’t know him, except through the internet and the occasional sighting in the office.
Yet I can’t stop the pettiness.
Fine then, if that’s how you feel!
I send the text and then almost throw my phone at the wall. The only thing that stops me, right at the last second, is the thought of how much it would cost to replace. That might make it so I can’t pay my half of the rent. Saving for the sewing machine really set me back.
Gripping my phone in a fist, I grab some toilet tissue and paw at my cheeks. I keep expecting my phone to vibrate, telling me there’s a text from Felix. I’d take an angry one, a borderline abusive one, anything, so I know he cares. He feels something.
But there’s no response, not in the bathroom and not for the rest of the day.
It’s difficult to focus on my work, but my boss keeps a stern eye on everything I do. For once, I’m relieved. It means I’m forced to think about other things, if only in short bursts, before my thoughts return to him.
This is it, then. This is the evidence I need to let this silly crush go. I can’t keep living like this, dreaming up impossible scenarios with Felix Franklin.
Hours pass, work filled with monotonous assignments. I check my phone every chance I get.
Nothing.
What did I expect?
Did I think I’d tell him I didn’t want to speak, and he’d care?
It feels so foolish now. I should’ve played it subtle, casual, and then…
And then what?
Then we meet one day, as he suggested, and he sees what I look like. He laughs at me. Or, worse, his face tightens in pity, his forehead furrowing as if I’m the most tragic person he’s ever laid eyes on.
When he sent that message about taking me out – my skin tingled when I remembered, hey, mystery girl – he must’ve been thinking of somebody utterly unlike me.
My total opposite. A blonde bombshell.
With a sick grin, I think about sending Rachel in my place. She’s the sort of woman he’d be expecting.
Lunch breaks and I drag myself to the sandwich shop, music blasting in my ears to distract me from the non-event of the text back and forth.
Nothing has changed.
Felix didn’t want me before. He doesn’t want me now.
So why the heck are tears budding in my stupid annoying eyes again?
Back at work, I try to focus on my work tasks, redirecting my attention from my phone to my computer screen again and again. It’s difficult not to let my mind stray to the text exchange, even as I remind myself that nothing has ended, not really.
For something to have ended, something needed to begin. And nothing did. We were texting with some borderline flirtatious banter, and that’s it. It’s not as though we were developing some soul-searing romance.
If he saw me.
That’s the thought I return to far too many times. It bounces around my mind, loud, deafening, making it so I can’t think about anything else. If those wolfish eyes passed over me with their intense perceptiveness and glinting confidence… he’d turn away, shaking his head, disgusted by what he saw.
Or his gaze would pass right over me like I’m a piece of furniture.
He wouldn’t even care that I’m here. I’d be nothing to him.
For what feels like the fifteenth time, I guide my gaze back to the computer screen. I keep having to remind myself of why I’m here…to work, not to pine over the CEO.