Half of me is certain tonight was an enormous step in the right direction. The other half of me wonders if I’ve yet to scratch the surface of this enigmatic woman.
Still, progress is progress.
Twenty
Sophie
Past
“I’m so sorry, Soph.” Nolan cups my face, kisses the top of my head, and pulls me tight against him. We’re outside a little Italian restaurant on the north side of the city. It cost me thirty dollars to Uber here, not that I can’t afford it. I wasn’t sure if I should come.
He went radio silent on me for six days—but it might as well have been an eternity.
Every night, I waited for my sister to fall asleep before crying into my pillow wondering what things were going to be like going forward. What my weekends would look like. If my friends would still want to hang out with me despite not seeing me for the last several months. What I’d do if the stockpiled cash runs out and we get another unexpected medical bill.
“There’s no excuse for the way I acted,” he says. “I was an asshole, and you didn’t deserve that.”
It’s my turn to be silent, but mostly because I don’t know what to say. I’m upset, but I’m also all cried out. I want to tell him I’ve dated boys my age who were more mature than that. And I think he should know that I was days away from calling the café and begging for my job back.
But for whatever reason, I say nothing.
It’s like everything is frozen. My heart, my body, my words.
“I was just looking forward to seeing you,” he adds. “And when I couldn’t, and there was no way around it, I got angry and I took it out on you. It’ll never happen again. I promise.”
There’s a fullness in my chest that overpowers the tightness that had been there all week. I want to forgive him and pretend like nothing happened, but I also want him to know he can’t do that to me again.
I also want to ask him what he did last weekend without me, but anytime I think of asking, a stab of jealousy cuts through my middle. The thought of Nolan spending an ounce of his free time with anyone except me makes me strangely sick to my stomach.
He brushes the hair from my forehead and kisses my mouth, slow and lingering, depositing the familiar aftertaste of Wrigley’s spearmint gum as his signature cedar and ambergris cologne cloaks the oxygen around me.
I close my eyes, and the world around me disappears the way it always does when we’re together. The symphony of city traffic around us fades into the background. The warm scent of heated asphalt disappears from my lungs. There are no barking dogs or construction jackhammers or city buses humming past.
“What do you say we get dinner to go and head back to the hotel?” he asks.
His eyes search mine, hopeful.
“I know I hurt you.” He exhales. “Tell me what I have to do to get back into your good graces and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything. What do you need from me? Name it and it’s yours.”
I swallow the hard lump in my throat. “The only thing I want is you.”
“Baby, you’ve already got me. I’m all yours.”
Twenty-One
Sophie
Present
I plaster my hair with dry shampoo, sweep it into a bun, and almost forget to zip the fly of my pants on my way out the door the next day. Sleep refused to come last night. For hours I lay awake in bed, tossing around and replaying my time with Trey like a movie in my head.
Everything about the past week has been surreal.
Never in a million years could I have imagined bumping into Trey Westcott would lead to a multi-million dollar proposal and a personal tour of his estate.
It’s so absurd, I almost laugh out loud.
I speed-walk the four blocks to the office and make it to my desk with a minute to spare. But no sooner am I signed in does my inter-office messenger ping.
TREY WESTCOTT: Rough night?
SOPHIE BRISTOL: Were you literally waiting for me to get here so you could message me?
TREY WESTCOTT: Of course not.
TREY WESTCOTT: I have the system set to alert me when you arrive.
I’m not surprised he can do that …
SOPHIE BRISTOL: That’s not creepy at all.
TREY WESTCOTT: Actually, I happened to glance out the window in the conference room and saw you sprinting in. You about bowled over that poor lady walking her dog.
SOPHIE BRISTOL: I wasn’t sprinting.
TREY WESTCOTT: Semantics. Either way, you were in a hurry.
SOPHIE BRISTOL: I don’t like being late.
I wait for him to respond, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. But a minute passes, and another, and nothing.
I don’t take it personally. He probably has a calendar of back-to-back meetings and more important things to do than play message ping pong with me all morning.