“Ouch,” I said under my breath. “How quickly we go from ‘I fucking love you,’ to ‘I forgot about you.’”
His face scrunched up as he realized how what he’d said had sounded. “No. No, I’m sorry, that didn’t...” He took a deep breath through his nose, as though mentally wiping the slate clean. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m not feeling right.”
“Another headache?” I realized I was leaning forward slightly, examining him, as though I could diagnose his illness.
“I have to remember to schedule an appointment to see someone.” He reached across the table and took my hand in his. His thumb brushed across my knuckles, and I drew a shaky breath.
I was making the right choice, turning down Gabriella’s offer, wasn’t I? A part of me was disappointed that when the chips were down, when I had to make a really important decision about us, charming, panty-melting Neil hadn’t shown up to dinner to make the choice easier. In his place, weird, stand-offish Neil-with-a-headache had turned up. Another part of me was glad it was playing out this way. Because the shine of a new relationship wasn’t going to last forever, and I needed to be able to make my choice about this job— and Gabriella’s ridiculous requirement— with that in mind. Would I turn down the offer if I knew Neil and I wouldn’t be together in three months? Right now, where I was sitting, after waiting twenty minutes for a no-call, no-show boyfriend... the answer was still yes. I loved him, insane as it probably was to love someone I’d only been in a relationship with for a two months. But something about us just worked. I couldn’t imagine not being with him in three months. I couldn’t imagine not being with him in three years. It just seemed right that we were together, and I suspected he felt the same way.
“Don’t worry about it. You had a stressful day.” I shrugged. “It’s not like we’re going to always be perfect.”
He squeezed my hand before releasing it to pick up his menu. “I had a stressful day? I wasn’t the one interviewing for a job. How did it go?”
“It went... not great.” I wasn’t sure how much I should tell him about the reason it hadn’t gone great. Though Neil had agreed to let me make my own mistakes and not meddle, it would be a lot easier for him to say he was going to stop meddling than to actually do it. “She offered me a job, but I’m not going to take it.”
He set the menu aside, brow furrowed in concern. “Why not?”
“I wouldn’t want to work with them again. It was uncomfortable for me, sitting there with them, being aware of how important they found themselves. They’re the center of their own little world, still, and I was expected to fawn over them and try to earn their approval. I guess when I worked for Gabriella before, I got so used to that expectation that I didn’t see anything weird about it.” I could have stopped there, but being honest from the very start was better than trying to hide anything from him. “And they are convinced I’m sleeping with you.”
“You are sleeping with me,” he observed.
I snorted. “But they have no reason to believe that. They had all this supposed evidence, like the fact that I took a sick day... it was just stupid, inconsequential stuff. But their little spies had come to this conclusion for them, so Gabriella offered me this job on the condition that I break things off with you. Even after I lied and said we weren’t dating.”
The look I had been dreading crossed Neil’s face, a darkening expression like a thunderhead of over-thinking rolling right in to spoil our dinner. “What job did she offer you, exactly?”
I took a sip of water from the stemmed glass in front of me. “Assistant creative director of her new magazine.”
“Good lord.” He shook his head. “Well, I suppose this calls for a congratulations?”
“I’m not taking it,” I stated firmly. “She’s trying to control what I do in my private life. And Jake is just as bad. I thought we were friends, but I guess I didn’t notice how obnoxious he was until I started working around normal people.”
“I don’t think there are any normal people at Porteras,” Neil opined. “Myself, included. I cannot wait until Valerie is able to take it off my hands.”
I wasn’t sure what would happen when he quit working at Porteras. I didn’t suppose he’d starve or anything, but what would he do? Would he go back to England? I didn’t want to think about that now, even though I knew I should before I finalized my decision. But I trusted him to tell me if he didn’t plan to stay in the country, especially now that he knew I was turning down a job for him. “How did the meeting go?”