Chapter Six
Maggie
It was as good as I had felt in ages. I actually started whistling as I went to work. “The Rocky Road to Dublin.” I wondered what Dr. Benoit would have made of that.
There was a definite spring in my step, my Doc Martens, the tops hidden under the legs of my suit pants, barely touching the ground. It would have been quite fair to say that I was finally having a good day for the first time in ages, and it showed. Something I was sure I would be teased about it, but I could handle it.
I truly felt better than I had in months, and I don’t think one session with the good Dr. Benoit was the sole reason for it. Clearly, meeting Gavin had worked wonders on my mental health as well.
“What are you so happy about?” Darcy asked, as I sat at my desk across from her at the office.
Though we worked together, we had first met as roommates when I was looking for a new place. She helped me get the assistant job, mostly by telling some well-placed and believable lies about my experience. We’d been best friends since.
At least I had that going for me. I suddenly felt bad for neglecting to inform Dr. Benoit about the power of friendship that had helped me out in the past six months. But not bad enough to ruin the great mood I was in.
“I met someone,” nearly sang.
“Really? When? Last Night?”
“This morning!”
“What? Before work?”
“Yeah, that’s why I was late. I mean, not because I met him but because I had put in for some time off for an appointment, and I met him there. It was amazing. Like something out of a fairytale.”
“Sounds more like a RomCom. Where did you meet him?”
“In the waiting room.”
“Oh yeah. Because you had an appointment with a therapist this morning,” Darcy said, apparently suddenly realizing our past conversations about how scared I had been to go to a therapist for the first time.
Ironically, that part had been a piece of cake compared to seeing my ex and step sister in the lobby beforehand!
“Yeah, but that wasn’t even the most interesting part…”
I started to rush out a bunch of words all at once in an attempt to describe my crazy morning.
“Your tongue gets very loose when you’re in love, darling.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling my cheeks get warm. “I mean, come on. I just met him. I wouldn’t call it love.”
“So you met at the therapists office? Both of you were seeing a shrink? That’s the perfect opening to a modern day romance story if I’ve ever heard of one.”
“Not exactly. It was one of those all in one office buildings. He could have been there for any number of reasons. I was called in before he was.”
“Oh, I see,” Darcy said with a nod and a wink.
“You make it sound weirder than it was,” I protested.
“I’m sure. I guess you had to be there,” Darcy conceded.
“So, what’s he like? Bangable?”
“Darcy!” I said, feeling my cheeks burn.
“Oh, he is, isn’t he? And you just met him. Sounds more like a crush to me. Do you really think it is going to work?”
I typed Gavin’s name into my phone, suddenly driven to disprove her skepticism. I came to his IMDB page and pulled it up, and handed it to Darcy, who seemed to think I was making the whole thing up.
“Holy sex bomb, Batman!” Darcy yelled, her tortoise-shell glasses nearly steaming up.
Darcy came off as pretty nerdy, but she was actually sexy under it all. She had shown me some glamour shots from when she had been a model. I suspected that her current style was at least partly a deterrent to the attention that she had no doubt always been getting in the past.
“I know, right?” I beamed.
“And he actually spoke to you. In words?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“Not just ‘do you have the time?’ or ‘how do you do?’”
“Nope, he helped me get rid of my bitchy step-sister and her fiancé who used to be my boyfriend – long story – who were there to for pre-marital concealing and were giving me a really hard time. Gavin stepped up and used his stellar acting talent and gift of the gab to convince them that we were engaged too and there for the same reason.”
“Sounds like a keeper,” Darcy said, handing the phone back.
Technically I wasn’t quite sure I exactly had him yet but he was pretty insistent on getting my phone number and I was pretty sure I’d seen him glance, very subtly, at my chest, which, even thought it was a bit difficult to miss, made me think that he might want me too. We had a date, of sorts, to the engagement party and who knew what might happen after that? Sure, this whole thing was meant to be a fake engagement to get Raquel to be jealous and to save me from looking like a complete idiot around her and my ex, but that didn’t mean that we couldn’t also have a real relationship.