Valentine isn’t the only one “concerned.” So are my friends. And later that night, they insist on Girl Time.
Wynn was adamant we discuss this “job issue.” I assume Gina’s told her about the job offer on the table from Malcolm since nobody else knows about my other writing problem. Not even my friends. I just really dislike being the one knocked-out on the floor after life struck her out. I’m trying to get back to normal even though I don’t know what normal is anymore.
But at least one of the fixtures in my life is drinks with Wynn and Gina during the week. We sit at a high table near the windows. It’s comfortable.
Still, I’ve been refreshing my email like mad.
“I don’t know why you thought he’d want to talk to you about what happened so soon, it’s only been four weeks and what happened was kind of . . . well, it could take years,” Wynn says.
“Wow, Wynn,” I groan.
“Well, I’m being honest, Rachel!”
I toss back the rest of my cocktail. My mind flashes to his hand, reaching for my leg under the table . . .
Twinkling green eyes, teasing me until I can’t bear it . . .
I love my friends; we’ve been together forever. They call my mom “Mom” and know everything about me, but now as Wynn asks me to relate the “job issue” and Gina tells her all about it, I keep draining my cocktail in silence, sadder than I’m letting on. My friends know everything about me, but at the same time, they don’t know it all.
They don’t know that as I sit here I remember all the ways he used to tease me about how I play it safe. He used to tease me to come out of my box, that he’d catch me. But would he catch me now?
“It doesn’t matter why he took four weeks,” I cut in when Wynn and Gina keep arguing over why he took so long to contact me. “I just want him to talk to me. I want to know if I hurt him so I can make it better. I want a chance to explain, apologize.”
“You doubt you hurt him?” Wynn asks, aghast. “Emmett told me there’s no way he’d give you the time of day right now if you weren’t under his skin.”
“Interesting,” Gina says. Then, looking at me, “You’re not the only one haunted by Saint, do you think that you’re haunting him too?”
“I don’t want us to be ghosts for each other. I want us to go back to the way we were when he . . . trusted me.”
Wynn whistles admiringly. “You can get that man in bed, maybe he’ll reluctantly love you, but you won’t get his trust if his life depended on it now.”
I wince at the thought of that. “True, trust is important to him; if I can’t prove to him I’m trustworthy I’m doomed to be one of his four-night girls.”
“Did you get the impression he’d give you another chance?” Wynn asks.
I stay quiet.
“Rachel?”
“No, Wynn. He doesn’t want me anymore. But I need to apologize. I just . . .” I shake my head. “I just don’t know what to do.” I look at Wynn when my refill comes, frowning as I realize something. “So you and Emmett have been talking about it?”
“Um. Well, yes,” she says uncomfortably. “Everybody’s touched on it, you know? It was public.”
I press on, “Did Emmett have any advice for me?”
Wynn shrugs. “He doesn’t think a man like Saint would give you another chance. But then, he did offer you a job, so . . .”
“What does Emmett the chef know about a guy who literally owns Chicago?” Gina tells Wynn, rolling her eyes. “Plus Emmett’s a guy. He’s telling you this so that you, Wynn, don’t turn out to be a reporter and reveal that he wears pink undies and shit.”
“Gina.” Wynn scowls.
Gina grins, then turns to me. “Tahoe says—”
“Tahoe?” Wynn and I say in unified shock.
“Tahoe ROTH?” Wynn asks. “The oil tycoon and Saint’s bestie?”
“He’s not Saint’s only bestie, Callan Carmichael is too,” Gina specifies, then she cuts me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Rache. I’m not supposed to talk to you about this. But he’s concerned and so am I. And . . . well, from what Tahoe told me, Saint’s pretty messed up. Colder than usual. Really withdrawn.”
I sit here listening, aching.
“He loves Saint as much as I love you,” Gina says, and when Wynn opens her mouth to ask about the obvious elephant in the room—her plus Tahoe—Gina holds up a hand to stop her. “I don’t care for Tahoe, but he hasn’t enjoyed your breakup any more than I enjoy watching you mope. He called me to ask what was up, ’cause of course Saint’s not talking and he says he hasn’t seen Saint like this since his mother died.”
Knowing what I know—that his mother was the only one who probably genuinely cared for Malcolm while he was growing up, how he felt he’d failed her, how he’d failed himself in failing her, how he’s been trying to fill up an empty hole ever since—Gina’s words wreck me.
Wynn chides, “Stop talking to Tahoe, he’s just using this as an excuse to have sex with you.”
“I know, right?” Gina laughs.
“So? Are you going to let him?” Wynn asks, curious.
“No! He’s gross. I mean, he’s hot, but his attitude is gross.”
I stare at my cocktail and wonder if I’m already getting drunk to the point where I’m getting emotional too easily.
I’ve cried so much I don’t even have to try. The kind of crying where the tears just spill. With no warning. With no effort. They just come. I cry at the thought of never being with him again. And I cry because I know I hurt this beautiful, ambitious, intelligent, generous, caring man. I used to rest my cheek where I could hear his heart. Now it’s locked behind iron doors and ten-foot walls that I put there.
“Rachel, men like Saint never commit. Not for the long term. But . . . he reached out to you. Offered you a job. If you reach back, maybe . . .” Gina trails off and sighs. “Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know how to help you, Rache.”
“Saint is very physical. You know what would do you and Saint a world of good? Tyrannosaurus sex: mean, violent, delicious, painful, and cathartic.” Wynn adds, “That will lead you then to spooning. Emmett and I are still so new though, we can’t even spoon. It’s more like sporking.”
“What the hell is that?” Gina asks us, frowning.
“When they’re hard when they spoon you!” Wynn rolls her eyes. Then she looks at me and giggles. “Did he do that to you too?” she asks me.
“He used to . . . um, pull my ear.” I tug one of my ears absently, helpless not to be drawn into my memories.
“Now that’s because you have really small, cute ears. Emmett likes kissing my nose.” Wynn crinkles hers for emphasis.
My heart has turned into an empty eggshell. It feels ready to crack as my fingers fly up to brush one corner of my mouth. “Saint used to give me these torturously slow ghost kisses . . .”
“Oh, you two!” Gina says in dismay. “You’re making me want to barf.”
Wynn laughs, but I fall quiet as the hurt and the regret and the heartache come back with a vengeance.
“Say, have you heard from Victoria?” Gina asks. “She lost her job after Saint canned her reveal article and all she does is tweet now and complain. She’s just some Tweleb now, but I bet she buys likes for her tweets, ’cause who’s even reading her?”
Then, alarmed by what she said, she adds, “BUT DON’T GO ON SOCIAL MEDIA. Nothing good can come out of that.”
I purse my lips and don’t tell them that I’ve already had a social-media fest recently and now I can’t stop.
“I don’t understand why he didn’t can my article too. Why just hers?”
“Obviously he didn’t care what they said about him.” Wynn shrugs. “Maybe that’s why he only canned Victoria’s, because she talked about you.”
I play email roulette again several times, refreshing and refreshing, checking to be sure I have all the signal bars lit up.
“Rache, we worry, you and those sad panda eyes,” Wynn says.
“I’m not a sad panda, come on.”
“The only times you don’t have the panda eyes is when you get the googly eyes from thinking of him.”
“That, or the screen-saver face when she thinks of him,” Wynn counters.
“Ha ha,” I say, rolling my eyes and pushing my cocktail away. “It’s just that I love him. I love him so much. It breaks me to think I hurt him. I’m so confused, I just don’t know what to do.”
They fall quiet, and I find myself back at M4.
Trapped again by forest-green eyes, cold as winter.
