6. I Thought We Were Friends
6
I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS
BASIL
I barely heard my assistant’s greeting or registered the morning buzz of the office as I headed toward my desk.
My usual routine—checking emails, reviewing reports, and grabbing coffee—felt…off because, for the first time in two years, Summer was absent from my life.
I exhaled sharply, dropping into my chair. Maybe I should call her. Maybe?—
“Hey, CEO, how are you doing?” Drew leaned against my office door, a coffee in one hand, a smirk on her lips.
“Hanging in there.”
“So, are we making the announcement today?”
Right, her promotion.
“Just got in, Drew, I need to talk to Jessie, and she’ll put a comms plan together.”
Jessie was our head of communications and my right-hand person for both internal and external PR and comms.
Drew walked in and closed the door behind her. She came to my side of the desk and leaned against it next to my chair.
“You okay?”
She stood very close to me, her legs brushing against mine. Did she always touch me like this? This was a workplace, and sure, we were friends, but there were lines, weren’t there?
“Like I said, hanging in there.” I shifted a little away from her.
She moved closer, put a hand on my shoulder and kneaded. “How can I help?”
You can stop touching me, woman!
I rolled my chair and rose, needing the physical distance. Now that I had it in my head, I was starting to see that this touchy-feely behavior was not entirely acceptable. It was fine when we were in college, but we were professionals now, and I was the CEO of this company.
Suddenly, I felt compelled to know something. “I have a question for you.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“You’ve never kissed me on the lips before, why did you do it that night?” I’d been thinking all Sunday about this. Sure, I didn’t see a problem with it when it happened, we both were excited about the news of her promotion but as the hours passed with no news from Summer, I began to finally pull my head out of my ass and think —see things from her point of view, which I also realized I’d been failing to do when we were together.
She frowned. “Basil, we’ve always hugged and kissed.”
Had we?
She sighed. “Look, I get it you’re upset about Summer. But come on, you can’t be surprised that the relationship ended, can you?”
“What does that mean?”
I was thinking of marrying Summer, eventually . I knew she was it for me—but somewhere, somehow I started to get irritated with her, hoping she’d fall in line and then we could think about forever. But what was the line I wanted her to fall in? Accepting my friends? She did that. She never told me she wouldn’t meet them or that I shouldn’t hang out with them. She smiled and cooked dinner when they came over. The only times she had problems were when Drew got proprietary about me.
Other times, her problem wasn’t so much with my friends saying something as it was with me not saying anything to stop them. But they were just teasing, weren’t they?
“You dress like you’re from that old TV show…what was it?” Gareth asked.
“Little House on The Prairie,” Karen joked.
I had laughed along with the others. Later, Summer had said that hurt her feelings.
“Why? So, you dress differently than they do. What’s the big deal?”
“It’s not about how I dress, Basil. It’s about how they say what they do. But that’s not even the point because I don’t give two fucks what they think. It’s that you join them. Instead of saying, ‘ Hey, my girlfriend looks great ,’ you laugh with them at me.”
“Laugh with you, Sunshine, never at you.”
Fuck me! Had I really said something that stupid? They were laughing at her. I was laughing at her.
“Summer was with you because you have all this.” Drew waved a hand around my office. “I get it. You’re handsome, you’re rich, you’re going places—and she comes from nothing . She doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree, Basil, and you have Mensa-level IQ.”
If I’m so bright, how the fuck did I manage to get dumped by the woman I loved?
“I’ve got no problem with her level of education,” I snapped.
A flicker of impatience crossed her face. “Oh, come on, you do. Just two weeks ago, when Ajay said how he had a rule that he wouldn’t hire anyone in his company with less than a bachelor’s degree, you said, you agreed, and that someone who couldn’t even get that far was obviously without any ambition.”
My heart sank. I said that in front of Summer ? I hadn’t thought about her at all. I was just…saying shit.
A muscle twitched in my jaw. “I love Summer.”
She let out a short, humorless laugh. “Basil, you complain about her all the time. You talk about how she doesn’t get your job or you . How she doesn’t understand the pressures you face because she has a little hobby shop and?—”
“It’s not a hobby anything,” I cut her off, shame and anger warring inside me. I was ashamed that I’d been bitching about my girlfriend to my friends and angry that Drew was putting Summer down… again . “She makes a living?—”
“Please.” Drew straightened, shaking her head. “It’s obvious she has no money. Look at how she dresses?”
Where the fuck was all this coming from?
“I don’t care how she dresses,” I roared. “I care that she’s kind and generous. I care that she shows up for me. I care that she lives life to the fullest and that she makes me happy.”
Drew snorted. “Neither of you ever seemed happy when we were around.”
That was true, but I think it had more to do with the company I kept than with my relationship with Summer.
“Drew”—I looked her in the eye to get her attention—"I don’t have to justify my feelings for Summer to you.”
A flicker of impatience crossed Drew’s face. “You’re just feeling bad because you dumped her. The guilt will pass once you realize how much better off you are without her.”
“She dumped me,” I corrected Drew.
“Fine.” Her features softened with tenderness. “So, what you have is probably a bruised ego. Let it go, Basil, stop torturing yourself. Some relationships…they just don’t work out, it’s no one’s fault, it just is what it is.”
I looked at her, and for the first time in eight years, I saw something I’d never seen before: malevolence . Had it always been there?
“Summer and I are going to work it out,” I stated with feigning confidence. “We just fought. We’ll make up. We always do.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Why do you want her?”
“Like I just said earlier, I don’t have to explain my motivation to you.” Now she was pissing me off.
She moved quickly and wrapped herself around me. I was too shocked to move. “Stop this, Basil. Stop it. She’s gone. Let her go. It’s time to move on. It’s time to give us a chance.”
I looked down at the blonde hair resting against my dress shirt, my arms hanging to the sides, and I felt the punch in the gut, hard .
Did she just say it was time to give her and me a chance? Fucking hell! Was Summer right about everything?
Yes, you moron, she was!
“You saw her coming in,” I whispered. “That’s why you kissed me.”
Epiphanies were strange things that hit you way after the damage was done.
Drew raised her head, her eyes wide. “What?”
“You wanted her to see that kiss. You knew I’d downplay it because we’re friends. You knew…she’d see it for what it was.”
“What it was, was you letting me kiss you.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “ You always choose me when I’m there. If I said, ‘ Hey, let’s go kayaking ,’ you ditched your plans with her and came with me. If I said, ‘ Hey, we have to work late ,’ you canceled a date with her.”
I caught her hands from behind my waist and set her away from me. I took two steps back so we weren’t touching. My heart banged in my chest like a drum.
“She doesn’t fit,” Drew cried out. “You saw her at the Christmas party? She was a bitch to everyone. No one likes her. Ask anyone in the company and they’ll tell you that you and I are meant to be together.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why would I ask anyone at Stratos who I should be with? My personal life is mine. Drew, we’re friends. Though, right now, I’m wondering even if that is true since I can’t believe you’re saying the things you are.”
“I‘m saying”—tears filled her eyes—“I love you.”
I blinked, sure I’d misheard her. “The fuck?”
She tilted her head, like the answer was obvious. “Don’t tell me you don’t know. All these years we’ve never had a chance to be together. Either I was dating or you were, or we were busy with work…but now, it’s our chance. She’s gone. I’m here .”
I stared at her. This was The Twilight Zone, wasn’t it? This couldn’t be my fucking life. My girlfriend dumped my ass, and my best friend was in love with me.
“Come on, Basil. You know we make sense. We work together, we understand each other’s world, we’re both successful?—”
“ No ,” I snapped.
“Basil?”
“We are… were friends.” Because we obviously weren’t anymore, not if she’d just helped me lose Summer.
Buddy, she’s not a saint, but it was you who fucked up, so don’t try and shift the blame, okay?
She stepped toward me, and I raised a hand. “No more touching me. No more hugging me. No more kissing me…at all. We’re colleagues! Show some professionalism.”
She didn’t seem to be paying attention to what I was saying. Tears were streaming down her face, messing up her mascara. Her blue eyes were full of hurt. I didn’t give a shit because she’d just betrayed me in the worst way possible.
“Summer was never going to fit into your life long-term. You two were playing girlfriend-boyfriend, but now you can finally be with someone who actually belongs in your world.”
A chill settled in my stomach. I had thought Drew had my back. But now, I knew what Summer had seen all along—Drew didn’t get along with her because she had feelings for me.
“Drew, I’m going to say this now, and it’s the only time. If you step out of bounds again, personally, with me, I will fire you.”
That stopped her in her tracks.
Career first, right?
“We were friends. Now we’re only colleagues. Considering your behavior and how you deliberately went about hurting my relationship with Summer?—”
“You don’t get to hold me responsible for that.” She wiped her tears. The pain in her eyes now morphed into rage. “ You treated your girlfriend like dirt. You didn’t defend her when Gareth made comments about her golden pussy, or when Karen told her she dressed like a hobo, or when Ajay called her a gold digger…so don’t you make this my fault. You want us to be colleagues. Fine !”
She turned around and stormed out of my office, leaving wreckage behind that I didn’t know I could ever piece back together.