Chapter 16
“ I say this with love babe, but you’re looking a little worse for wear today,” Veda remarks when I plunk myself down in the seat next to her at our Monday morning meeting. “You doing okay?”
Am I doing okay?
What an excellent question. Considering it was nearly three in the morning when I finally dragged myself into bed, where I then proceeded to replay my steamy-turned-sour kiss in my head over and over until I almost exploded from overthinking, and factoring in the colossal hangover I’m currently working off, no. I am not okay.
But seeing as that’s a lot to dump on a person at eight in the morning, I settle for a simple “Medium.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I sigh, grateful for the question but not having the mental capacity to get into it yet. “More than anything, but not now.”
Right now, all I want to do is focus on work. I need to, since I’ve been thinking of nothing else but Eli since last night. About the taste of his lips and the way his hands felt on my body, and the pit in my stomach when he walked away without an explanation.
Half of me is still totally clueless as to what made him change his mind, but the other half knows somewhere deep down exactly what happened. That kiss was nothing more than the result of copious amounts of alcohol, misguided flirtation, and the persuasion of three a.m. He got swept up in the moment after what had genuinely been a really great night, and I can’t blame him. Had he not stopped it, I would have made the horrible mistake of sleeping with him—for real this time—when we both know he doesn’t feel that way about me.
I guess I should be grateful he had the good sense to walk away. If I’m this crushed after one measly kiss with Eli, I can’t even imagine how messed up I’d be if we had actually slept together. I’d probably fall in love with him right on the spot, get all clingy, and eventually go into a downward spiral of tears and heartache once he’d tell me he doesn’t want to be with me. So maybe it’s for the best that nothing happens between us. It’ll make saying goodbye at the end of the week so much easier.
“Call me when you do, ‘kay?” Veda offers.
I nod, wincing at the memory of his rejection. Luckily, I was able to sneak away to work before he got up this morning, but I know I’m going to have to face him sometime. Unless I figure out a way to make myself invisible in the next two hours, I’m shit out of luck.
I’m internally agonizing over the awkward conversation we’re inevitably going to have later when Amani strides through the door and brings me back to reality. She sits down at the head of the table with her usual cup of coffee in one hand and stack of highlighted, sticky-note laden papers in the other—no doubt the drafts of this issue’s articles that she has thoroughly annotated—and the room falls into its typical hushed silence.
“Good morning team,” she announces. “Let’s jump right in, we’ve got a lot on the docket today.”
I open my laptop and prepare to take notes, forcing myself to get it together. This job should be my priority, not some guy I just met a week ago. If I want to get anywhere in my writing career, I need to start putting the opportunities that Amani has given me at Flourish at the forefront. Eli may be handsome and caring and easy to talk to, but he’s a temporary distraction. This is my real life.
“First, did we fix the glitch with the navigation on the homepage?” Amani asks Kai, our IT tech, who assures her the issue of every button rerouting to the About Us page has been taken care of.
I personally thought it was hilarious, like we were saying Sike, you don’t want that article. We’re much more interested to read about.
“Excellent. Moving right along; Gemma,” she calls out, and my hands start to sweat when everyone looks in my direction. “How’s that article coming along?”
“Good—I mean, great! I’m nearly done, just have to write the conclusion,” I reply, trying my hardest to make it sound like this article is in the bag. Even though it’s not ‘in the bag’. If anything it’s out of the bag and into the trash.
“Glad to hear it. I was starting to get worried, it’s been over a week and I’ve yet to see a draft.”
And cue the red cheeks.
Okay, pretty embarrassing to be called out like that in front of everyone. But Amani’s a no-nonsense kind of woman who doesn’t beat around the bush. That’s one of the things I admire about her.
Admittedly, I have been putting off sending my draft to her for the past few days… Not only because I don’t have a conclusion yet, but because I keep thinking the whole thing won’t be good enough. Like she might hate it and say it’s an embarrassment to Flourish’s name, and crush my dreams of ever having my own column. But I know she’s right to expect some kind of result by now; that it’s time to stop stalling and put my big girl pants on.
“I just wanted to make sure it’s up to the standard Marisol set, but I will absolutely send you what I have tonight,” I reassure her.
“Wonderful, can’t wait to see what you came up with. I’ll send you some notes after I read it.”
I nod diligently and set a reminder on my computer as Amani moves on to a new topic, even though I know I won’t need one with the amount of stress it’s causing me. I’m just closing my calendar when I look up and notice Kira looking in my direction with an unsurprisingly smug look on her face. I don’t need to read her mind to know what she’s thinking: that I can’t pull this off.
I want so badly to prove her wrong, to be able to knock this out of the park and tell her, “See? I did it all by myself and Amani loves it, so you can suck it.”
Unfortunately, I have a funny feeling that’s not going to happen.
Veda must notice the stink eye Kira is giving me because not two seconds later, a message from her pops up on my computer that reads, You got this !
I send her back a heart emoji in appreciation, even though I’m not totally convinced she’s right.