Chapter 11 #2
Could he honestly doubt how I felt about him?
Well, yeah, maybe. Because he didn’t know what he’d meant to me for the past five years. He only thought we had shared the past two weeks.
But maybe even that alone should have let him know I would be anything he wanted me to be.
I had molded myself into a Bribury Basic, I could easily become what would appeal to Billy Montrose.
Jane’s pendant seemed to burn against my skin just then, and I pulled it out from beneath the comfy sweater, feeling the warmth from my skin as I held it, tracing my fingers along the outside curves.
Strength. I had it, I should show it, Jane had said about the necklace.
I pushed the thought away as Montrose said, “Do you think we should talk about what’s going to happen when the semester starts?”
“What do you mean?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and I dropped the pendant out of my hands, then held on tighter to the sides of my laptop. Was he already backpedaling?
“What, specifically, do you mean?”
“Well, I mean, you’re not my student anymore, but you are still a student.”
“Yes…”
He rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin. “And you are my employee.”
“A short-term, project-specific employee. I mean, I’m not going to be in a position to cry sexual harassment because you didn’t promote me when I deserved it.”
“Not that I wouldn’t. Give you the promotion, I mean.”
I smiled, and he returned it, his teeth almost as bright and evident as his white shirt. “I know you would,” I said.
His smile stayed as he said, “So…apart from you being a student and my employee…absolutely no roadblocks for us to…”
“To…?”
“Well, I guess that’s the question, isn’t it?”
I tried to channel my future, super-confident, twenty-eight-year-old self. “Do you really think it’s a question anymore?”
The smile left his face as I just looked at him, then silently quirked one brow up in…question? Challenge?
Slowly…oh, so slowly…he shook his head just the tiniest amount. But it was enough for me to silently thank my future self for being so bold.
“No,” he said almost too quietly for me to hear. In fact, maybe I’d just read his lips and hadn’t even heard him at all.
It didn’t matter. I had the answer I wanted.
I nodded once but didn’t say anything. I would have given anything to be with him in person at that moment, sitting on his terrace, hearing revelers from the streets below and out in the city.
To be able to reach across the table and touch him.
To get up and walk over to him, where he’d make room for me on his lap.
And I’d wrap my arms around him, feeling the thin, cool cotton fabric of his shirt, and the hard, warm man beneath.
Wait. The cotton of his shirt? “You must be freezing out there,” I said, realizing he’d been outside for the last ten minutes or more with no coat, hat or gloves. I shivered in my warm cozy bed just thinking about it.
“Actually,” he said, grinning, “I am totally freezing my nuts off out here.”
“Why didn’t you go back inside? After midnight?”
He shrugged and I noticed the redness of his cheeks and nose. “I was going to right after the countdown, but it seemed like, I don’t know, the darkness and stillness out here gave us a deeper level of…intimacy.”
“Wow, spoken like a writer. Yeah, you better finish that book this year, so you’re not spouting lines like that in everyday conversation.”
He laughed, then turned his head. “You’re right. I hear my parents coming in. I should probably go see how their night was.”
“They braved the madness?”
“Not really. Our neighbors a couple of floors down had a small party. They didn’t even have to leave the building.”
He started to rise and I felt a moment of panic, the same feeling I got every time one of our conversations was winding up.
“Umm…okay, well, I’ll be in the office tomorrow if—”
He was shaking his head as he rose from the table and picked up his laptop. “We leave tomorrow for Gstaad to ski for a week. My parents, sister, her boyfriend and me.”
I didn’t bother starting in on my New York not remotely being a launching pad for a European vacation. But I thought it.
“Have fun,” I said, keeping all traces of jealousy out of my voice, though I wasn’t really sure who, or what, I was jealous of. I didn’t even ski. (Just the thought of someone from my neighborhood on skis made me inwardly cringe.)
“Thanks, I will. But I probably won’t be calling you while I’m gone. Time zone, and I didn’t get the roam thing for my phone. There’s always internet in the resort, for email, but…”
I didn’t want him to think he had to be accountable to me. Waving a hand, I said, “Don’t worry about it. I have plenty to keep me busy for the next week and a half. Any questions can wait until you get back.”
He nodded while closing the terrace door behind him and stepped back into his bedroom, which was about the size of my family’s entire apartment. “Yeah, I know you can handle it,” he said.
“Okay. Well, then…”
“Hey, Syd?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think it’s going to be weird, be awkward, when we see each other for the first time?”
“You mean like a blind date or something?”
He chuckled, setting his laptop down on the desk, but continuing to stand. He tilted it so I could see his face, but being eye level with his body was very nice indeed.
“I guess. I mean, we’ve grown…really close over the past two weeks, and yet…”
“And yet…”
We watched each other, neither one wanting to define the other’s feelings—or their own—by finishing the sentence. He rubbed his chin again. “I just don’t want it to be awkward, you know?”
“It won’t,” I said. I hoped.
We wished each other “Happy New Year” again, and then hung up.
I placed my laptop on the floor by my bed and wrapped myself tighter in my comforter. With my computer light off, the candlelight took over and I lay there and thought about the upcoming year, and how much I couldn’t wait for the next week and a half to fly by.
This was going to be the best year of my life, I just knew it.