Chapter 10
“It’s you ?!” Emmy screeched in disbelief.
“It’s YOU ?!” Gabe echoed, always having to one-up her.
She suddenly couldn’t breathe. She might never find oxygen again. The earth was crumbling to bits beneath her. Up was down.
Inside was out. Gabe freaking Olson was Axe Murderer.
“No,” she said out loud. “No, no, no. This is not possible. It can’t be you!”
“It can’t be you !” he cried.
Birds took flight from a nearby tree at the shrill sound of their voices. The family playing with their toddler scooped him
up and moved farther down the lawn.
Emmy couldn’t even feel her feet on the ground. Reality was shredding to pieces before her eyes. She went full Sally Field
in Mrs.Doubtfire on him. “The whole time? The whole time?! THE WHOLE TIME?! ”
She wanted to sink into the earth. She wanted to drown in the lily pond. She wanted to break into the Air even if all the pieces had been right in front of them, it was not obvious . Because never in a million lifetimes would Emmy think she could get along with Gabe Olson the way she did with Axe Murderer.
She didn’t even want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about how she’d been flirting with her co-worker from mere
feet away, because she knew she’d most certainly texted Axe Murderer in Gabe’s presence more than once. The idea of it was
simply too mortifying to dwell on.
She popped up from the bench, suddenly unable to be in his presence for a moment longer. She was going to expire from humiliation.
“I have to go.”
“Emmy, wait—” he said, but she was already walking away.
She beelined along the lily pond, heading back toward El Prado so she could get to a parking lot and into a rideshare as soon as possible. She summoned a ride but at least waited until she was out of his line of sight before she lifted her phone to call Beth.
Beth answered on the first ring, having been on standby in the event of an emergency. “Oh god, you’re calling me. Why are
you calling me? Please don’t tell me this means you’ve been kidnapped.”
“Worse.”
“Worse? Like, mom’s-basement-catfish worse?”
“Like, ‘Meryl Streep just pursed her lips in The Devil Wears Prada catastrophe’ worse. I’m coming over.”
“Oh no. What do I need to uncork: white or red?”
“Tequila.”
“Shit, Em. Okay. What happened?”
“I’m still in too much shock to explain it. I have to tell you in person.”
“Okay. I’m here.”
Twenty minutes later, Emmy sat on her best friend’s couch staring at a Princess Leia Funko Pop figurine perched on a busy
bookshelf draped in houseplants. Beth sat next to her in leggings and a hoodie, jaw unhinged.
“Gabe. As in, Olson. As in, Gabe Olson,” Beth said for at least the tenth time.
“ Yes! Saying it over and over isn’t going to change that fact, Beth!”
“Sorry! I’m just... Are you sure? Like sure , sure?”
Emmy tore her eyes from the quirky little Star Wars parade on her friend’s bookshelf and leveled her with a glare. “Yes, I
am sure.”
“And it’s not a prank or something? The guys in your office aren’t, like, ganging up on you for some reason?”
“That would be incredibly mean, even for them. And no, it’s not a prank. He was as genuinely shocked as I was.” She could still see Gabe’s face from the park. The gaping confusion and utter disbelief— an image she was sure he now had burned into his memory too but starring her.
“Wow,” Beth said. “That’s... Wow. Can’t say I saw that one coming. So what happened?”
“We made the discovery, and then I basically ran away.”
“You ran away?”
“What was I supposed to do, stand there feeling naked and wallow in it? I had to get away from him. Oh god , and I’m going to have to see him at work tomorrow.” She grabbed a fluffy throw pillow and buried her face in it. She felt
her friend’s warm hand land on her back and rub.
“Well, at least you’ll be gone for the wedding for a few days after tomorrow,” Beth said.
Emmy groaned and lifted her face. “Don’t remind me! Getting a date was the whole point of this, remember?”
Beth smoothed down Emmy’s hair that had gone wiry from static. “No, the point of this was meeting the guy you’ve been crushing
on for weeks. Having a date to the wedding was going to be an added bonus.”
“Well, both of those things are now moot,” Emmy said, and frowned at her.
“Are they?” Beth’s voice was cautious and soft, and Emmy did not like her implication.
“What does that mean?”
Beth stood up from the couch and splayed her hands like Emmy might throw something at her. “Hear me out. I’m just the messenger,
so don’t shoot, but do you think maybe... this all means something?”
Emmy really didn’t like her implication. “Means something like what?”
Beth hesitated and then spoke cautiously. “Maybe it means you guys have a connection. A real one.”
“No, I have a connection with Axe Murderer, not Gabe Olson.”
“You realize they’re the same person, right?”
“No. They are not the same person. The person I see at work every day is not the same person I text all the time.”
Beth sat back down and placed a hand on her knee. “Em, are you the same person when you’re texting him?”
“I—”
Her sentence jammed in her throat. She paused because when she stopped to think about it, she realized the answer was yes.
She did keep certain things from Gabe because their relationship was primarily professional, but that didn’t mean she was
fake around him. More like guarded and mindful of boundaries. With Axe Murderer, however, all her guards were down. If Gabe
had gone one level deep, Axe Murderer had been ten levels deep, but both of them were dipping into the same well.
Beth gazed at her like she recognized the conclusion she’d come to. “All I’m saying is, it’s not nothing that you’ve been
so open with him all this time. There’s obviously something there, so maybe don’t be so quick to shoot it down.”
Despite herself, Emmy considered it. She would have been lying to deny there was something between her and Axe Murderer. Discounting
the past several weeks and pretending none of it had happened would be a disservice to her feelings. But how could she possibly
reconcile that fact with the reality of Gabe Olson being the single most infuriating man she knew?