CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Absolutely nothing was clear right now. In fact, him “clarifying” was only making me more confused. “What about Colette?”
A look of pain crossed his face, but it quickly disappeared. “She and I are done.”
There was obviously a lot more to that story, but there wasn’t time to ask about it now. Adrian was waiting for an answer.
An answer to him asking me on an official date. Something he’d planned to do before he’d ever stepped foot in the office today, given that he’d already told HR.
Unlike Max, who was kissing me while still having dinner with his ex-girlfriend—and who knew what he was getting up to in Los Angeles, how many dates he’d gone on. He hadn’t even bothered to reach out to me while he was gone. He wasn’t being clear about his intentions with me at all.
And I preferred this.
It was everything I’d hoped for since I’d started working here, but there was no joy here, no excitement.
Just an aching hollowness.
Maybe that would change if I accepted.
“Yes,” I said cautiously. “I’d like to have dinner with you.”
“Great! How about eight o’clock at my apartment?”
“Sure.” I nodded. I waited for a beat, but that hollowness didn’t go away. If anything, it got worse.
“Thanks, doll. Can you close the door on your way out?”
I got up, my body feeling unbearably light. Like I was no longer tethered to reality.
I couldn’t believe Adrian had finally asked me on a date.
Or that I’d agreed to go.
He buzzed me when I sat down at my desk. I pushed the intercom button. “Yes?”
“I’m going to send over a list of things I need you to get done today.”
“Okay.”
He hung up his phone and I still had that unreal feeling. An email from Adrian came into my inbox, and I glanced at the very long list. There were a lot of things he had to catch up on. The first item was to order a large bouquet of flowers and have them delivered to the office. He was probably going to give them to Claudia to apologize for taking off for so long. It wouldn’t be the first apology bouquet I’d ordered for him.
I went online to my favorite local florist’s website and placed the order. The whole time all I could think about was what I had just done and whether or not it had been a mistake. My cell phone rang and my heart leapt with excitement when I saw who it was.
Max was calling me.
I ran into the conference room and closed the door. I wanted privacy.
“Hello?” I said, my heartbeat thundering in my chest. I’d missed him so much.
“Everly? How are you?”
My hands were shaking so bad that I dropped my phone. I swore and grabbed it off the floor and put it on the table. I put it on speakerphone and said, “I’m sorry, I dropped the phone.”
“No problem. I was calling to see how things were going. Was your boss happy about the event?”
My boss? Did he mean Adrian? Did he know what had just happened? That was ridiculous. There was no way Max could possibly be aware that Adrian had asked me out on an official date. But it was where my worried mind went. It shouldn’t have, though. Max and I were supposed to be just friends.
Right?
But why was he calling me now? Why hadn’t he called me at all over the last two days? This just seemed so random.
Or like he somehow knew what I’d just agreed to.
“I haven’t seen Claudia yet.” I hesitated, not knowing what else to say. Should I tell him? It felt cowardly not to. He’d had no problem telling me about his date with his evil, stupid ex-girlfriend.
But if things really had changed between us ...
The conference door suddenly swung open and Adrian leaned in. “Everly? What kind of food do you want for our date tonight?”
My mouth dropped open, my pulse hammering so hard in my wrist that I could actually see it, and I glanced down at the phone, fervently wishing that it might have somehow turned itself off.
It didn’t.
Max was still there and presumably had heard every word.
Adrian waited for an answer, and I pressed the mute button on my phone and told him, “I don’t care. Whatever you want is fine.”
He nodded and then closed the door. My heart was in my throat as I unmuted the call. “Max?”
“I’m here.” His voice sounded completely different. There was a detachment, almost a coldness, in his voice.
I wanted to ask him if he’d heard Adrian, but then he said, “So you finally got that date with your boss? Congratulations. It’s everything you wanted, right?”
My mind was floundering. How did I fix this? Max hadn’t reached out to me until this morning. Maybe if I’d turned my phone on and seen a bunch of missed messages from him, I wouldn’t have said yes to Adrian.
It wasn’t fair to blame him. I had done this. And I didn’t know how to undo it.
Tell him . I could actually hear Vella’s voice in my mind, encouraging me to say something. But the fear was stronger and paralyzed me into not speaking.
I had to say something, had to explain. I had been so scared that Max would reject me and had wanted so desperately to protect myself that I’d allowed myself to get hurt even worse by not being honest about what I did and did not want.
“Yes, but it’s not what you—”
He cut me off.
“I’m about to walk into a meeting, so if there’s nothing else?”
“I just ...” I let my voice trail off. What was I doing? “I’ll let you go to your meeting,” I said as my shoulders slumped, feeling defeated.
“Talk soon,” he said, and hung up.
That didn’t feel very relationship-y, either.
A skyscraper had settled in the pit of my stomach, making it difficult for me to breathe properly.
Why couldn’t I just say what I wanted? Why was I always like this?
Right as I opened the conference room door, Rodrigo, one of the event designers, entered the room. “Hi, Everly. Did Claudia add you to the committee for the diplomat’s anniversary party?”
“No, she didn’t. I’m going to be there on Saturday night to help out, though.”
He nodded and I added, “I was just making a phone call.” I held my cell up like some kind of explanation.
From his expression I could see that I was doing it again. Explaining things that didn’t need to be mentioned. I left the conference room and went back to my desk, intent on tackling the list that Adrian had created for me.
That phone call had gone so badly. I still didn’t understand how Max could kiss me that way and then ignore me completely.
Maybe this was part of what I needed to figure out. That there might be nothing here and I needed to move on from Max.
Adrian laughed at something. That sound used to make me smile, but it wasn’t having any effect on my current mood. It did cause me to pull up the company handbook to see the rules on dating coworkers.
Apparently he’d been right and we could go out, so long as we told Human Resources, which he had already done.
Before I’d even accepted.
What if I’d said no? He was my boss. Wouldn’t it have made things really awkward for both of us if I’d turned him down?
I glanced at his office as I realized that he had fully expected me to say yes. It hadn’t even occurred to him that I might reject him.
That bothered me.
I knew that he could be entitled and self-centered, but I couldn’t help but compare him to Max. There wasn’t anything about Max that was entitled or self-centered.
I was trying to work and sort out my feelings all at the same time when Vella buzzed me. “There are flowers for Adrian at the front desk.”
“I’ll come grab them.” I hung up with her and called Adrian. “Your flowers have arrived. Do you want me to take them to Claudia?”
“No. They’re for you.”
“Me?” I turned my head sharply to look at him. He was leaning back in his chair, grinning at me.
“Yes, you. You didn’t think I’d take you out without getting you flowers first, did you?”
He’d had me order flowers for myself? Again, I couldn’t help but compare him to Max. Max never would have done that. The hollowness only intensified.
If Max had sent me flowers, it would have meant the world to me. Heck, I would have settled for a single text.
My world felt upside down.
“Thank you,” I said, but I didn’t mean the words. I didn’t want flowers from Adrian.
“You’re very welcome.”
I hung up the phone and headed toward reception. When I reached Vella’s desk, she asked, “Who got Adrian flowers?”
“They’re for me,” I said, trying to fake an enthusiasm I didn’t feel.
She raised a single eyebrow at me. “Adrian, the human participation trophy, went through the effort of getting you flowers?”
“Technically he had me order them but didn’t tell me that they were for me,” I said. “How nice was that?”
“Zero percent.”
“It’s the thought that counts.” I didn’t believe it but I couldn’t handle Vella making me feel worse about things.
“Yeah, I’m sure it takes a lot of thought to make a gesture this small, this late. He should have been buying you flowers every day for the last four years to thank you for being such an amazing assistant and for sacrificing so much for him. Why did he finally pony up?”
Just a few weeks ago, I would have been bursting at the seams to share my incredible news. I discovered that I did not want to tell her.
“Adrian asked me out on a date tonight and I accepted.” I pushed my shoulders back, waiting for her response.
She just blinked at me a few times and then said, “I’m sorry, did you just say you were going on a date with a man who has the emotional capacity of a doorknob?”
“That’s not—”
“What are you planning on doing with him on this date ?” she demanded, cutting me off.
“We’re going to have dinner at his apartment.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Vella look shocked. “You are going to his house, which is filled with sharks and snakes, and he’s your employer with a shady past? That’s not a date. That’s a nineteenth-century Gothic novel. Don’t do it.”
“You told me to figure out what I wanted and that’s what I’m doing,” I said defensively. I knew she was upset because she cared about me, but the depth of her reaction surprised me. “I had a crush on Adrian for a long time. Maybe if I spend some time with him, I can figure out my feelings faster.”
“That seems like a stupid way to work things out. Like jumping into the ocean to see whether or not you can swim,” she said, shaking her head. “Is this because Max went out with his ex? Are you trying to even the score?”
“No.” It wasn’t, was it? I wasn’t a vengeful or petty person. That didn’t seem like something I would do, but what if it had been like, a subconscious thing? “Adrian is being up front about what he wants. Max isn’t.”
“And neither are you!” she practically shrieked. “When have you told Max anything about how you feel?”
She was right. I couldn’t say as much, but I knew she was right. It wasn’t fair that I expected him to share how he felt when I was too scared to do the same thing.
“Isn’t Adrian engaged?” she demanded. “Weren’t you supposed to be getting him a ring?”
I had honestly forgotten about that, and other than a couple of random texts from Adrian that had nothing to do with rings at all, he’d never brought it up again. I tried not to drop the ball on things like this, but I’d been so completely caught up in Max that I had totally blocked it out.
“Things are over with Colette,” I said.
“So you elected yourself president of Reboundlandia?” A UPS driver arrived with a package, and she stopped her rant long enough to sign for it. But as soon as he was gone, she picked it right back up again. “What I don’t get is why you’re going on a date with Adrian when you’re so pathetically in love with Max.”
My heart started banging hard in my chest, preventing my lungs from drawing in breath.
In love with Max?
What?