Chapter 5
FIVE
LIFESTYLE COORDINATOR
Addison
I slammed my car door shut and cringed as it creaked and made another sound that I couldn’t begin to describe. Fumbling with my bag, water bottle, and phone, I finally balanced everything and strode into work.
“Addie? Addie!” My best friend’s voice chirped from my phone as I put it against my ear.
“Yes, Bri. I’m still here.”
“Oh, okay, good. I heard a horrible metallic-like clanging sound and got worried.”
“That was just my car door,” I sighed as I passed through the lobby and into my office.
She choked out a laugh, and I knew exactly what she was about to say. “You’ve gotta buy something new, Addie.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I muttered as I dropped my belongings on my desk, hoping for a quiet, calm day. “Anyway, we were talking about you. What are you going to do?”
She sighed, groaned, and then I heard a squeak, which I assumed was her bed as she plopped down onto it.
I knew Bri better than anyone. We’d been best friends since elementary school when she moved in next door, but she’d relocated across the country for her dream job in the tech industry a few months ago.
Don’t ask me exactly what she was doing—I barely remembered her job title most of the time.
When she’d left, there was a Bri-sized hole in my heart that no amount of phone or video calls would ever begin to fill.
But I’d take what I could get.
“I don’t know,” she groaned. “That’s why I called you.”
I tossed my lunch into the mini-fridge in the office I shared with our property manager and flipped on the lamps I’d strategically placed around the room. Whoever invented the fluorescent light and installed it in all offices throughout the country was diabolical.
“Do you want advice or for me to just commiserate with you?”
She was silent for a beat as I dropped into my desk chair and smoothed out the skirt of my pink dress. A color that perfectly matched my freshly dyed, cotton candy hair.
“Advice, I guess.”
My smile was slow. I put her on speakerphone and logged into my computer to get started on my morning tasks—posting the lunch and dinner menus for the day on our resident portal and printing them out to post in the main lobby.
As a lifestyle coordinator, which was a fancy title for event planner, at a luxury senior living facility, my job duties were vast, but I loved it.
I loved the residents, and I loved that the job kept me on my toes.
But that was never really a problem for me.
Not only did I work at Lake Hills Luxury Senior Living, I was also an assistant coordinator at Grant Events.
Caroline Grant was the best boss, and I pretty much made my own hours, making it possible to do both.
Not easy by any means, but manageable. Most of the time.
Bri cleared her throat as I read the menu from the chef and got lost in my thoughts. “Addie? Hello?”
“Sorry, sorry,” I muttered, hitting print and copy and pasting the menu onto our site. “My advice is…well, relationships with coworkers are exceptionally complicated. Does your company have a fraternization policy?”
“Only for managers and subordinates. We’re both developers, so no, no issues there. Trust me, I checked the first time we talked.”
I pressed my lips into a line and shook my head. Leave it to my best friend to fall in love with her gorgeous coworker. Bri always seemed to get herself into messy situations.
“You’ve got it bad, Bri. Is it even possible that you can let it go? That you could maybe keep your relationship with her strictly professional?”
“Probably not,” she said honestly. “This is a pointless conversation because I’m going to do what I want anyway.”
“Yes, I know.” I hopped up and grabbed the menu from the printer. Jogging out into the lobby, it was early, so it was still quiet, and I was able to pin it to the bulletin board without running into anyone. “You always do what you want no matter my advice.”
Back in my office, I continued down my mental checklist. All other emails were next.
“You’re right. That’s so annoying, but I’m sure it won’t change. Anyway, since nothing is going to change with me, let’s talk about you.”
I rolled my eyes and suppressed the urge to make up an excuse and hang up the phone before she could say anything else.
“I can feel your eye roll through the phone, Addie. You can’t blame me for being curious. Your love life has been absolute insanity lately. Especially compared to my nonexistent, very one-sided crush on my coworker. I need to live vicariously through you.”
She was right—the past few weeks had been crazy.
In a very short span of time, I’d had a relationship-ending fight with my long-term boyfriend, Owen, moved out of the apartment we shared for a year, and had my first one-night stand with a man that was almost two decades older than me.
I’d also blocked Owen’s number because he wouldn’t leave me alone.
He’d even stooped as low as stopping by Lake Hills last week to try to talk to me.
Thankfully, I was otherwise occupied and hid in the kitchen until he left.
That was the short version, of course. Bri and I had already rehashed every single little detail.
Like how my breakup had been a long time coming and was far overdue.
Owen had never made me a priority and lacked the drive to do anything productive with his life.
I never expected much, but when I paid all the bills and was the only one that could hold a steady job, it took a toll on our relationship.
And if that wasn’t enough, he’d lied to me often.
About anything and everything. Things as small as who he was texting and as big as if he had a job or was going to school.
And when he’d ditched me Halloween night, deciding instead to hang out with his friends rather than go with his girlfriend to the opening of an exclusive sex club, I knew it was over. Hence the one-night stand with Beckett, also known as Mr. Phantom.
Somehow the gorgeous man dressed as the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera was infatuated with me even in my haphazardly thrown-together Bubbles costume.
I’d decided that night that I was going to leave the old Addie behind Abditory’s doors.
I wanted to be someone different. Someone who didn’t have responsibilities or a boyfriend that would rather be anywhere but with her.
And Beckett was the perfect person to make that happen.
He made it easy to forget everything else.
And after hours of talking and flirting, we’d had the most mindblowing, life-changing sex of my life. It was dirty, undiluted pleasure like I’d never known, and I’d thought about Beckett’s power and skill every day since.
Just the reminder made my skin hot and produced an ache between my legs I hadn’t been able to satisfy since that night. Since I’d slipped out of the bed and out of the room without so much as a goodbye.
Part of me regretted it, but I also knew there couldn’t be more. There was no point sticking around.
“Well, I have nothing new to report,” I muttered, clicking through emails.
“I’m still trying to understand your thinking here,” she began. “You finally got rid of Owen, and now you have the possibility of a major upgrade.”
“Bri—” I chided, but she didn’t stop.
“He’s the best sex you’ve ever had, attractive, and kind. He’s also an accomplished attorney, and he’s been searching for you.”
When she put it that way, it sounded so very simple. But life was rarely that straightforward. My time was already sparse and was growing more and more hard to come by every day.
I’d felt bad about leaving him, forcing myself to walk out the door while he was in the en suite bathroom even though my entire being was screaming at me to stay. But when he’d called Grant Events looking for Caroline, it felt like fate when I’d intercepted the call.
I’d pretended to be our receptionist and taken a message. Beckett had been blunt and asked who had attended the opening.
“Oh, I believe it was Meredith, our assistant coordinator.”
“Does Meredith have blonde hair and green eyes? She was dressed as Bubbles.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the truth. To tell him that it was me. I was the blonde with green eyes he’d spent the night with. But I didn’t.
“Nope, she has long, dark brown hair.”
His sigh was tired, and I held my breath. I wasn’t sure what had come over me, but I’d had to ask, why? I wanted to know why he was looking for her.
His response had stayed with me.
“Because she’s all I can think about.”
“It’s not going to happen, Bri.” I pretended not to hear the waver in my voice. Bri didn’t miss it, though.
She scoffed, and my phone vibrated on my desk in front of me with a text from the property manager.
“Whatever you say, babe. You just let me know when you’re tired of lying to yourself.”
“Sure thing. But I gotta go actually work. I’ll call you later.”
“You better. Love you lots!”
“I love you, too.”
I hung up and immediately checked my texts.
Gloria: Hey, Addie. I’m so sorry, but my son is sick and I won’t be in this morning. We have a new resident coming in this afternoon to move in. Can you cover for me? Everything is available in the “new tenant” folder.
Any idea that the day was going to be calm and smooth instantly vanished.
I took a long, deep breath and exhaled slowly when there was a knock on the door and Mr. Peterson poked his head inside. I donned my usual smile and swallowed down my anxiety.
I’d make it through the day. Hopefully.