4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
S itting in the bar she's avoided for weeks since she last saw Kade, Jess holds a glass of water in her hand and looks around. Her anxiety shoots through the roof, and she wants to be anywhere but here. They spent so many nights in this very place before heading off to one of their places together. When she believed them to be a couple, and he believed them to be nothing more than a fling.
She tried to get out of coming to O'Reilly's. Her boss wanted to take everyone out for a celebratory round, and she offered up every other location she could find within a ten-mile radius of the office. Of course, they settled on the one bar she would rather swallow nails than go to.
They successfully finished a project everyone thought impossible for their clients, and the drinks are well deserved. She tried to find a way out of joining, but she had no good excuse to avoid coming out without looking like a terrible team member. Considering she hopes to one day take over the company from Paul, skipping out on celebrations like this would hurt her more than help her.
"You did good, kid," Paul Gaines says as he gives her a side hug.
Her eyes look up to meet his warm brown ones, and she smiles. He has a head full of white hair with a mustache he's rocked since 1982. On anyone else, it would look ridiculous, but he pulls it off quite well.
Jessica's father passed away when she was five, and she and her mother never found a way to get along. She never knew how much she missed having a supportive parental figure in her life until she met Paul. He took her under his wing when she interned at his company, and she's never had a desire to leave since. They always say employees leave management, not companies, and she doesn't have any intention of leaving her boss unless forced to.
"It was a team effort," Jess says, deflecting the compliment. She's never been great with praise. Probably because she's never had any experience with it from her mother.
"You're so modest," he says. "You know, you're really going to have to work on that if you plan to buy me out when I retire. Modesty doesn't go nearly as far as conceited gloating."
She laughs. "I'll keep that in mind. But since you aren't retiring anytime soon, I think I'll stay modest. We'll work on that later."
“I’ll mark it down as one of my SMART goals. HR probably will love that.”
"You found a way to work with that impossibly difficult committee. They wanted to stop all progress, which doesn't make any sense to me. If no one inhabits those buildings, no one maintains them. It does no one any good to stop people from making changes and breathing new life into those old, haunted buildings."
"They just want to make sure the integrity of the building stays intact."
"By rejecting code regulations set by the very city they work for? Tell me how adding technology to allow handicapped patrons access to a building on a door that already exists hurts the integrity of the building."
Smiling, she nods. The committee was hellbent on stopping them from doing anything in most cases. "It was difficult, but it was also kind of a nice challenge. We don't have that many anymore with how great your reputation is. It taught me the art of compromise and creative solutions. Not to mention how best to navigate working with difficult people."
"Look at that optimism," Tiffany, the receptionist with brown hair as big as her personality, says. Her long, fake nails and false eyelashes complete the look she aspires to. Tiffany joined the party without waiting for an invitation once she heard the word 'bar.' "You're almost too good for this job."
"Watch your mouth," Paul jokes.
He shifts to talk to one of the others, and Tiffany looks around. Jess can't help but wonder just how high her hair happens to be teased. She's added at least a couple of inches to her height from her hair alone. Add that to her four-inch heels, and she's about half a foot taller than she normally would be.
"So... is the boyfriend here? Or is he coming? I want to see this guy who's had you smiling like a fool for months."
Tiffany really hasn't been paying attention, otherwise she'd noticed the smile fell from her mouth weeks ago. The words feel like a knife to the chest, and the words she has to say feel like battery acid on her tongue. "We're... uh... we're not together anymore."
"What are you talking about? You were head over heels for this guy!"
"Yeah, I was. He wasn't."
She takes a sip from her straw, and there's no chance for Jess to find a way out of this conversation. "Come on."
"I was seeing him. He was seeing other people. It just didn't quite work."
"That son of a bitch! He cheated?"
Here goes nothing. "Not according to him. He sees it differently because we never had what he calls ‘the talk’ defining what we were or weren't to each other. But after five months with items left at each other’s places, it didn't seem overly necessary."
"You can't really hold him accountable for seeing someone else if you hadn't discussed whether or not you were boyfriend and girlfriend."
Boyfriend and girlfriend? Are they in high school? And why the hell isn't she angry for Jess? Jess expected at least that much from her.
Sighing, she looks away and catches Tim's eye from behind the bar. He nods at her, and she gives a smile before turning back to Tiffany. "Can I hold him accountable for the way I found out he was seeing other women?"
"Did you see him on a date with someone?" she gasps, her eyes wide. "You know, that happened to Shandra on Girlfriends of the Famous . Found out her fiancé was dating other women while out with her friends one night. Flipped a table and dumped a pitcher of margaritas on the woman's head while he chased after her, begging for forgiveness. She, of course, took him back. He's rich and famous. But he did it again. Those women never learn."
The thing Jess learned quickly about Tiffany is how she lives for reality television. Anything about wives or girlfriends of rich people and she's addicted. She talks about these people like she knows them personally while drawing parallels to people’s lives. Jessica and Shandra obviously have so much in common.
"That would have been better."
"How'd you find out? Did you go through his phone like Lindsay on Selling Mansions ? That's how she found out Trey, her boyfriend and owner of the realty company, was sleeping with two of the women he'd just hired. She wasn't dumb enough to believe his lies, and she dumped him like a sack of trash after selling some of his expensive and invaluable art. Then she got arrested."
Maybe Jess should've gone through Kade's phone when he was sleeping one night. Maybe then she'd have an idea who these other women were. But she never thought to do it because nothing felt off between them until she walked in on him with Lena, and now she wonders if maybe she should have done it anyway. If she had, she may have been able to walk away with a little more of her dignity than she did the last time she saw Kade.
"Well?"
"Are you ready for this? Because I don't think this has been covered on one of your shows."
Her eyes widen. "What?"
"I walked in on him having sex in the kitchen. With a woman he told me was his cousin."
"No!" Her jaw drops. "She wasn't really his cousin, was she? Because if she was, I've seen that one before. And you need to go to a therapist. Now."
"No, he lied to avoid suspicion when I saw she called one night. She is very much not his cousin."
Her hand pushes a stray hair on her forehead away. "What'd he do? How'd he explain that? He just... what? Tripped and fell?"
"He... well, he didn't. It was a very strange evening."
"Are you sure she's not his cousin?"
Jess laughs. "I'm sure. She's gorgeous and was so upset. Not because she got caught but because she didn't want to be a homewrecker. Which she wasn't since he didn't think we were a real couple."
"Can it be forgiven since he didn't think you were exclusive? Wasn't the sex great? I knew every night you got some because you had an extra pep in your step the next morning. I mean, do you really want to give that up?"
Looking around to make sure no one else pays any attention to them, she lowers her voice. "Yes, the sex was amazing. The best I've had, but he has no desire to be in a relationship. And I don't need to waste my time hung up on a guy just because he's good in bed."
"Show him what it feels like, and he'll come around."
"What?"
Tiffany sighs. "Date other guys as well as him. Once he gets a taste of his own medicine, he'll come around."
"That's not fair to the other guys. Besides, if I have to play games to get a guy to commit, he's not staying committed long. Once the game ends, he'll be on to the next."
Paul clinks silverware on his glass and gets their attention before holding it in the air. "I just want to thank everyone for making this project such a success. We finally succeeded in making the Historical Society work in our favor, and I've been told they're suggesting our firm to any other tenants looking to remodel the buildings downtown."
Jess stares in shock. She hadn't heard about this little tidbit. "They are?"
"You made quite an impression, Jess. They respected the way you found compromises between modernization and preservation. No other architects in the area have been successful in bridging that gap. You came in clutch."
The others on the team hold their glasses up as well, all cheering for her, and she blushes. "Thank you. It really was a team effort, and I'm happy we were able to find ways to make it all work out so everyone ended up happy."
Beer bottles clink around her, and she's suddenly transported back to the last night she was in the bar. The last night she saw the man she's still madly in love with. The tears sting at her eyes, but she blinks them away. She'll never let anyone see her cry. She just can't.
Paul wraps an arm around her shoulders, and she looks up at him with a forced smile. One drink. She just has to stay for one drink, and then she can leave before Kade inevitably shows up. He's here most evenings after work, and he should be ending his day right around now.
As though she called him, Kade walks through the door and nods to Tim before taking his usual seat at the rail. The bartender nods back, but his eyes tell Jess he won't draw attention to her. Tim was always so nice. Too nice, actually, to work behind the bar on Saturday nights. It gets rowdy, and he always has a difficult time getting others to take him seriously.
"I have to go," Jess says, her voice quiet. "Thank you so much for this."
"Where are you going?"
"You know, I'm not feeling very well. I think it might've been what I ate for lunch, but just in case it's not, I don't want to risk anyone else getting sick."
He looks down at her with concerned eyes. "Do you need a ride home?"
Kade turns around, and she shifts to use Paul as a human barrier. "No, I'll be okay, I think. But I should get going. I don't want to risk a mess in my car driving home. Thank you again. This is so appreciated."
He opens his mouth to say something else, but she reaches for her purse and hurries towards the door. She can feel Kade's eyes staring into her back, but she never turns around to look at him. Instead, she hurries to her car around the corner and drives home as quickly as she can. She was not prepared to see him tonight.