17. Audrey
Tuesday was the next day I made my way into the office, where I knew Theo would be present. George was there in a navy blue suit, looking as dazzling as ever, while Ava wore a bright orange number; a silky looking high-neck jumpsuit that hardly seemed weather appropriate for December. Tying together the whole look, her eye make-up was orange as well, with little pink flecks of colour throughout. I loved seeing what Ava wore every day… the artful details she added here and there to make an outfit come together. It made me want to try harder, instead of my usual pants and thick coat of choice, though I always tried to pair it with a cute sweater while I was here in London. It didn’t seem like Theo ever had a hard time choosing what to wear to the office either, just like George or Ava. I was envious, the way the three of them looked so put together, even when Theo was running late with a coffee tray for the rest of us.
“I’m here!” he announced, his tie flying up in his rushed movement. At least he was trying to be prompt, and he came with gifts. “I didn’t know your orders yet, so I just got lattes for you both.” Theo nodded to Ava and I, while George sipped at a cup of black coffee, steamy enough to scorch someone’s tongue right off.
“Close enough.” I shrugged. “Thanks, coffee boy.”
“My pleasure. What did I miss?”
In terms of George’s typical efficient meetings, this one had a later start than usual. It was likely due to accommodating Theo’s tardiness, or because George needed Theo’s notes as talking points. When Theo finally came in, brow slightly sweating while he puffed out apologies, George casually walked over, patting his son on the shoulder with one hand and swiping the notebook from Theo’s laptop bag with the other. It happened so swiftly, I almost missed it. In a way, it was refreshing to see this side of George. Before, he felt too perfect, like he knew everything that went on in his business, as if he was some all-seeing mastermind who could direct an entire meeting with nothing but the knowledge in his own head. It was almost sweet, watching him thumb through his son’s notes, silently nodding to himself as he got comfortable in the head seat at the conference table. He cleared his throat and we got right to work.
“Our next point of action is to vet the list of media contacts you were going to reach out to. While we do love any publicity, we also need to make sure the attention we get will be functional, targeting people who will likely want to attend for years ahead, not just want to see what the top business folk in London wore to the event.” George chuckled.
“Definitely,” I said. “I’ve already made a few contacts of my own that I can email straight over to you, but in terms of long-lasting relationships, Ava has a binder for us to look over and choose the contacts we need. Don’t you, Ava?”
“Oh no.” Ava gritted her teeth, quickly searching through the pile she gathered on the desk, a binder clearly missing from it. “Maybe it’s in my office, I’ll be right back.” We nodded, making slight small talk while she ducked off, only for her to return minutes later, bright red from racing around. “I just remembered where it is,” she said.
“Alright?” I sounded unsure, waiting for her to get to the point, or break the news that she dumped it in her latest office clear out.
“It’s in the archive room.” Her face almost seemed apologetic, and I was unsure what that meant for us. Though it was good news that it hadn’t found its way to the bin, even if she was making the archives seem so ominous.
“I didn’t even know we had an archive room,” I admitted.
“For good reason, too.” She hesitated. “I really hate to be the one to ask this of you, but do you think you could go and search it for me? It’s in the basement, below the lobby. It’s just that I really need to discuss some notes about the gala with George.”
“Sure.” I stood up, leaving my things on the desk. I thought it couldn’t take that long, but then Ava mouthed a small ‘sorry’.
“Theo, can you go help her too?” Ava almost looked ashamed to ask, and this was where I became curious. What was in the archives that’d cause this much angst? And for him to come along too? That wasn’t his job. He worked with us, certainly not for us.
But despite being taken aback by the request, he nodded all the same. “Of course.”
We found our way into the agency’s basement, where we stored previous client files, and our old media contacts. It wasn’t as tense as I thought it would be, seeing as we’d been pushed together on a few jobs already, either because of Lucy and Will, or Ava. The archive area was dark, and as much as I hated to be the bearer of bad news, slightly damp. “There must be a drip,” I said, breaking the silence. It almost felt necessary to point out, since it let out a light stench that I worried would be mistaken for my own.
What was the go with that? I felt like women were always fumbling over the idea that we might be perceived as smelly, without any actual cause for it. “Ah, that’s where the smell’s coming from,” Theo pointed out, almost as if he worried I was wondering the same about him. Huh. A smile drifted onto my face. “What are we looking for again?”
“Ava said it was a black binder, with the word ‘Press’ written on the spine in white ink.” As I scanned across the many binders on the shelves, hope drifted away from me.
“That doesn’t really narrow things down, does it?” Theo said, catching on. Every binder was black, and the labels were almost microscopic, meaning we’d have to pass along each binder to read whether the word spelled ‘Press’ in the first place. I cursed Ava, and the fact that she knew what kind of state this place was in, without doing anything about it.
“I guess that’s why we were both brought down here. I was starting to worry Ava found me incompetent.” I laughed.
“You? Never, you’re too strait laced to not impress someone in charge.” With our rekindled friendship, if you’d even call it that, I started to enjoy Theo’s light jabs at my ego.
“Oh?” My eyes narrowed. “Is that the impression I give you?”
“The way you fawn over my father almost makes me jealous,” he teased. His movement was flirtatious, using a small ledge of the book shelves as a seat, and pulling me toward him by my blazer.
I moved forward, playing along, until I leant down to his level and whispered in his ear. “As if your heart could hold such a strong feeling.”
“You wound me.” He held his hand over his empty rib cage.
“Now that I feel you’d be into, freak.”
Mischief filled the light of his eyes. “So that’s your impression of me then?”
“Absolutely.” As soon as I said it, I regretted opening the floodgates of that conversation. It’s the type of commentary that left us both wondering what we actually were into these past five years. Was his touch still the same as back then? How much practice did he have in-between? These kinds of thoughts were difficult to get out of my head, so I thought I’d focus on the distraction we’re here for, instead. I pulled a binder from the shelf and noticed there were even more binders stacked behind it as well. This was going to take all day. “Let’s get to work.”
After at least twenty minutes of sorting, while passing sweet insults back and forth like we were exchanging money, I’d sorted the room of black binders into two giant heaps; binders to check, and those already checked. I had doubted his work ethic before, but as we both sat on the floor in front of our respective piles, I was impressed with how seriously he was taking it. We had to be extra diligent on the current batch of binders, since most of the writing on the outside had water damage. That meant we needed to double check the pages on the inside of the binders as well, an annoying delay in our already literallystockpiled workload. I stretched out my arms and studied Theo as he bobbed back and forth with his task, until his eyes caught mine.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing, clearly.” I yawned.
“Trying to make this take longer? I didn’t realise you enjoyed my company this much.”
I scoffed. “If that was the case, I’d ask you to dinner instead.”
“We could arrange that if you want?”
“Funny, really.” I waved the idea away as if it were a fly buzzing in front of my face. “You should try comedy; you might get some more bites.”
“I’ll look into it, if I ever get out of this room.” He took it as a compliment. “But I can’t really see myself leaving Dad on his own at the company.”
I pursed my lips. “You have a really good relationship with George, don’t you?” It was something I was almost envious of, knowing he was able to build something great with his family, from the same town. It wasn’t something I’d ever thought possible, with my parents in different states. And choosing one seemed unfair, so I chose neither, and moved away as far as I could. I guess this was another stark difference in what made us tick.
“I’d like to think so,” he said sincerely. “He’s a pretty easy guy to be around.”
“Maybe you should take some notes,” I chimed.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He rolled his eyes. It was a clear implication that all the ladies at the office thought George was the perfect man, and the more we spoke about it, the more I could see Theo wanting to claw his eyes out. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
My throat turned dry; it was probably some kind of reaction to the mould in the ceiling. I shook it off, gulping down some saliva. “Sure.”
“Why don’t you talk to your parents?”
Suddenly, my skin felt itchy, but this time I knew it wasn’t from the room; it was a reflex I built, where I would scratch at my arms to distract myself and not sink too deep into an unwanted feeling. “It’s my fault, in a way,” I admitted. At first, I didn’t know how much I wanted to reveal. I’d obviously told him years ago that we were estranged, but I never thought he’d be asking about the details after so much time has passed. Yet as he sat earnestly, I didn’t have anything to hide. “It started when they got divorced. I was only eight, and being sent back and forth between them drove me mad.”
“Too much to manage?” he asked politely. He wasn’t calling me out for feeling inadequate; it was a genuine toll that came with juggling two completely separate families.
“More like, too much moving entirely. We weren’t close enough for an even weekday and weekend custody split. Dad lived in Sydney, and Mum lived in Adelaide. They didn’t tolerate each other enough to stay in the same city, and I don’t blame them for that. But it meant I spent January to June with Dad, and July to December with Mum across states.”
“And so, you never learnt to settle down,” he pointed out.
“So, I never settled down,” I confirmed. “Just like I told Will, it’s hard to feel like you belong to one place. And after a while, I realised those six months in each state actually took a toll on my family. When Mum got a boyfriend with two young kids, it threw them out of rhythm, and it was no longer my family. Then the same thing happened with Dad, with his new wife.”
“You’ve got siblings?” Theo was intrigued.
“Not really—Mum’s boyfriends never stuck around long, and Dad and Helen didn’t want children.” I was probably the reason for that, honestly.
“And now you don’t talk to your family because they never knew you well enough in the first place,” Theo concluded, a knowing nod on his face as if he were familiar with the storyline. Not from his life, but it was probably a trope in a British drama series that played on BBC during the summertime. Though, with his Mum’s early death, his life seemed to have enough drama in it already.
“Stuff the comedy, you should become a shrink.” I tried to chuckle, but it came out flat.
“And then you found Lucy.” He changed the topic to something brighter.
“And funnily enough…” I scratched my head. “I found you.”
Theo stood up, holding a binder in his hand as he walked over and sat beside me. Close enough that I had the urge to scooch over, though for some reason, I didn’t move away. I liked the feeling of my leg against his, and soon enough, he draped an elbow over my knee in familiarity. Still, I didn’t move, and let his fingers drum against my ankle. “Do you regret meeting me?”
I thought about his words carefully, but my head shook before I could make my mind up. “Absolutely not.” He went through his own traumas, not being able to say goodbye to his mother. I’d turned into a cruel woman, but I didn’t have the guts to hold his grieving actions against him anymore.
He didn’t say a word after my answer, but his eyes bored into the side of my skull until I turned my face to meet his gaze. His expression was intense, his pupils dilated, and before I knew it, my own line of sight dropped down to his soft-looking lips, the slight stubble emphasising his manliness. Oh. The realisation hit me; I still found Theo attractive. Not just in a handsome way, where I could admit to him catching my eye if I saw him walking past me on the street. No, this was a different kind of attraction, where I wanted him to hold me close and kiss my face off. I bit my lip at the idea, until oddly enough, the scene came to life.
Theo twisted his body to face me, holding one hand around the back of my head while he pressed me against the wall we leant on, and the other hand across my waistline. Just like that, his mouth was on mine, first pecking at my lips before I opened my mouth wider, welcoming a deeper kiss. His breath on mine felt warm and nice, while his tongue tasted like spearmint; prickly and fresh. “Theo,” I moaned, pulling him closer to me. I watched his eyes open, hungrily, and his hands drifted from my waist to the hem of my blouse. But despite my heart wanting to feel his touch more intimately, my brain took over, and I pulled away. In that second, shock washed over my face, not from his actions… but from my own.
“That was a mistake,” I blurted, standing up while I patted down my hair. It was already dishevelled from the humidity in the room, and a make out session wasn’t helping.
“You think?” His eyes studied mine, their intensity making me feel naked.
“I know,” I corrected. “We need to forget this happened.”
He paused for a moment, looking down to the floor, before his demeanour changed to a comforting tone. “Don’t worry about it.”
“And we haven’t even found the damn binder yet.” I paced back and forth, wondering where to start. It looks like our kissing wasn’t the only impactful movement, since one of us must’ve kicked one pile into the other, blurring the lines of what had and hadn’t been checked. “Shit.”
“I said don’t worry about it,” Theo repeated, holding up a black binder in his hands. On closer inspection, I could see the word ‘Press’ faintly etched into its spine.
“How long have you had that?” I asked accusingly.
“I only found it moments before I walked over to you,” he explained, stepping up from his sitting position. “Don’t fret, I wasn’t going to keep it from you for long.”
I snatched the binder from his hand. “With this, I’m going home.”
“Want a kiss goodbye?” he taunted.
“Theo!” I scolded, racing out of the archive room in a red flush. From what I knew of Theo so far, he wasn’t the type to kiss and tell… so all I could do was hope that absolutely no one was going to find out about what happened today. Not even Lucy.