Chapter 34 Nora
Chapter 34 NORA
“ S omeone’s in a good mood today,” Yeong said as Nora got into the elevator on that sunny Thursday.
She was not in a good mood. Her head throbbed from staying up late last night, and the lack of an answer from Aiden—added to her guilt regarding not talking to her team—only made everything worse.
For the millionth time, Nora checked her phone to see if Aiden had responded to her text. Nothing.
“Hey,” Yeong said when she didn’t answer him. “Sorry. I was just kidding.”
Shaking her head, Nora reminded herself that Yeong didn’t deserve to be mistreated because of her problems. But maybe he could help with at least one of them.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Nora asked.
When they got into her office, she closed the door behind her.
Yeong looked at the closed door, then at Nora, his face marked with a comical expression as if he was afraid of what she had to say. Nora cut to the point. “Have you told them already?”
“Tell who, what?”
Nora sat down and motioned for Yeong to do the same. Her desk was littered with paper, pens, folders, and cups, but she had bigger fish to fry. Tidying up could wait.
“Your team. About the mass layoffs.”
Yeong sniggered. “Hell, no! I’m not doing the company’s dirty work for them. If they want to lay someone off, they should do it themselves.”
Nora wasn’t surprised he hadn’t considered other people’s feelings. Men rarely did.
“Don’t you think you should warn them in advance, so they can start looking for work?”
“Hm. I haven’t thought about that,” he said. “But what if they don’t lose their jobs? Telling them could cause unnecessary distress.”
“True. But I understood from the meeting last week that Eliver Inc. was very probably leaving us. And if they do, mass layoffs are inevitable.”
“I understood that they were possibly leaving us. There’s a difference.”
“Well, I...” Nora crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Whatever. We can agree to disagree.”
“How mature of us.” Yeong flashed her his beautiful smile and Nora was surprised to realize she wasn’t attracted to him anymore. Her head, her heart, it all seemed to be taken entirely by another man’s beautiful smile, leaving no space for anyone else.
Yeong fumbled with the Master Yoda figurine on her desk. “Have you told them?”
Nora shook her head. “I tried, but I didn’t have the guts to do it. This is eating me up inside.”
“Then just let the cat out of the bag already.”
The mention of the word “cat” made Nora think of José’s cat, and her shoulders drooped with the weight of guilt. Would José be able to feed his cat, once he was unemployed? How would Dave provide for his four—soon to be five—children?
What a coward she was, keeping that information to herself. They could be applying for other positions already, if it wasn’t for her weakness. She hoped they’d have it in them to forgive her when the time came.
The shrill ring of the telephone made Nora jump in her seat. She peeked at the caller ID visor and noticed Yeong doing the same. They shared a wide-eyed look. It was the vice president’s secretary, calling all team leaders in.
The VP, a woman in her fifties with a quirky sense of humor, made Yeong and Nora laugh a few times even amid their tension. In the end, the meeting was about the upcoming Christmas celebrations. Incidentally, she mentioned that a client needed some changes in their cybersecurity protocols, and Nora took the opportunity to pitch José’s firewall idea. The team leader responsible for the software development area immediately requested to see what José had so far.
When everyone was dismissed, Nora and Yeong shared a knowing look and stayed behind. They asked the vice president about the mass lay-offs.
“Oh, no, no one is losing their job. Eliver Inc. is staying with us, and we didn’t even have to hack their systems and blackmail them! It’s a Christmas miracle, one month in advance.”
When they reached the elevator hall, both Yeong and Nora breathed deeply. With a “ding,” the elevator doors opened and they got inside.
Silence set between them. It was awkward—not because of the silence itself, but because Yeong never stayed silent for long. What was wrong with him?
“I think I may need a change of pants,” he finally said.
Nora’s tension dissolved into a big cackle.
“No, seriously. When they called us in... I thought that was it. I thought they were going to let us all go. And I would be so, so screwed, because I just signed a mortgage.”
Nora’s mouth was agape. “You thought our jobs were on the line, too?”
“You didn’t?”
“No! I understood that they were only going to fire low-ranking people. God, that was the most misunderstanding-prone meeting of all times. How the hell were you so chill about the whole thing, if you thought you might be losing your job, too?”
Yeong blew a raspberry. “I wasn’t chill at all! But I saw how stressed out you were and didn’t want to make it worse, is all. Anyway, good thing you didn’t tell your team, uh?” Yeong wiggled his eyebrows in a “I told you” face, and Nora rolled her eyes.
In reality, she was truly grateful for not having told them a thing. Had she done it, she would have caused anxiety, panic, and who knows what else, only for things to work out on their own.
A pang hit the center of her chest—a black hole, both nothing and too much. If Aiden had told her from the beginning that he was famous, she knew she would have never allowed him into her house—and into her life—as she had done. She would have never given herself the opportunity to know him—the true him—throughout that night. She would have kept a polite distance from him, and would have continued living her life without ever knowing what it was to feel the way she felt when they danced together. When he held her in his arms. When he kissed her.
Nora dragged her feet out of the elevator and into her office, and did her best to at least pretend she was working until five.
In the minutes before the belly dance practice started, Nora was lost in her thoughts when Dipa arrived. She was wearing a beautiful, brand-new blue set of harem pants and top, but before Nora could compliment it, Dipa shot, “What is Aiden Elliott doing with my umbrella?”
“Good evening to you, too, and I’m fine, thanks for asking. Now, what the heck are you talking about?”
“My limited-series Goofy umbrella. I lost it months ago, and now I see he has it. It can’t just be a coincidence.” At Nora’s confusion, Dipa displayed on her phone a series of pictures from a gossip portal: Aiden peeling off the black cover of a foldable umbrella; Aiden grinning once he opened it and found Goofy’s face, the character’s large ears pending from the canopy; Aiden completely deflated staring at the ground. “I repeat: why does Aiden Elliott have my umbrella?”
Seeing photos of Aiden pierced Nora’s heart. She remembered giving him the umbrella as a gift before they walked to Woody’s.
Nora missed him—intensely, irrevocably. She could finally admit to herself that she’d do it all over again. But instead of lashing out at him, she would sit down and talk to him like a rational, sensible person.
She’d had Aiden—not in the palm of her hand, but within the reach of her lips—and she had lost him. All that bullshit about next time now seemed so childish. She should have kissed him more, made love to him—on her bed, on her couch, on the seat, hell, the loveseat. She should have soaked up everything she could from that night, because apparently that was all they’d ever have.
Even if the resolution was to be the same: daylight melting all the bridges they’d built in the dark.
There would be no next time. Aiden made that clear by not answering her text. And in a few weeks—when was it again?—he would be leaving for Jordan. And he would surely forget about her.
“He’d lost his umbrella and that one was around and... I’m sorry. I would’ve never given it to him if I knew it was yours,” Nora said.
“Are you kidding me? Aiden fucking Elliott has my umbrella? I’m practically famous,” Dipa said.
Nora scoffed. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I wonder why he looks so sad, though,” Dipa said with a hint of irony, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “And I also wonder if it has anything to do with why you look so sad right now.”
Covered in sweat and exhausted, Nora was glad she had made the effort to go to the practice tonight—she knew exercise was a very important part of her treatment. And she loved dancing, anyway. She feigned nonchalance on the ride Dipa gave her back home, but as soon as she entered her house, Nora finally gave in to temptation and searched his name online. And once she started, there was no turning back, because all the platforms—bless their algorithms—thought she wanted to know every single detail about him. And she did—but not necessarily the ones the internet offered.
She didn’t want to know which film would premiere soon— Indigo Eyes , that same evening—or which one he was currently filming— Consequat , his reason for being in Nashville last week. She didn’t want to know what designer brand Aiden wore for the last red carpet; she didn’t want to know if he thought this superstar was nice to act with or if he liked that new singer. She didn’t want his answers filtered through a celebrity site. She wanted his honest words straight from his heart.
And yet she couldn’t stop herself going from site to site reading everything she could find. To Nora’s relief, Aiden kept an overall low profile. He wasn’t known for trashing hotels, getting stoned, or being spotted in places with suspicious reputations.
No reports of violent behavior. No rehab. No sex scandals.
Except for his relationship with Marcie Jameson, his love life barely made the headlines, with few mentions about other girlfriends. “Few and far between,” he had said, and it appeared to be true. Aiden wasn’t a serial dater or a heartbreaker. Except when it came to hers.
The media’s interest in him had ballooned in the past months because of the critical acclaim he’d received for his last few movies. Aiden was at the apex of his career, and with greater fame came a brighter spotlight.
One gossip portal stated:
Scoundrel Days star Aiden Elliott was spotted holding hands with a mysterious woman, headed for breakfast Saturday morning. We can only imagine what they did all night during the tornado lockdown that was in effect on Friday in Nashville. Lucky her!
Nora simmered a bit when she read this bit. People probably imagined she’d slept with him because he was famous.
Another website gleefully declared:
Aiden Elliott was spotted having breakfast in Nashville with a brunette last Saturday. The couple arrived at the café holding hands but left separately after Elliott had a quarrel with photographers. According to sources, Aiden headed to the woman’s home and exited it minutes later, clearly enraged. How did Elliott manage to hide from us how hot-headed he is all this time?
She clicked on a video of him saying, “Disappear or I’ll make you regret this,” and purposely knocking into a paparazzo’s shoulder with his own.
Nora watched the video over and over. It was filmed on her street, right in front of her house, after she said those terrible things to Aiden. Still, she didn’t recognize him. His face contorted in fury; the eyes burning with wrath—that was not the Aiden she knew. And it was her fault. Clearly what she had said had deeply affected him, and the cameras were there to capture his reaction. She, too, was reeling from their fight, but luckily, she wasn’t famous, so her reaction wasn’t recorded and displayed for the whole world to see.
She clicked on another image—the one that Mr. Paparazzo had snapped at the precise moment—the Augenblick , gone as fast as the blink of an eye—in which she had given Aiden a peck on the cheek. Taken from behind him, the picture didn’t show Aiden’s reaction. Still, Nora remembered it. She remembered it all too well. Their fingers interlaced. The lopsided smile and his dimple—so enticing, so kissable. She should have kissed him more—his dimple, the corner of his mouth, his lips—she should have let the photographer take as many pictures as he wanted. She should have held onto that bubble of happiness. But she didn’t. Instead, she’d popped the bubble and watched it vanish.