Chapter Sixteen
On the first day back in the office after Christmas, Lissa feels her stomach twisting with nerves as she exits the lift on the fourth floor and heads to her desk.
She doesn’t know why. Or, well, she does, but it’s stupid.
She and Darcy have been messaging loads, it’s not going to be awkward.
But they still haven’t directly addressed it, what happened at the spa.
Darcy is already at her desk, scowling at something on her computer.
Lissa is concentrating so hard on her friend, trying to work up the perfect ‘hey’ for when she sits down next to her, that she doesn’t notice Liam walking straight at her, holding a mug in one hand and his phone in the other.
She yelps as they nearly collide, and he swears loudly as the liquid in his mug – black coffee – spills down her arm.
She hisses in her breath, pulling her arm back towards her as she has a brief flash of another time this happened, in a much more romantic setting.
‘Why weren’t you looking where you’re going?’ Liam demands, rescuing what remains of his coffee and rocking back on his heels. She resists the urge to point out that he wasn’t looking where he was going either, and examines the damage to her blouse. Well, at least it isn’t white.
She can feel multiple gazes from around the office on her and tries to swallow down the embarrassment as she looks back up at Liam. She tries to get out a ‘sorry’, but it doesn’t quite come.
His expression twists into a different type of frown. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks stiffly. ‘I mean, you’re not going to …’ He gestures down at her arm, then vaguely around. She has no idea what he’s referring to.
‘Umm, no?’ That seems the right answer, if she’s taking bets.
‘Good.’ He lets out what is clearly a relieved breath. ‘Because after last time, HR coming down on me, can’t be having another of those in the office, can we?’
It clicks, then. He’s talking about her panic attack. She feels heat flush her cheeks, and really hopes no one is near enough to hear this.
‘I’m fine,’ she says stiffly, and turns on her heel before he can ask anything else.
Darcy looks up at her as she slides into her chair, humiliation still burning her face. ‘Are you okay?’ she murmurs.
Lissa swallows. ‘Yeah. He just wanted to know if I was going to cause problems for him with HR by having another panic attack in the office.’
Darcy makes a hissing sound. ‘Dick.’
Lissa nods her agreement, then blows out a breath, glancing at her friend. ‘How was Nottingham?’ Darcy went home over Christmas to see her family.
‘It was good. We all drank far too much, of course, so I’m in need of a massive detox, but it was nice to see everyone.’
‘Good, good.’
‘And you?’ Darcy asks as Lissa switches on her computer. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, fine, you know. January blues, et cetera.’
‘Mm,’ Darcy agrees with a nod. Are things awkward? They feel awkward.
‘New shoes?’ Lissa asks, pointing down at Darcy’s feet, which are crossed at the ankles and encased in low-heeled snakeskin boots.
‘Naturally. Christmas present to myself.’
And that, Lissa thinks, was a terrible effort to get things back on track. She takes a breath. ‘Darcy? Are we … okay?’
‘What do you mean?’ But Darcy’s tone is noticeably too light.
‘Since the spa,’ Lissa elaborates, glancing around to check no one is within earshot. ‘I mean – did I completely freak you out? Because I know I looked crazy, but I promise I’m not really. Or if I am, I’m not completely crazy and I’m not any different to the person I was when we—’
‘Lissa. I don’t think you’re crazy. Well, no crazier than the rest of us.’
‘Maybe a little bit more,’ Lissa says on a sigh.
Given that her friends don’t tend to have meltdowns at the spa and scare everyone so much that the manager insists on giving you complimentary juice for the rest of the day.
At the time Darcy said it was a great way to get free drinks and maybe if Lissa had thrashed around just a little more they could have got champagne instead. But since then …
‘Yeah, well, okay,’ Darcy says. ‘Maybe a little bit more. But whoever said crazy was a bad thing? The word needs a PR overhaul in my opinion.’
Lissa snorts quietly.
‘You didn’t freak me out,’ Darcy says after a beat.
‘Okay. Well, good.’ But things still feel off.
‘I just …’ Darcy bites her lip, swivelling her chair to face Lissa head-on. ‘I didn’t know you didn’t like water – or couldn’t swim, or whatever. I never would’ve booked the session if I’d known.’
‘I know,’ Lissa says quietly. ‘I’m sorry. I thought maybe it would be okay.’ And it would have been, wouldn’t it, if her mind hadn’t decided to go elsewhere.
‘I didn’t even know you had a sister,’ Darcy says after another beat. And Lissa knows this is the crux of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. ‘It’s just … it’s all a little …’
‘Complicated?’ Darcy guesses. ‘Yeah. Mia said. I just figured it would’ve come up, something like that. That’s all.’
‘I should have told you,’ Lissa says, resisting the urge to look around again as she hears footsteps behind her, someone else on their way to their desk.
‘I guess I just didn’t want you to think differently of me.
’ She pulls a hand through her hair, matted slightly from the January wind outside.
‘Everything with Chloe … it defines so much of who I am. I suppose I didn’t want it to define who I was with you, too. ’
Darcy studies her for a moment, in a very direct, Darcy way. Then she purses her red lips and nods. ‘Yeah. I think I can understand that.’
Lissa feels her chest relax a little. ‘So we’re good?’
Darcy smiles. ‘We’re good, sweets.’
They both turn back to their computers, waking up the screens.
They had a company-wide office closure for two blissful weeks, and now Lissa is dreading the daily slog again.
She’s decided to stop her job hunt for now – the countless rejections are starting to make it seem a bit pointless.
She’s feeling a little lost on that front.
‘So,’ Darcy begins, ‘still convinced you’re seeing visions of your past lives?’
Lissa wrinkles her nose as she clicks on a company-wide email from Liam. ‘I know you don’t believe me.’
‘I never said that.’
‘Right, but I know you think reliving memories from previous lives is unlikely.’
‘We-ll,’ Darcy says, drawing out the word, ‘on the scale of likeliness, most likely being I’ll drink wine this weekend and least likely being one of us will sleep with Liam …’
Lissa snorts, and automatically glances around to check that Liam is in his glass office – the only one of them to have his own office, with the rumour being that he designed it deliberately so he could spy on the rest of them.
Seems unlikely, given that it was built before the company moved in, but she wouldn’t put it past him.
‘But you can try to convince me over a drink if you like. Maybe I should go and see this Saskia person myself, as long as she’ll only tell me the good stuff and not the bad.’
‘Well, I mean, she doesn’t really tell you about it, it’s a whole trance thing, and also, I was having the memories before I went to see her, but …
’ Lissa catches the way Darcy is looking at her, one eyebrow arched, a slight smirk around her lips.
‘Never mind,’ she says on a sigh. ‘But yes to a drink.’
‘Fab, I need something to get me through this month. Friday?’
‘Yes. No, wait. Shit, I can’t do Friday. But any other day, I’m yours.’
‘Thursday, then. Why can’t you do Friday?’
She hesitates. Her instinct is to lie about it – to say she’s seeing her dad or something. But given the conversation they’ve just had … ‘I’m seeing Ash.’
‘Ash?’ Darcy’s voice rises an octave. She glances behind her to where Mark is sitting, right at the back of the office, then drops her voice. ‘Ash as in the hot friend of Mark who came to the pub quiz with us and completely ignored my attempts to flirt? That Ash?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘What? How?’
‘I don’t know. We bumped into each other and I guess we’re sort of …
friends?’ She’s not sure why she says that like a question.
‘Or potential friends, at least.’ Darcy lets out a low whistle.
‘Please don’t tell Mark,’ Lissa adds. She’s not sure if Ash will have already mentioned it, but if not, she doesn’t want Mark to hear it from Darcy, like office gossip.
‘Come on, would I?’
‘I’m not sure I should answer that.’
Darcy makes a pff sound and waves her hand in the air. Then she rests her hand on her chin, leaning towards Lissa. ‘So this thing with Ash …’
‘It’s not a thing,’ Lissa says quickly.
That message she got from him, though. Because I want to see you. It could be innocent – she wants to see Darcy, doesn’t she? Admittedly, her insides don’t fizz if Darcy tells her she wants to see her, but that’s her problem. It isn’t Ash’s fault.
‘Hmm. Okay. Well we can add it to the agenda for Thursday. Item one.’
Both of them straighten as Liam opens his office door, heads their way. They make a very obvious show of answering emails as he approaches.
‘Raring to go after a good break, I hope, ladies?’ he asks, running his thumb and forefinger over that stupid beard.
‘Oh absolutely,’ Darcy says brightly. ‘I’ve got all kinds of ideas for companies we might be able to pitch for.’
‘Well that’s great. I look forward to hearing about them all in the meeting.’ He walks away, over to Mark’s desk.
‘You know,’ Lissa mutters, ‘if you keep that up, he may very well fire you before you have enough saved for travelling.’
‘Nah, I’m too good at my job.’ Said with a confidence that Lissa envies. ‘Besides, I can definitely come up with some ideas of companies to approach. How long do we have until the meeting?’
Lissa checks the time on her phone – tries not to be disappointed when there’s no message from Ash waiting for her. It’s Monday morning, for Christ’s sake.
‘Ten minutes,’ she says.
Darcy grins and rubs her hands together. ‘Easy.’