Chapter 17 #2
Javier stopped as he reached the office door and leaned against the jamb. He couldn’t fight back the tide anymore. It was time to throw in the towel and admit defeat.
He glanced back at Maisy with a mournful look. “I think it’s time we start looking at wrapping the whole thing up,” he said, pain in his heart. “You’re the one with legal training. I need you to research what we need to do to close the business.”
They were words he’d hoped he would never have to say.
“What about current jobs on the calendar?” Maisy asked, following him out to the outer office.
“There’s only one,” Javier admitted. “That ridiculous rich kid’s birthday party in Surrey on Saturday.”
“The one where they requested a ‘high-class clown’?” Maisy’s face twitched as she spoke, reflecting the way Javier had felt about the horrible request, too.
“That’s the one,” Javier sighed. “I’ll take the job. I’m definitely a clown at this point, and it’s not like I’ll have a whole lot else to do this weekend anyhow.”
Maisy’s expression registered surprise. “You don’t think you’ll be able to patch things up with your man?”
Javier didn’t want to answer the question. With his entire heart, he wanted to say that it would be an easy fix and that all he and Desmond needed to do was talk. But in reality, he worried that too much damage had already been done.
“One way or another, I have to do the job,” he told Maisy, meaning it in more ways than one.
He was going to do everything he could to pull him and Desmond out of the mess they’d been thrown into.
He left the office and headed out, marching to the nearest Tube station.
He had no idea how Desmond would react to him showing up at his office wanting to talk things through.
He had no idea what was even going on at Desmond’s place of work after Friday night.
There was a chance everything had gone to shit and Desmond was in some sort of trouble.
That only made the journey out to Canary Wharf feel like it took forever. By the time Javier made it to Desmond’s building, he was itching to find Desmond and ask what was going on. Maybe the radio silence over the past few days wasn’t a great idea after all.
He could tell as soon as he stepped out of the lift into the reception area of Pickering Jones that something was out of the ordinary.
The office looked like offices usually did, but there was a strange sense of upset in the air.
The smartly dressed, middle-aged woman at the reception desk looked harried as she spoke to a tall, imposing black man in a suit while her phone rang and rang.
Javier held back and waited for things to be less chaotic.
Not for the first time on his way over to Desmond’s office, he wondered if he should have called or texted first. He’d figured that just showing up was the best way to avoid any possibility of Desmond putting him off, but now he wasn’t so sure.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked at last as the black man took a step back. Javier thought he recognized him from the awards dinner.
“Um, I’m here to see Desmond White?” Javier asked, definitely feeling like calling first would have been the better way to go.
“I’m sorry, but Mr. White no longer works here,” the woman said with a tight smile.
The bottom dropped out of Javier’s stomach. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You’re his date from the other night,” the black man said. “Marcus Abara.” He offered his hand. “I recognize you.”
“Yes, I am.” Javier shook his hand. “You’re saying that Desmond quit?”
Mr. Abara looked just as confused as Javier did. “I would have thought he’d told you by now.”
“No, he did not,” Javier said, panic starting to rise in him.
“He came in on Monday morning and tendered his resignation, effective immediately,” Mr. Abara said. “We’ve been scrambling to fill the gap ever since then.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Javier said. “I won’t get in your way, then.”
Mr. Abara said a polite goodbye, and Javier marched straight back to the lifts, taking out his phone. He did what he should have done from the start and texted Desmond, “Did you quit your job?”
Three dots didn’t appear until Javier was back on the ground floor, retracing his steps out the door and over to the station.
“I did,” Desmond replied at length. “It was the right thing to do.”
“Oh, baby,” Javier said, then quickly texted. “Can we talk?”
Best-case scenario, Desmond would call him, they would discuss a place to meet, and they would spend the rest of the day talking things through.
The best-case scenario didn’t happen.
“I’m not in London at the moment,” Desmond replied.
Javier blew out a breath through his nose and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at his phone.
A horrible, sticky feeling crept down his spine.
Desmond was avoiding things, avoiding him.
Once again, he’d left him behind while he’d gone off to cope with his problems, or probably not cope with them, on his own.
It was most likely an instinctive reaction, Javier told himself as he walked on, fighting to tamp down the anger that pulsed through him.
After years of Matthew, running was probably the only thing Desmond knew how to do.
Javier wasn’t going to be able to help anyone if he chose to feel hurt every time someone he loved reacted based on their history of wounds.
“Okay,” he texted back. “Call me as soon as you’re home. I really want to be with you.”
He hit send before he could second-guess whether he was coming on too strong.
Desmond replied with a smiley face that looked a little too vacant.
It was the best he was going to get in the moment, he knew. And if he was honest, he had a hell of a lot of work of his own to tackle before he would be in the right headspace to try to salvage a relationship.
All he could do, all both of them could do for the moment, was muddle on as best they could and hope something eventually worked.