Fourteen #3
“A sudden onset on the way home?” His grin spread. “Or was there a precipitating event? Perhaps one involving someone else in the office who shares your propensity for working late?”
She turned to face him, not at all enjoying his smug expression. “How’d you know?”
“This has been simmering since the first day you burst through the door all riled up about your mattress re-meet-cute.”
“My what?”
“She’s been under your skin from the starting gate, even before then. She was under your skin since the seventh grade.”
Daphne couldn’t deny the charge.
“And after your little Friendsgiving group therapy session, something had to give. That kind of built-up tension doesn’t diffuse itself. You can’t have a breakthrough and return to business as usual in a week. How’d it happen? What even happened?”
“She kissed me.”
He tossed a small handful of popcorn into his mouth and made a rolling motion with his hand for her to continue.
“I told her she could.”
He rolled his eyes. “I need details. You’re an artist and an empath. Paint me a picture. Make me feel it!”
She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to feel any of the many things the kiss had sparked so unexpectedly.
She honestly hadn’t expected to feel anything at all.
Or maybe she’d expected to feel something akin to the general positive regard she felt for her clients.
Even though she didn’t go around kissing them, the concept was similar enough.
“Gillian came in, clearly befuddled and still struggling to make sense of things. I wasn’t used to that.
At first, I was kind of gently joking around, trying to get back on familiar footing, but she was so very Gillian-esque, trying to make everything into an intellectual exercise. ”
“Very consistent for her. She’s a processor. What’d you do?”
“I kind of laughed at her.”
“Again?” Hugh looked aghast. “After everything?”
She winced. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, and when I saw the hurt on her face, it cracked through my irreverence. Hugh, I don’t even know what came over me, but something about realizing I’d hurt her, hurt me.”
“That’s progress. You’re generally a very empathetic person, but you’d put up so many guards with her, you stifled that part of you, which is sad, because it’s a great part of you. One of the best.”
“I know, and I honestly never wanted to hurt her. Annoy her maybe, needle, or keep her from hurting me, but I wasn’t ready to see her vulnerable,” she explained.
“And maybe I didn’t recognize it as vulnerability at first because she was talking about the kiss, the one we missed, and reauthoring with almost clinical detachment.
She basically likened kissing me to some science project or trauma-recovery experiment. ”
“How very romantic of her.” Hugh laughed. “I see why you weren’t swept off your feet.”
“No. I was not. I basically agreed, not out of pity, but because she’s so damn formidable when she’s using all her therapy words and wearing those pencil skirts.”
Hugh nodded.
“But I didn’t think it would mean anything. I thought she’d kiss me and we’d call it complete, like little more than wrapping up a snuggle session for someone who really needed one.”
“So she wasn’t the only person falling back on her professional experience for a sense of security?”
Daphne hadn’t thought of it that way. Had she and Gillian both done the same sort of overcontextualizing?
“It didn’t work. Or maybe it worked for her, which would be fucking maddening if on top of everything, she also got confirmation that she’s better at her job than I am, because that doesn’t seem fair.
She was the one who proposed this whole research method gone awry—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he called, over her increasingly unhinged tirade. “Back it up, Darling. You skipped seven steps ahead. You were in work mode, research, no big deal, blah blah blah. Then what happened?”
She blew out a heavy breath, not wanting to admit to that part. “She checked consent.”
He smiled. “Of course she did. What a gem.”
Daphne rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t quite write off the endearing earnestness of that moment. “Then she kissed me.”
“And?”
“And what?”
He threw a piece of popcorn at her. “What was it like?”
She managed to hold a neutral kind of posture for all of three seconds before dissolving again. It was like every bone in her body turned to jelly, and she flopped over the steering wheel again.
He gasped. “She wrecked you.”
Daphne didn’t see any need to deny it. They were having this conversation because she couldn’t think and walk at the same time.
“You fucked around and found out with the high-school-archnemesis-turned-office-archnemesis. How delicious.”
“You don’t have to enjoy this quite so much.”
He laughed. “Why not? You did.”
Again, she had no argument.
“She was good?”
“So good,” Daphne admitted. “I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s good at everything. I’ll just add kissing me to the very long list of things Gillian has apparently perfected.”
“Perfected?”
She shrugged and tried to think of a more toe-curling, mind-melting, body-burning first kiss.
All her synapses were still overloaded, so maybe she was missing something, but she couldn’t think of a better example.
“First kisses are supposed to be a little awkward. I mean they’re good because they’re new and exciting and full of promise, but this one shouldn’t have been any of those things.
She didn’t sell it at all. There was no foreplay. ”
“Except for the twenty-two years of anticipation since the initial attempt.”
“Which should’ve made it all the more uncomfortable. She kept talking about ‘reauthoring trauma,’ which should be the least sexy lead-up ever.”
He snorted softly. “The worst pickup line in history, which only makes it all the more impressive she made you go boneless in the aftermath.”
Daphne groaned. “I hate this about her. She always does this.”
“Always does what?” Hugh cackled. “Kisses you senseless?”
“Exceeds expectations. Just once I want her to be worse at something meaningful than everyone thinks she’d be.”
“I hope it’s not the first time you two have sex.”
That got her to sit back up. “We’re not going to have sex.”
“Why not?”
“Because, because … all the reasons. Every reason in the world.”
He laughed even harder. “Except for the fact that she’s perfect and you like kissing her and you two have pent-up tension, and now that you’ve got a taste of those sweet lips, you’ll want a taste of her—”
“—Don’t you dare finish that sentence!” She found a bit more fortitude.
“I’m not going to sleep with Gillian DeGarmo.
We work together. I have a job I love and a family to focus on, and at least a hint of self-respect.
Not to mention the two of us would end up killing each other eventually, and I do not look good in prison-jumpsuit orange. ”
He seemed to at least accept the last argument. “Not with that olive skin tone of yours.”
“Trust me. I may’ve made a terrible miscalculation here, but I won’t repeat past mistakes. I’m not going to jeopardize my job or my family again.”
His face softened. “This isn’t the same as last time.”
“Because I’ve learned my lessons, and because I know exactly what Gillian’s capable of. Any insanity brought on by this kiss will be the temporary kind.”
“Okay, let’s pretend that’s true, and in two days you’ll compartmentalize the best first kiss of your entire life, then never take that neatly packaged memory to the office again.”
“Not pretending,” she corrected. “I can do it.”
“Sure, sure. But what about her?”
“What about her?”
“You weren’t having this earth-altering kiss alone. What if she, even in all her grace and practice and self-regulation, is sitting in a car somewhere losing her shit because she simply can’t make sense of what you did to her?”
Daphne’s chest tightened, and she blinked away the residual haze of lust and surprise.
In the rush of her own emotions, she hadn’t paused to process Gillian’s reaction, but Hugh’s comments sent a portion of tonight’s memories rushing back.
Just as clearly as she could still feel Gillian’s lips on her own, she pictured her standing back, strong, stoic, centered.
“Gillian is fine,” Daphne said, suddenly feeling completely sober. “She got exactly what she wanted. Closure. The end.”
Hugh shook his head. “You don’t know. She’s not always easy to read. She projected those unflappable vibes for years, all while harboring a whole lot of big feelings about something you’d basically forgotten.”
“Yeah.” Daphne ran a hand through her hair and shook off some of her lethargy. She’d already thought of that. “Which is why I asked her, right afterward, when my whole world was still spinning, if she got the answers she was looking for.”
“Good for you. Way to break the patterns and face things head-on. What’d she say?”
Daphne forced a smile and unbuckled her seat belt, feeling very much like she could walk, or perhaps run away, but Hugh placed a gentle hand on her arm, and she let it anchor her enough to say, “She said all she felt after the kiss was peace.”
Hugh sighed. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. What else was there to say?
He got it. He always understood. There was nothing worse than feeling the thrill and confusion and elevated emotions of something that could’ve been an entirely new beginning only to have the woman across from you view the same event as a calm and quiet end.