Page 4 of Restore Me

I toss back the rest of my wine and pour myself another glass, ignoring Mal’s questioning stare. Maybe if I stay quiet long enough, she’ll forget she’s here to interrogate me about my meeting with James and the contractor from hell. It’s a ridiculous thought. The girl is like a dog with a bone when it comes to stuff like this. Unlike me, she doesn’t understand the concept of letting something go.

She crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. “Fill me in on this meeting with James and the contractor. You never said who it was, and I need to know….for business purposes.”

Her eyes are sparkling with mischief. The little witch is enjoying seeing me all riled up. Granted, me being upset enough to leave work early is rare. Most days, you can’t pay me to leave the office early, but today is different. There are extenuating circumstances, and Mal getting a kick of out my aggravation makes me want to smack her.

“No one you need to worry about,” I repeat her words back to her.

Mal scoffs. “I’m your business partner, girl. I literally need to worry about who we’re working with. I mean it’s kind of hard to do my job without having their name or contact information.”

She’s right.

I put my wine glass up to my lips and take another long sip to buy myself some time. Mal waits patiently, her perfectly arched brows raised in anticipation and amusement. She’s enjoying this a little too much. I sit my glass back down on the cold quartz and roll my eyes, making it known how annoyed I am.

“The new contractor is Dominic.”

The words feel like gravel in my mouth. Disbelief and shock swirl in my belly and the headache that was fading a few minutes ago decides to kick back up in full force. Saying his name in relation to my project makes it all too real. I’m officially working with Satan himself.

Mal tosses her head back and lets out a loud howl. Her obnoxious laughter bounces off of the walls in the kitchen and rings in my ears. I knew she would get a kick out of this.

“It’s not that funny, Mallory.”

She’s doubled over now, clutching her belly and trying to stay upright on the barstool.

“Oh, Sloane. It really, really is.” She sits up and swipes a finger under each eye to wipe away the tears that fell while she was laughing in my face. “From the way you were acting, I thought James had hired someone awful. Like some kid who just got his license or that one guy who kept looking at your breasts every time y’all went over building plans for the Allister’s house, but it’s just Nic.”

She’s oversimplifying the issue and she knows it. Of course, working with an amateur or the perverted guy from the Allister project would have sucked, but working with Dominic will be worse, so much worse. Because he hates me, and he always has.

It doesn’t matter that we’ve known each other for over a decade or that my husband was his best friend and business partner. He just doesn’t like me, and anytime we’re in the same room, which is a lot given his relationship with the family I married into, he makes it clear.

He gives everyone else the warmth of his sunshine—full-blown smiles that reach his dark eyes and tight hugs that make his biceps bulge when he wraps his arms around the people he cares about—while I get nothing but ice. Cold indifference that sometimes slides into burning, white-hot anger when other people aren’t around. I should be disturbed by those moments, but truthfully, I prefer his anger. It’s better than being treated like I don’t exist, and it gives me something to fight back against. Eric used to find our disdain for each other amusing, and clearly, Mal still does, but it’s easy to be entertained when you aren’t the one being hated for no reason other than you dare to exist.

When Eric and I got engaged, I stayed up all night trying to picture a future with Dominic as a permanent fixture and nearly had a panic attack when the images flashed through my mind.

Dominic standing beside Eric at our wedding, his dark eyes glittering with hatred for me.

Our kids running into his arms and screaming “Uncle Nic,” so happy to see a man who can’t stand their mother.

Christmases where he came over to our home and waited until I was alone just so he could give me the full rundown on everything he thought I’d done wrong that day.

Overwhelmed, I turned over and placed my head on Eric’s chest, nestling into his warmth and firing off questions about how to get his grumpy, moody, asshole of a best friend to like me. The only advice he’d given me before falling asleep was to stop calling him by his full name.

“He hates when people call him Dominic, babe.”

It was the worst advice Eric had ever given me. Just the idea of using one of his nicknames made my stomach lurch. I couldn’t call him Dom or Nic like everyone else did. Not when he looked at me like I was gum on the sole of his favorite pair of Nikes. Nicknames indicated warmth, friendship, intimacy, and we had none of that.

Dominic treated me like an outsider. An unwelcome force that slithered into his inner circle, fell in love with one of his best friends, and enamored herself to the other. I was nothing to him but an inconvenience he had to deal with to spend time with the people he loved.

And nothing—not even losing Eric four years ago at the hands of a drunk driver — has changed the way he views me.

I pin Mal with a hard glare. “Do I have to remind you the man hates me?”

I don’t. She’s well aware of the state of my relationship with Dominic.

“He doesn’t hate you, Sloane.” She gives an exaggerated roll of her round eyes when I arch a questioning brow at her. “So you guys don’t get along. I’ve seen you work with tons of assholes and still manage to get the job done. Hell, it’s not like James is a walk in the park either.”

That’s true. James is young, handsome, rich, and used to getting everything he wants: cars, clothes, properties, businesses, women, and the like. He can be a jerk, but he’s never one to me. Sometimes, he can be a little too friendly. A longing look here, a lingering touch there, posting pictures of us from events we both happened to be at on his Instagram with captions that made it seem like we didn’t just run into each other.

He’s even asked me out on dates before, and every time I turn him down he just smiles and says ‘Next time.’ I’ve never mentioned any of this to Mal. Even though me going out on a date is rarer than me leaving work early, she can still be pretty sensitive about it.

---