Page 20 of The Relationship Clause

Why don’t you expound on that thought, Owen?

My therapist’s common follow-up question is louder and more insistent than I like. I don’t want to expound on the thought, and I won’t. There’s nothing to be expounded on. This weird, flustered feeling whenever I think of Junie has everything to do with my sister’s line of questioning and nothing to do with my actual feelings toward Junie.

“I didn’t stop by Pete’s because I had to get here early to meet with my lawyer,” I say.

Bill, who is currently sitting in the corner with his briefcase and his nose in his phone, glances up briefly and grunts.

Kiera smirks and opens her mouth like she’s about to point out something painfully obvious to everyone in the room, but before she can, I play the boss card.

“Don’t you have work you should be doing?” I say in my most grumbly, bossy voice.

But Kiera, who is used to this, smirks again and tosses me a wave as she floats back out of my office.

“Thanks for the backup,” I mutter to Bill, who only grunts again then excuses himself to grab coffee from the breakroom.

As the seconds tick by, I begin to wonder if I’d misplaced my trust in Junie, despite Kiera’s reassurances. What does “first thing in the morning” mean to most people? True, I didn’t specify eight o’clock, but she knows what time I visit Pete’s every morning. This means she knows roughly what time I get to work every day. So she should be here. She should absolutely—

“I’m here!” yells a voice.

I look up through my office windows to see a woman with fiery hair bolt out of the barely opening elevator. She dashes through the room toward me, and for a single, but very long, second, I have to remind myself who I’m looking at.

I’m used to seeing Junie dressed in her barista outfit. White shirt, black pants, black flat shoes, apron on top, and her red hair pulled up and tamed into either a ponytail or a bun, sometimes a braid. That’s who Junie is. She’s the barista. A cute barista, yes, I can admit that, but a barista all the same.

The woman running toward me is most definitely not the barista.

Her hair is loosely curled and streaming wildly behind her, her lips are a soft shade of pink, her blouse is a creamy color, and her skirt is flowy, ending above her knees. It’s a perfectly respectable length for a skirt in an office setting, except for the fact that she’s wearing heels, and for some reason, I can’t handle both the heels and the legs at the same time. My eyes zero in on them, and it’s not until she flies into my office, pink-cheeked and chest heaving, that I finally tear my eyes away from her legs and snap my jaw shut.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she says. “I was having car trouble. Had to get my neighbor to jump start Bessie for me.”

“Bessie?” I ask. It’s literally the only word I can latch on to in the moment.

“My car.”

“You named your car Bessie?”

She slides up and nudges me with her elbow. “Wait until you meet her. You’ll understand then.” I must give her a blank look because she clears her throat and backs up a couple of steps. “So, um, anyway, are we ready to do this?”

I suddenly wish there were a window in my office to open. I need air. Cold air. I’m panicking. There’s no reason for me to panic, yet it’s happening anyway. I tell myself it has nothing to do with the woman before me and everything to do with the fact that I’m entering into a contract to hire someone who may as well be a complete stranger to be my secretary for the next three months, but I know that’s not it entirely.

It’s something else. Something I don’t want to face or name.

But Bill emerges from where he’d gone to get coffee, and I know it’s too late to back down. Besides, if I did, I have no doubt Kiera would kill me.

Bill stops dead in his tracks, his eyes bugging out as he looks at Junie. “June?!”

Junie turns, and Bill’s surprise is mirrored on her face. “Billy?”

June? Billy? What the heck kind of twilight zone did I fall into?

My eyes dart between them. “I’m guessing this means you two know each other?”

Bill doesn’t say anything, but Junie breaks eye contact with him to turn to me. She looks jittery. “Yeah. Um. We used to date.”

Now I’m the one with my eyes bugging out of their sockets.

Bill??? Bill dated Junie? I mean, I see the appeal from Bill’s perspective. Junie is a stunning creature who any man would count himself lucky to call their girlfriend. But Bill? He’s a great lawyer, don’t get me wrong, and granted, I don’t know him as anything more than that, but from the outside, he seems so…

Not like someone a girl like Junie would date. Not to mention way too old for her.

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