Page 69 of Dreaming of Dawson

“I’ve already told you this, but you’re good at it,” Dawson says with a slight smile and I have to smile back. “What happened after that?”

“He called me the next day, even though it was a Saturday. Initially, he apologized for monopolizing the conversation, and then he asked me to go out with him again.”

“Did you do more than talk? Or more than listen to him moan about his uncle?”

I nod my head and Dawson copies me, although his actions are more slow… more considered. “This is probably one of those things you might not want to hear, but he was my first.”

“Why wouldn’t I wanna hear that?” he says, surprising me.

“Oh. I just…” I can’t hide my disappointment, but he shakes his head, stopping me mid-sentence.

“Hey… don’t overthink my answer,” he says. “All I meant was, it had to happen sometime… even if I wish it had been me, and not him.”

I suck in a breath, unable to say that I wish it had been him, too. Because saying it won’t make it come true, will it? No matter how much I want it.

“The point is, I wondered pretty much straight away if I’d made a terrible mistake.”

He sits forward slightly. “Why? What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that afterwards, he went home. He didn’t stay the night, and I didn’t hear from him.”

“But you worked with him. Surely…”

I shake my head, and he stops talking. “I mean I didn’t hear from him on the Sunday. Obviously what we’d done together had meant a lot to me, but he didn’t call or text to see how I was, and although I had his number, I felt like he should have been the one checking up on me, not the other way around.”

“You were right,” he murmurs, and then moves closer still, so our legs are almost touching. “Is that’s what’s worrying you?” he says. “You think if something happens between us, I’m gonna walk away like he did, and it’ll make things difficult at work? Because…”

“No,” I say, interrupting him. “Because that’s not what happened.”

“Oh. What did he do then?”

“He called me into his office on the Monday morning and explained that his uncle had kept him busy on the Sunday, so he hadn’t been able to call.”

“He couldn’t even find five minutes?”

“That’s what I asked, but he said it had been impossible, and moaned about the way his uncle monopolized his time. Then he apologized and said he wanted to keep seeing me.”

“Can I take it you said yes?”

“You can. Within a few weeks, I was spending most weekends at his place.”

“He didn’t live with his uncle?”

“No. He had a lovely little apartment close to the office. His uncle had bought it for him when he graduated college, and we’d go there on Friday evenings after we finished work, and I’d stay over until Sunday night.”

“Not Monday morning?” Dawson asks, sounding intrigued.

“No. He… He didn’t want anyone at the office to know we were together.”

“Why? Did the company have rules about things like that?”

“No. There were at least two other couples who worked there that I knew of,” I say, recalling how I’d seen them holding hands, and how I’d raised that with James. “I asked him once why it was okay for other people to be openly together at work, and not us.”

“What did he say?”

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