Page 42 of Where We Go From Here

Her eyebrows rise in shock, but she smothers it quickly.

“You remembered?” she asks, blinking fast as she surveys me. She’s trying to play it cool but her irises are molten under the warm string-lights.

“I remember everything you say to me.”

Why the hell would she think that I wouldn’t remember?

Heat climbs up her neck and she glances over to the dance floor. I gather that she doesn’t want to talk about herself and that she’d much rather be getting her sway on, so I try to give her a little comforting encouragement. With my thighs spread wide beneath the table I move my boots further forwards and then cross my ankles behind her feet. Her eyes fly to mine before she takes a quick peek under the table, her cheeks glowing pink as she lets me subtly envelop her. We’re like two kids in a classroom behind the teacher’s back.

She tucks her hair behind her ears with flustered fingers and then drops them into her lap, beginning her incessant twiddle.

“Okay, fine. I guess you know some of the details since you’re employed by Ray Corp, but I’ll give you the brief Wikipedia summary. I was born and raised in LA. I don’t mind it there but I haven’t exactly missed it much since coming out here. There are things that I’d love to do there – like camping in the nature valleys and stuff – but I mainly just miss the orange trees. They look so cute when they get those tiny oranges,” she laughs, but then she shakes her head as if she’s trying to get herself back on track. “My mom’s the CEO of Ray Corp, my dad’s the head of the books. She met him when she was scouting for an in-house accountant and I guess he fit the bill. She’s…”

Harper’s eyes flick back to mine, assessing me for a moment, unsure about whether she should go on. I feel like she’s getting to the meat of it but she’s clamming up, so I gently rub the back of my calf up against hers, telling her it’s safe to continue. I get another flutter of those pretty lashes and then she’s sitting on her hands, eyes on the table.

“My mom’s the breadwinner, so I always knew that I’d have big shoes to fill. After high school she put me through college, and then from the age of twenty-one to twenty-eight I worked pretty much non-stop as a screenwriter – and by that I mean that I worked hard enough to be able to pay my mom back for my tuition fees after my second year as a working woman.”

Jesus, she’s impressive. I give her another rub and she goes on.

“It was slow at the start because I wrote a movie for a friend from college. She was doing her directorial debut but, regardless, it kind of went viral. In an instant cult classic kind of way. And there was a lot of negativity from the… how do I put this nicely? Um, thelower intellectual echelons. But then the right people found it – big production houses, insane producers – and they loved it. And then the negativity that had happened didn’t seem to matter so much. Because then I compared the lovers to the haters and I was like,well shit – not only are the lovers so much nicer to listen to, they’re also the powerhouses that literally run the whole industry.One thing led to another and then I was signing a three movie deal with this huge production company, and from then on it’s just been…” She shakes her head, eyes far away. “Writing, and writing, and writing. Nonstop. And it was literally like heroin for me, until…”

The straw goes back between her lips, putting a full-stop on her suspended sentence.

“Until?” I ask, prompting her.

She looks up at me, her soft blonde curls framing her vulnerable expression. I sit back against the bench and roll my shirt up my forearms. Then I rest them down on the table between us and rub my thumb around the base of her glass.

“Sounds to me like your mom raised you real good. You’re smart, accomplished. Unthinkably beautiful.”

Her lips part and a little gasp leaves her throat.

Why is she always so surprised when I give her a compliment?

I know that she’s got a confident streak in her – you’ve got to when you’re working in a cut-throat industry. But is all of that confidence coming solely from within?

Has there never been anyone to tell her how amazing she is?

An even worse thought crosses my mind.Has there been someone in her life actively suppressing her flame?

I narrow my eyes on her, trying to get to what she isn’t telling me.

“So here’s what I’m wondering,” I tell her, crossing my legs a little tighter behind her calves. “Why did such a gorgeous young successful woman set up camp in the middle of a construction site, in one of the coldest parts of the country, right bang centre in the middle of the holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas,” I tick them off on my fingers. “We’ve passed October, so that one’s already gone. And from what I’m gathering, you have no intentions of leaving before the Pine Hills job is completed. You don’t sound mad at your parents, so I can’t imagine that you’re avoiding them. Which leaves me with about three possible conclusions.

“One, you have some other family members that you aren’t telling me about, and maybe they’re jealous of your success or something. But then I’m thinking that I’m not sure that that’s a strong enough reason to keep someone as determined as you out of the city that you were born and raised in. Two, you’re having a creative block, but that one doesn’t really sound right either, because you’re always writing in that notebook of yours.”

I take a deep breath and watch her eyes widen in shock. I’m about to hit the nail on the head. We can both feel it.

Might as well get this over with.

“So that leaves me with option number three. There’s a guy. The guy who you claimed to be irrelevant, but who has done something so bad that it’s worth you fleeing your home, your job, and your family in exchange for a solo cabin retreat in the middle of a winter reno.”

She watches me in total silence, her body stock-still.

“Don’t think that I haven’t noticed the way you can’t leave your fingers alone for five minutes. You had a ring, didn’t you?” I ask her, my jaw a little tense because that thought didn’t seem real until I finally said it out loud.

Goddamn it. Some bastard really managed to make this woman his fiancée and then he blew it before he got her down the aisle?

His fucking loss.

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