Page 24 of The Way You Hurt Me

“I know. I can’t even jog—they try to give me a black eye every time I move a little too fast.”

“Let’s not pretend you’d jog otherwise,” she says, because she knows me too well.

Yoga and core in front of the TV? If I must. But I draw the line at cardio.

“How are you, darling? It’s been too long. I know we text, but it’s just not the same as having you next door.”

“We haven’t been next door to each other in, like, six years,” I say with a snort. “But I’m good. I just started my first job.”

“Fuck.” She grimaces. “A job? That’s it. I’m officially old.”

“Well, I am a few years ahead. I think we can wait a couple of years before looking for wrinkles or white hair.”

“White hair,” she wheezes. “You’re so cruel.”

I have fun, certainly, but I can’t shake the feeling I’m not truly home. Maybe it’s because I barely see Morgan and Cam. But maybe it’s also the fact that after six years, New York is more familiar and comfortable to me. Thorn Falls is a place I’ve truly left behind. I feel small and young here. Maybe I should have said that to Dimitri when he told me to come back for Christmas.

But to be fair, it’s once per year. It won’t kill me.

I only spend the weekend in town, and then I’m back in the city that never sleeps. There are cake leftovers in the fridge, and Lucy kept the cardboard stand, using it to display our spices next to the stove. It’s adorable, though being greeted by a Dimitri reminder as soon as I walk into my kitchen isn’t good for me.

Maybe I should make an appointment with my shrink. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her, and she’ll make sense of all the mess in my head regarding Dimitri’s reappearance in my world better than I can.

Well, not a reappearance as much as a cameo. He just showed up at a party. I probably won’t see him for ages now. Until next Christmas at the earliest.

I sigh, falling in bed. Occupying myself wondering whether I should text—to thank him for the breakfast; to say it’s fine, he can come to Christmas and I will too, like a grown-up—or ignore him, I don’t think much about the fact that I’m going back to work tomorrow.

I won’t lie. My job sucks.

Well, maybe not the job itself. I had thirteen interviews in various industries, and ended up choosing IT because it’s the easiest for me—my sister has been talking coding to me since I was in diapers, it feels like. I wanted a job I could just leave at the door when I clock out at six. And it’s just that: coding, checking other people’s code, brainstorming about innovative ways to approach issues.

The problem is my boss. Not my direct supervisor—the team leader, a forty-year-old mom of three, is just fine, professional, and to the point. But in the ten days since I started, her boss, the division’s leader, has found his way to my desk almost every day, and has looked down my sensible blouse or stared at my ass far too much.

Look, I get it: office romances are all the rage for a reason. It could be nice to be pursued by a colleague, under the right circumstances, but he’s old, overweight, unattractive, with bad breath, and overall gross. Slimy is the word I’d use to describe him. He makes me uncomfortable. So much so, I’ve considered resigning. Except quitting a job I just started can’t be good for my resume. If I turn around now to try to get into the jobs I bypassed, there will be uncomfortable questions. It’s all around a shitty situation.

I might freak about Dimitri more than anything else on Sunday night, but come Monday, my shoulder tension as I ride the metro is all about Mr. Lloyds and his wandering eyes. I mean, he might just look. It’s gross, but he would hardly be the only man watching me. It’s just that most pay for the privilege, and do it behind their screens, away from me. Not to mention, I catch something I don’t like in his gaze. Something that makes me think he feels completely entitled to stare wherever he’d like, as much as he wants. That makes me highly uncomfortable.

But he doesn’t cross a line, so for the rest of the week, I just take the probing stares.

Six months. Six months here, and I’ll quit. Iwasaccepted for various other jobs. There’s no reason my prospects will have completely disappeared in six months. Naturally they’ll ask why I quit so fast, and I’ll look flighty when I say it just wasn’t a good fit, but that can’t be helped.

By the end of the week, I’m thoroughly exhausted, with a crick in my neck after tensing so much every time he found a reason to approach my cubicle. I’ve observed him often enough to know he doesn’t do that to any of the male employees—nor most of the females. His sole targets are me and Rose, another pretty girl, though she’s been working here for longer.

I decide I need an outlet. A way to chill. And to me, that means filming a video.

11

DIMITRI

I’m distracted the day after, and the day after that. A week has passed and I can honestly say I still think of Willow in that fucking dress approximately every thirty-seven seconds, which is an improvement.

Honestly, she took me aback. I mean, I get updates. I see pictures. Videos. Plenty of those. I knew what she looks like now. I thought I was prepared for a face-to-face.

What a fucking joke. There’s not a man alive prepared for Willow Brown.

God, that ass.

I need to do something about this. The question is what, exactly.

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