Page 23 of A Little Spilled Milk

I thought back to the last time I’d been in a hotel and how he had to stay in the suitcase. This was so much better.

“What time do you have to be at work?” We drove in early to avoid hitting traffic, and I was glad for it. It meant we had some downtime.

“I have the dinner tonight at eight. Then nothing until the morning when I have a few meetings.” He put his suitcase on the bed, opened it, and then pulled out his suit and dress shirts to hang them up. “After dinner, we can do something, or we could wander around now.”

“Yeah, let’s do that. It looks like there were a lot of cool places nearby,”

As much as I liked the room, I was gonna be spending a lot of time here tomorrow, so it felt like a good idea to get going. We headed downstairs, taking the elevator. This wasn’t like at home where we only had a handful of flights of stairs. Our room was on the 18th floor, and I’d be exhausted scaling that many steps.

All I wanted to do was hold Emory’s hand. But I knew that this was work for him, and for work, he should be professional—not having his boyfriend hang all over him. If that’s what I was.

We’d never really said. I probably needed to ask about that.

It was getting easier to talk about important things with him, but that was never the easiest for me in general. I was more open with Emory than I’d ever been with anyone else, but I was still a work-in-progress.

Walking through the lobby, I heard his name called from behind us—a woman’s voice.

“I didn’t know you’d be here!” she said.

We stopped and turned around, a big smile on Emory’s face, as a woman dressed in a very-expensive-looking business suit—and wearing what appeared to be my annual salary in jewelry—walked up to him and kissed each of his cheeks.

I did not like that. I did not like that one bit. It took all my strength to slap on a happy face.

“So good to see you. Are you speaking this weekend?”

“I am.”

She glanced at me. “Oh! Sorry. Is he with you?” She had to know I was. Or I was reading too much into it, which was probably the case. Of course he had worked with beautiful women and hot men over the course of his career. It was bound to happen. And the kissing of his cheeks? That was a social norm, right?

“Yes. He came as my guest,” Emory confirmed. “Vinnie, this is Mia. Mia, this is Vinnie.” He turned to me, watching my eyes carefully as he said, “Mia and I used to work together.”

I shook her hand, all professional like, even if I felt anything but.

“We used to play together too.” She winked.

My stomach dropped.

I didn’t know what it was about this woman—maybe that she seemed so put together, or that she was obviously so successful, or that she was doing what I interpreted as trying to make me jealous—but it was just all so much. I needed to get out of there.

“I’m going to see if our rideshare is here and ask them to wait so you can finish up here,” I told Emory, and before he could say anything, I left.

I didn’t want her to see my jealousy. I didn’t like feeling this way—feeling so insecure, unsure.

Emory was outside not even a minute after me. He hadn’t stuck around long. He put his hand on my lower back. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah, I was just afraid we were going to miss our ride.”

He leaned in and whispered in my ear, “We didn’t order a rideshare.”

Crap. We didn’t. He was right. I probably should have considered that before I made up my lie and definitely before continuing.

“Well, I didn’t want to get in the way of work.” That sounded plausible, right?

“Mia and I don’t work together anymore. We just happen to be at the same event.”

I needed to stop talking about Mia before I said something that would get us in a fight.

“Which way should we go? The left looks busier.”

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