Page 93 of Ten Years and Then…
“You want to know the truth?” She nodded. “Look over there, see them with the same shirts I’m wearing?” She nodded again. “That’s been my whole life, from the week after I graduated until five minutes ago when I saw you in here.”
Was he saying what she thought he was? That he’d been alone all this time, he didn’t have a girlfriend, he hadn’t been with anyone at all?
“I can’t believe that.” Except she did believe it. It was equally true of her, wasn’t it?
He shrugged. “I mean, I’ve made friends at work, but—but that’s it. I share an apartment with Jeff from accounting, I get into the office by eight, I get home at six, most nights I bring work home or if not I sort of half-watch TV, and on weekends I do laundry and go to the grocery store and if Jeff harasses me enough maybe I go to a baseball game with him or something.”
She reached over, grabbed his hands. “That—I don’t mean this how it’s going to sound—that sucks, Daniel. You deserve so much better.”
He almost laughed, but it came out more like a sigh. “Yeah, that’s what Bianca says, too. And my mother thinks it, I can tell, but she won’t say it. Dad just asks how much money I’m saving up and if I’ve gotten a promotion yet.”
What if it hadn’t been that way? What if she’d followed him to Chicago when he graduated? She could have transferred schools—there were a ton of good colleges there. Northwestern had a great journalism program.
Instead of saying goodbye when she gave him the necklace, she could have asked him to marry her, right there on the quad. He would have said yes.
No, he wouldn’t have.
He wouldn’t have let her uproot herself and change all her plans just for him. No matter how much it would have gutted him to say no to her. And he’d do the same now, if she suggested it.
“You should listen to Bianca. And me. There’s more to life …” Her voice caught, and she looked away from him. “What the hell am I saying? It’s exactly the same for me. Work, home, bring work home, errands. Except I don’t even have Jeff from accounting.”
Now he did laugh. “You’re not missing much there.”
“Maybe not. But you know what I’m saying. Why are we both like this? Why are we both alone? Did we ruin each other for anybody else that much?”
Daniel, an hour later
“You realize your team has been watching us this whole time,” Nora said.
“I figured,” Daniel agreed. “But I’d rather spend this time with you. I’ve got eight hours a day, five days a week to spend with them.” More like nine or ten hours, really, which just proved his point all the more.
“I was at your booth this morning. They said you were at first aid, helping—I assume the girl you were with when you got here?”
Of course Nora came by. “Yeah. Red sprained her ankle. I wasn’t going to let her hop all the way across the show floor by herself.”
Nora clinked her glass to his—their third Mariah-garita each, which he was pretty sure he’d be regretting in the morning. So much for one-drink-only tonight. “That’s my Daniel. Always the hero.” But then she raised her eyebrows. “But what’s the deal with calling her Red? Doesn’t she have a name?”
He laughed. “She’s Kristin. And so is the one in blue sitting next to her.” He told Nora the story of their inability to come up with a suitable way to differentiate themselves, and his solution to the problem.
“Wow,” she said, when he finished, barely able to control her giggles. “That’s hilarious. The perfect solution. But I bet they both hate it.” She paused. “Which makes it even better. It’s so annoying it’ll force them to come up with something better for themselves.”
Daniel hadn’t considered that, but it made sense. They’d probably do that once they got back to Chicago. “They’re putting up with it for now. I think they’re just taking pity on me because this is my first time leading a team.”
Nora wasn’t laughing anymore. “Daniel, I would have thought you’d be able to give yourself a little credit by now. I don’t think any of them are taking pity on you. I think they all see you’re a fantastic Team Leader. Your booth looked great, you were taking care of the people under you when they needed it, and you came up with a creative solution for a problem nobody else could solve. When are you going to start seeing in the mirror what everybody else sees in you?”
She was holding his hands; when had she put her drink down to grab them?
That was just dodging her question. He owed her an answer. More important, he owed himself one.
“I do see it—sometimes. There are moments. Flashes. When I got picked to lead the team. When I got the St. Louis contract three months ago.” When he’d officially gotten the interview with QNS, January of his senior year, and he’d asked out Valerie.
“Who’s Valerie?”
He felt himself blushing. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?” Nora nodded. “She was—I guess you didn’t know. Valerie’s the one girl I dated after we broke up.”
Nora, a moment later
Nora had known. Not the name, and not for certain. But Kim had told her about the blonde girl—woman—who’d been in the Ellis Hall lab all the time, almost always with Daniel sitting next to her.
