Page 86 of We Met Like This

Page List

Font:

Font Size:

“Thanks, dear.” She left the apartment with Miles. I listened as the lock clicked into place. I took my cup of coffee to the couch, then stared at my phone for a moment before googling my name.

The top hit was my sister’s channel even though I’d never been on it. The next one was my Instagram page. I clicked on the link and scrolled my page, wondering what Oliver would’ve found had he decided to look me up after going home. I smiled as memories accompanied the pictures: going to the beach with my friends, my nephews opening Christmas presents, my mom blowing out candles on a cake. I kept going further and further into my history when an old picture of Rob came flitting across the screen. Just Rob, standing outside the agency, pointing at the sign. I clenched my teeth and hit the trash button, deleting it.

Great, I really wasn’t making a guy who’d been cheated on twice feel safe. I breathed out a sigh. Whatever. He was theone who’d declared us friends. It wasn’t my job to make him feel safe. “We’re friends,” I said, as if my brain needed it to be spoken out loud to believe it. Why did that word taste so bad in my mouth?

I swiped out of the app and over to my email, checking it once again, like I had been doing obsessively since I published my website on Saturday. Three days and it was still empty.

The Hidden Dangers of Heavy School Bags: How Excess Weight Affects Children’s Spine, Posture, and Growth

What Your Tongue Color Reveals About Health: A Specialist’s Guide

Why Alzheimer’s Disease Happens and How to Prevent It

Brain-Eating Amoeba (Naegleria fowleri): Current Situation, Risks, and Prevention

My other obsession was posting on social media. At first, I’d been super careful about composing the perfect pitch. But since so few people were seeing my posts (based on the likes and reposts), now I just wrote whatever came into my head.

Are you an author looking for a literary agent for your romance novel? Consider someone who is fighting it out in the current dating pool on a quest to find her true love. Me. That’s me. #amwriting #litagent #amquerying

I added my website and pressed the publish button.

Doubt spread through every inch of my body. I had thought maybe the clients I shared with Rob would reach out since I wasn’t allowed to reach out to them. But they hadn’t. Maybe they didn’t know I’d left. He certainly wouldn’t tell them. If they happened to see my posts, they would know. But what if they didn’t? What if nobody saw them? What if I never got a client? What if I never even got a single email? Kari’s words—Call me in several years when you’ve gotten your feet wet—pounded through my head.

I had to get out of my head. Laundry. It needed to be done. The sweats I’d been wearing for the last several days could attest to that.

There was a note on the washer full of wet clothes that read:Text me if the cycle is done and you need this.It was followed by a phone number. Since it was the only washer not running at the moment in our apartment’s laundry room, I texted the number.

Your clothes are done, I sent, then sat down to wait on one of the three chairs next to the folding table with my basket full of clothes. On my phone, I navigated to my inbox again. Empty.

I opened the book I had brought. It had never taken me so long to finish a book in my life and it wasn’t Lord Leopold’s fault. He was as rakish as they came. I read a few lines before my phone buzzed me away from the page. It was a GIF in our group chat from Cheryl. I hearted it and then started to put my phone away when I saw Oliver’s name below Cheryl’s. I clicked on his name and read through our last couple days of texts.

Sunday:

Me:Good morning.

Oliver:Where is the ‘beautiful’ that’s supposed to follow that?

Me:Oh, oops, I must not have highlighted the whole message to paste.

Later:

Oliver:I’m beginning to think I should be offended by the golden retriever thing.

Me:I love golden retrievers.

Oliver:And here I thought you weren’t a dog person.