Page 21 of Back for More
I stay there, in the doorway, so Kate can see and hear everything.
Lily steps deeper inside my office and waves me in. She smooths down the front of her loose black dress pants and studies me as I walk over to place my briefcase on the desk. She looks like a concert cellist with performance anxiety. And I still want to tear that blouse open.
“What’s up?” I ask. I really have no idea.
“I, um…” Her voice is so quiet.
I stay by my desk, about five feet away from her, but I lean in to listen carefully.
“I took some flowers to my mother’s grave on my way here this morning.”
“Oh.”
“There was already a bouquet of flowers lying there. Maybe only a week old? I wasn’t expecting…”
“Uh-huh.”
“I called Vicky, and she said that she and you and your dad have been taking turns”—her voice cracks and her lower lip quivers—“taking flowers there ever since I left.” She wipes at the corner of one eye with her fingertip.
“Yes.”
She takes a shaky breath and then exhales loudly. I’m a little concerned that she’s on the verge of getting emotional again, like that time at the lake. “I just wanted to thank you. For that. I didn’t know.”
“You’re welcome. It’s not like we do it every week or anything. Just every month or so.” I try to downplay it. If I come off as an asshole, so be it. We cannot go down this road, not here, not now. “Anything else?” I start unpacking my laptop.
I swear, I can actually feel the temperature of the air around us drop.
“Nothing else,” she says, her voice, her breath, her lower lip, everything back under her control. “I just wanted to say something about it and get it out of the way. Enjoy your conference call.”
“I don’t plan to. This is work. It’s not about enjoyment.”
“No shit,” she says as she shuts the door, leaving me with a faint tightness in my chest as I picture her, all by herself at her mother’s grave.
Nope.
Not going down that road.
Not here.
Not now.
By the time Kate knocks on my door to remind me that it’s time for her little going-away party to begin in the common area, my whole upper body is so tense from seven hours of trying to resist the need to either snap at Lily for being a sasshole, push her up against the wall and kiss her, or pull her into me for a reassuring pseudo-brotherly hug. I can feel knots in my shoulders and neck the size of boulders. If this is what it’s like when Kate’s still around as a buffer, I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through even one more day of this.
I’m sure Jasper will be making an appearance at the party, so I still havethatto look forward to. He generally likes to communicate with his employees via email and only attends our staff meetings once a week, and I have never been so grateful for his managerial style. But I’m trying to think of the last time I was actually in the same room with both him and Lily. It may have been at Mrs. Barnes’s funeral.
I fire off one last email to a client before shutting my laptop and heading out of my office, relieved to find the assistant desk empty and grunting to myself because I’m pretty sure they’re just pumping Lily’s fragrance in through the vents now. It’s everywhere. It’s subtly intoxicating, and it’s fucking killing me.
To say that the Barnes Group isn’t exactly renowned for having a fun work environment would be an understatement. It’s not old-school or buttoned-up or super sleek, but let’s just say our office parties generally last about twenty minutes once everyone has gotten their cake and a drink and given the employee of honor his or her pat on the back. It’s comforting in its predictability, like the food at a restaurant chain or a mediocre TV show.
So why am I hearing unrestrained laughter and the vocal stylings of ABBA from a portable Bluetooth speaker?
Lily.
The party started five minutes ago, and already she’s the axis around which it revolves.
I shouldn’t be so surprised. I guess I just expected her to be all sullen in a corner because she could be—I don’t know—at some beach in Malibu with that guy from that movie about male strippers. But here she is, holding a glass of Jasper Barnes-approved light beer in one hand and Kate’s hand in the other. She’s trying to draw everyone’s attention back to Kate, while probably answering banal questions like: “What’s it like to be an actress?” or “You’re so pretty! Why aren’t you the most famous actress in the world?”
I am literally the only person here who hasn’t let himself get drawn into her orbit.
