Page 6 of In Love and War
Before I could say anything else, the office door opened and I turned around to find Zac rushing in, his blazer in one hand and a coffee in the other.
It took me a second to register it was even him. His hair, which was usually styled perfectly, looked like a windblown mess on top of his head. Almost as if he’d run his hands through it a hundred times. His burgundy tie was loosened, the first two buttons of his light blue dress shirt were undone, his sleeves rolled up, and there were wrinkles on his shirt. Actual wrinkles.
Zackary Evans looked disheveled. Disheveled and exhausted.
“Good morning,” Andrew and Mai said in unison, and Zac nodded in acknowledgement before walking into his office and closing the door.
“Is… was he wearing the same clothes as yesterday?” Andrew leaned over his desk to whisper.
“See? I knew it. Something for sure must have happened. He didn’t say anything to you in his text, Milly?” Mai asked.
I shook my head. Maybe somethinghadhappened.
As Mai and Andrew started to theorize on what it could be, I sat in silence, drowning in my anxiety. It didn’t bode well for me that he was already in a bad mood.
“No, you know what, I know what it is. Same outfit, lack of sleep, bad mood… I bet you anything he was fighting with a girlfriend or something at her place all night. That’s got to be it.” Mai was confident.
Before Andrew could provide his take, Zac’s office door opened. He was holding one of the proposals in his right hand and looking at me.
“Did you print off the right copies for these? I asked for finalized versions.”
A few seconds of silence passed before I answered.
“No, um, those are the right copies…” I mumbled.
Andrew and Mai were all of a sudden incredibly interested in whatever was on their computer screens.
Zac just stood there, looking at me.
“Thisis the final version. You edited this,” he finally said with raised eyebrows as he held up the presentation in his hand, seemingly to make sure we were talking about the same stack of papers.
More silence as my mind raced, trying to figure out the best way to explain myself.
“I misread your original email and thought the meeting wasn’t until the ninth. So I hadn’t really started on it. I tried to get through as much as I could this morning…”
I could see from where I was sitting that his ears were turning red. Judging by the scowl he was now wearing, it was due to anger.
His grip tightened, wrinkling the pages in his hand. “You’re telling me thisnow?”
Mai, who was now pretending to be completely engrossed in a notebook on her desk, had been right. I should have just confessed to him right off the bat.
I looked down, not knowing what to say. Though it didn’t really matter. As soon as I looked away from him, Zac turned around and walked back into his office, closing the door loudly behind him.
No one else spoke for the next hour.
At a quarter to eleven, Zac came out looking much more put-together. His blazer was on, his tie straightened, and his hair styled.
He walked out empty-handed and without saying anything.
4
I’d aged ten years in the three hours Zac was gone. I’d tried to distract myself by working on other projects but couldn’t concentrate no matter what I did. This was definitely not over; I just didn’t know how bad it would be yet.
Before he came in, I received a text from him asking for me to wait in his office. I got up and did as I was told without responding, fully aware of the whispers that would start as soon as I left the room.
I only had to wait for a few minutes before the door opened again. Neither of us said anything until he walked over to his desk and sat down.
“How did it g—” I started, desperate to break the silence.
