Page 66 of Give Me Forever

She bit her lip. "Well, I just don't know if it's a good idea, you sleeping with Avery."

"And why not?” I asked.

"You do have history, and things can become muddled. You didn't break up with your previous girlfriend too long ago. What if you're still on the rebound?"

"First of all, I didn't break up with her. She cheated. That has a tendency to kill everyone's affection. You should know that."

She winced.

I hung my head. "Fuck, I'm sorry."

"It’s okay. And you do have a point. Our situations are similar, and it's because of that that I'm telling you this. Even when the other person wronged you, if you really were in love, it's not easy to erase them from your heart."

"Please tell me you’re not still hung up on that moron?" Kimberly asked, voicing exactly what I was thinking.

"Not anymore," Reese replied. "I wasn’t exactly hung up on him, but for so long, I kept wondering what she has that I don't. Why would he even need another woman? And my best friend, no less. I had some regrets that things didn’t work out. Don't you feel the same?" she asked me.

"Actually, no. I'm glad I found out who she really was before things got even more serious." But talking to Reese got me thinking. What did that say about my relationship with Olivia? That it hadn't been as deep as I thought? Come to think of it, after Avery and I broke up, I couldn't stop thinking about her for years. I'd always chalked it up to the fact that I'd been young, and she'd been my first big love, but what if it ran deeper?

"Sam," Kimberly said, "not to be a party pooper, but I sort of agree with Reese. Unless, of course, you plan to get back together with Avery."

I shook my head. "Neither of us is planning that."

"Oh good. Because very bad things seem to happen to you when you make plans." Frowning, she added, "In fact, sometimes I feel like planning has the opposite effect. I don't know if it directly leads to self-sabotage, but things end up not happening anymore."

Reese and I exchanged a glance. "What are we talking about here, exactly?" Reese asked.

"Yeah, I'm not following," I admitted.

Kimberly shrugged. "My former boss wasn't who I thought he was."

"You told Travis you're not being appreciated there."

"Yeah, it was more than that. At one point he seemed to be into me. We were involved for a while."

Reese gasped. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Kimberly pointed at her. "Because I knew you'd look at me with that judgey expression."

"That's not what I'm doing. This is just my shell-shocked face," Reese said. "Okay, fine. I'm judging a bit. You know how things can turn out when you're sleeping with the boss."

"I thought things were good. We weren't super serious, but I thought it was going somewhere. Then he went on a vacation last year. And came back married."

I instantly saw red. "What the fuck?”

“What? How long was he on vacation?" Reese asked.

"One month. Apparently he found ‘the one’ and couldn't wait to even tell me things were over before marrying her. I obviously realized something was awry because he'd stopped texting me. But some people are like that. Out of sight, out of mind. Things were weird at the office afterward."

"I bet," I agreed.

"That sounds like a nightmare," Reese said.

"After a while, he left, and I had a new boss, but things simply lost their appeal for me,” Kimberly explained. “Before, I was excited to live in Paris, and I was enjoying my French life, and then suddenly I just wasn’t. And when I no longer enjoy something, I take a step back and reevaluate.”

"I always liked that about you, Kim," I said. I was, as far as I knew, the only person who called her that. My whole family made fun of me. Apparently, I couldn't say her whole name as a toddler, and the shortened version just stuck.

"I'm happy to be home and working with Reese and Travis. I'm glad the three of us are working together. It feels good to build something of our own."

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