Page 47 of Ms. Lead

I can take a hint. She’s avoiding me.

“Mr. Bellamy?” Max’s inquiry pulls me back to this room, where I have completely lost track of our conversation.

I sit up, trying desperately to remember where we were and what we were talking about. For the life of me, I can’t remember.

“I’m sorry. What were we discussing again?” I ask, embarrassed.

It’s completely unprofessional of me to be this out of sorts during an interview. I’ve never been this discombobulated, and it would have to happen with my star character. I’ve got to salvage this somehow.

He examines me and must see that this situation will probably not get any better. For that, he is an intelligent man because I can guarantee that it’s most likely going to go straight down the fucking hill from here.

“Oliver. I understand you’ve had a bit of a rough go of it since you’ve been here in America.” He waves to the bruises, still coloring my forehead and cheek. “I think maybe we should do this by phone in a few weeks. Once you’re back home and settled.”

I sigh heavily. He’s right. This is officially the worst interview I’ve ever participated in.

“Thank you. And yes, it’s also not helping that I don’t have my notes in front of me. My apologies for making you go through whatever you did to be here.”

He gets out of his chair and shakes my hand. “It’s not a problem. I have your direct number now and Darcie’s, so I will call in a few weeks.”

Once he’s out of the office, I drop my face in my hands. This also isn’t the first interview I’ve fucked up this week because I’ve been too distracted with Bianca. I can’t help but fixate on her when she’s only a few yards away, or if she’s outside in the sunshine by the car and unaware of my watching. I lose myself in her.

And I only have a few days left with her?

I’m fucked. I’m completely, without a doubt, indubitably, entirely fucked.

Chapter Twenty-Six

BIANCA

ORDINARY

We’re counting days and hours now. Not weeks. In two days, Oliver will be gone. Just gone. Not gone for a little while, or even a long while, just…gone. My eyes sting with tears every time I think of it. We’ve drifted so far apart this past week. Well, that’s not entirely true. We’ve drifted apart since the boat incident. I don’t think we ever recovered fully from that, or that we ever will.

Honestly, how could we come back from something like that? I think it’s probably impossible, even though nobody was to blame. That might be the problem. If there were someone to blame, we could have closure of some sort, but this just feels open-ended and unresolved.

Oliver has said his goodbyes to everyone else since he’ll be leaving straight from our trip to the Grand Canyon. He switched his ticket to fly out of Flagstaff instead of Las Vegas as originally planned. Poor little Ava was beside herself, saying goodbye, and I had a tough time watching. She kept asking for a set time that he would be back, for a specified time he would be gone, for a promise that he would return someday, any day.

All Oliver could say, or would say, is, “We’ll see.”

That wasn’t good enough for her.

I can relate, and my heart broke for her as she tried to wrap her head around the inconceivable notion of possibly never seeing someone again. It can be hard to accept. I couldn’t tell if Oliver was as affected by her sorrow as I was. He hasn’t talked about it. He had on his aviators at the time and has been quiet all week, so the continued silence wasn’t new.

Now it’s Friday, the first day of our road trip, and as I pull up to the hotel to pick him up, he’s ready to go. I automatically get out of the car to load his bags into the back of the SUV I brought, but he does it himself. A clear contrast to when he first arrived. I give him a tentative smile as I remember his first day here, but only receive a brief twitch of his lips in response.

If we don’t talk, this could be a very long weekend.

About an hour into our four-and-a-half-hour drive, I can’t take any more of the awkward silence between us. This has been building up all week, and I need to address it before we get to where we’re staying. If I don’t, I will explode into a million angry pieces.

“Oliver, we need to talk.” I’m trying to work up my courage to talk openly with him about our relationship. I’m not usually so tentative about my feelings, but this is so delicate and fragile that I don’t want to ruin anything.

“The most dreaded four words in the English language,” he mutters, flashing a smirk at me. When I don’t comment, he adds, “What would you like to talk about?”

“Us,” I say plainly, and glance over at him to see if he reacts. He doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t say anything but just kind of nods his head as if he expected this. “Things have been weird between us all week, and I just want to know where your head is at when it comes to us.” I shrug a shoulder as if it’s no big deal, and I don’t know why. I do not mean to be nonchalant about this at all. This is important to me.

I can feel him study me as I drive, and I will myself to not flinch under his gaze. Whatever is going to happen, I need to be strong. I can’t be a weeping willow every time things don’t go my way. This is different and on a much grander scale than anything else in my life. But I tell myself that my reaction should be no different.

He doesn’t answer for a long time, and I start to worry that he’s not going to. I dare to glance at him again, and he’s staring out the window. His face and body language are unreadable. I feel so disconnected from him lately. It just feels wrong, somehow.

---