Page 43 of Hard to Forgive

“What dots?”

“Are you seriously that dumb?” I could practically feel Mariah’s disdain across King’s Bay. When I didn’t say anything, she continued. “I’m going to lay out some clues for you. Then I want to see if you can connect the dots yourself, or if I’m going to need to hold your hand to the answer.”

I rolled my eyes. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see me. It was the thought that counted.

“First, you spent every day since you got assigned to the same team as Jonas trying to get under his skin at work. Second, every time we’ve talked on the phone, his name has come up at least five times.”

“It has not!” I interrupted indignantly. I didn’t talk about Jonas that much.

“It has,” she insisted. “Don’t interrupt me while I’m giving you the clues. Third, you’ve hooked up with him twice, and I don’t even want to think about the number of times you’ve probably jacked off thinking about him.” She really didn’t. “Earlier this week, you called me obsessing over what he might be drawing in a sketchbook, then you dragged me to an art store to look at sketchbooks under the guise of professional courtesy. Which, by the way, no one spends that much time or money on a sketchbook for a coworker.” It really wasn’t that much money. She just had a different view on the value of a dollar than I did. I blamed my upbringing. “And now, you’re freaking out and have atummy achebecause he’s about to come over.”

I didn’t say anything, because those clues drew a damning picture, sure, but it was the wrong picture.

Itwasthe wrong picture.

I mean, yeah, I talked about him a lot, but that was because I was trying to understand why he hated me so much. I went out of my way to annoy him, because I wanted to know why he hated me. Obviously. The sketchbook… Okay I didn’t have an answer to the sketchbook.

It was the sketchbook that got me. It was the lack of answers to myself about it.

“I don’t like him.” My voice sounded flimsy to my ears, like a poorly thought out lie told by a child. “I can’t like him.”

“Yes, you do. You’re so fucking gone for this guy, Si.”

I groaned. She had to be wrong. There was no way I caught feelings for Jonas Koetter. It just wasn’t possible. The stomachache was a bad hamburger. There was a logical explanation for the sketchbook that still sat under my coffee table where he’d left it untouched. I didn’t try to get under his skin because I had a crush. I wasn’t some elementary school boy who didn’t know how to talk to the kid he liked.

That wasn’t me.

Except it was.

Because Mariah was right.

I liked Jonas Koetter. The more I tried to deny it, the more it clicked into place. I liked him, and I was so fucking screwed.

“I was going to talk to you about something,” Mariah started. Her voice sounded like it was coming through a tunnel, distant and foggy, “but I think you have bigger things to figure out right now.”

I felt like a bad friend for not insisting that she talk to me about whatever it was later. I made a promise to myself to call her later, to figure out what she needed to talk about and talk her through it. I just couldn’t process any more information with this revelation.

“I have to go,” I exhaled.

“Have to deal with your world shifting?” she asked.

Yes.

“No,” I lied. Again. “Jonas is about to get here, and I really need to focus on this project.”

She snorted. “Wear a condom.” And then Mariah hung up the phone, before I had a chance to say anything.

Yeah. I was fucked.

Jonas didn’t show up until 8:23, late enough that I wasn’t sure if he was actually going to show. I could smell the beer on his breath, but he didn’t seem intoxicated. In a way, it reminded me of the first night that we met, when he’d come over to me so confidently and introduced himself before we slipped back to my place. Maybe that was the wrong thing to be thinking when we had so much to get done, but I couldn’t always control my thoughts.

The thought lingered under the surface as we made our way through our final designs. Every proposal I made, he tweaked and made better. Every proposal he made, I stared at with stars in my eyes before he snapped at me to get it together. Mariah had clearly gotten under my skin when she called me out for having a thing for Jonas. Worse, the more I sat with him, the more I realized that it was completely true.

It took four hours of hard work, but eventually, I hit save on our final design.

“Can’t believe we did it,” I muttered as I closed my laptop.

Jonas sighed. “We did this part,” he pointed out. “Tomorrow, we’re going to have a shit load of other things to do probably. And if not tomorrow, next week when the client sees the designs and offers feedback and tweaks.”

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