Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 133321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 667(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 667(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
“I want it, too. I really did hurt without you, Grayson.”
“Me too, baby. Me, too.” He strokes my hair. “Let’s eat in the kitchen where we can heat up the pizza and talk. Really talk. I owe you a few more explanations.”
He means about why he fired me off my case the day we broke up and I dread this conversation. I’m not even sure I can have it now. I don’t want to fight with him and yet I know we need to clear the air. I know I’ve avoided conversations that I shouldn’t have avoided. I think he feels the same thing, the dread, the wish that we could just go back to where we started. I sense it in the air, I see it in his eyes. He doesn’t want to fight, but we have to have tough conversations. We have to deal with this.
As soon as we’re both back in our sweats, tees, and sneakers, Grayson takes my hand and leads me forward, out of the bedroom. Once we’re on the stairs, he bends our elbows, pulling me next to him. “Talk, fight, fuck,” he says softly, and the new ball of dread in my belly softens when we enter the kitchen and seem to fall into old habits. He kisses my hand before he releases me to place the pizza in the oven. “Do you remember the first time we ate this pizza?” he asks, turning up the temperature.
Do I remember?
So very well.
“How can I forget our first date?” I ask, settling onto a barstool. “It was a week after our meeting for drinks, and I still hadn’t called you on Friday night, so you took matters into your own hands.”
“I had no choice,” he says, joining me to sit on the barstool next to me, both of us facing each other, his hand settling on my knee. “I wasn’t letting you run from me.”
“I wasn’t running.”
“You were, Mia. You were running scared. I saw it in your eyes.”
I cut my stare and think back to that night, to where I was in my head when I met Grayson because it feels a lot like where I am with him now. And I know Grayson. I know that’s the point in this conversation. He knows that, and he wants me to tap into that memory, into those feelings, and the way he freed me from them. No. The way we freed me from them.
Grayson cups my head, and kisses me. “How about some wine, baby?”
“Yes. Please. Do you have that one—”
“Of course I have that one. It’s what you like.” He stands up and crosses the room to another bar at the end of the kitchen while I let my mind go where he wants it to go. To our first real date:
It’s seven on Friday night and the cubicles beyond my office door are all empty. I gather my work and slide it into my briefcase. My cellphone rings and I grab it to find my father calling. “Hey, dad.”
“You still at work?”
“I am. You?”
“Not tonight. I’m headed to a baseball game with my new foreman, Cameron, and then we’re going to the casino in Connecticut.”
“The casino? You don’t like to gamble.”
“That’s what they make penny slots for,” he says. “And I need a break. I’m burning it at both ends. What about you? The new job burning you out?”
“No,” I say. “I love it. It’s—interesting.” As is the boss, who I keep thinking about way too much, but thankfully haven’t seen again since our bar meet-up.
“We need to meet up for dinner. I know the job is new, but come to Brooklyn, honey. I need to hug my daughter. How about next weekend?”
“I’d like that. We’ll make it work.”
We chat a minute more, then disconnect and I’m bothered by the call. My father gambling? That makes no sense, but that home builders show he went to a few months back did earn him lots of new woodworking business. Maybe his money situation has eased up. I need to talk to him next weekend, but it must have if he’s taking time off.
Relieved by this idea, I grab my briefcase and head for my door. I’m about to exit when Grayson steps in front of me and I do what I did once before. I smash right into him. I gasp and he catches my waist. “I do like the way you keep running into me,” he says, those green eyes piercing mine. “You haven’t called.”
I should step back. I should push away from him. “No, and I won’t.” I inhale and try to step back.
He holds onto me. “Do you want me to let you go?”
“That’s a trick question,” I answer honestly.
“Explain, Mia.”
“If you weren’t my boss—”
“I’m not your boss, Mia. I’m just a man who can’t stop thinking about you. Have dinner with me.”