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Jesse
“Please tell me that you didn’t just text her that,” Sierra said, reaching for my cell phone. “No one ever wants to hear ‘we need to talk’, it’s usually always followed by something bad, you idiot.”
“Excuse me for not being good at this.” I wouldn’t admit it aloud, but I knew Si was right. I didn’t know what I was thinking when I’d hit send. I wanted to call her, to just lay it all out there before she had a chance to say anything, but honestly? I couldn’t. It was as though every single time I opened my mouth to tell her, I’d found myself speechless.
“It’s not rocket science, Jess.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re terrible at comforting your friends?” I teased, trying to tear my thoughts away from Evie. But it was hard. No matter how hard I tried, she always found her way back into my thoughts.
Not that I was complaining, of course. I just wanted a brief moment to clear my head, to try to figure out what I’d planned on saying to her.
“I’m not the one that told the person that I liked that I was in a relationship,” she reminded me. “This all could have been avoided if you’d told her the truth.”
“Again, not helping, Si.”
“I’m simply reminding you that your big mouth is the reason we’re in this predicament.”
“Yeah, trust me, I haven’t forgotten about that mess.”
I glanced down at the screen on my phone, hoping to see a response from Evie, only to find nothing. Had I crossed a line? She was a co-worker, and technically, I was her boss. I hadn’t planned on falling for her, but I was beginning to realize, my heart and my mind seemed to avoid working together.
Perhaps it’s best to stop things now, I thought to myself.
“I don’t know, Si. I’m beginning to think this is a bad idea – I mean, I’m kind of her boss.” The last thing I wanted was to make her uncomfortable. I knew how much she loved working at Firestorm, and the fact of the matter was that she was one of my best coders, if not the best. I couldn’t risk losing her simply because I couldn’t tear her from my thoughts.
I’d made one rule for myself: Don’t fall for your co-workers.
And then Evie came along and sent that rule out the door.
“You’re trying to talk yourself out of it, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I said with a smile.
Maybe it was weird to have the girl I’d been sleeping with giving me relationship advice, but Sierra had always been there for me. In all honesty, she’d always been my better half. Without her, I more than likely would have been a mess. She helped to keep me in check, to keep me from doing anything far too ridiculous, which I’d been known to do in my past.
She was my rock, and I appreciated her more than she probably realized.
I always thought we’d end up together in the end – after all, we were pretty great together – but then Evie came along, and I realized that while I loved Sierra, the way I felt for her was nothing compared to how I felt for Evie.
“I just don’t want to screw things up before they even have a chance to begin.”
“And you won’t,” she assured me. “Trust me, you’ll be okay. Just stop being a chickenshit already.”
“You really should have gone into motivational speaking, you know.”
Sierra took a seat on the arm of the couch and chugged back the rest of her beer. “Or I could just start charging you.”
“I’m going to go ahead and say no to that one,” I nudged her in her arm and smiled. “You enjoy listening to my nonsense and you know it.”
“I’m not necessarily denying that.” She reached out for my phone, setting her empty bottle on the table beside her. “Did you have this thing on silent? Or were you just ignoring the fact that she answered because you’re afraid of what she had to say?”
“Wait, what? Are you serious?” I snatched the phone out of her hand, ignoring the erratic beating of my heart, growing anxious with fear. Glancing down at the screen, I took a deep breathe before reading her response.
It was one word. A single word, and yet it held so much promise.
Okay.