At lunch in the coffee shop on Monday, she was eager to see Alex to find out all about his weekend. Well, not all about it. Couples were entitled to some secrets.
He didn’t notice her hurrying toward their table. Usually, he’d get to his feet, ready to pull out her chair. His mind must still be on his weekend, on his love. Lance hadn’t been explicit about how long he was in town. If he’d gone away again, maybe Alex wasn’t feeling so great.
Putting a hand on his shoulder, she got his attention, but kept going, running her fingertips across the width of him.
“Hey,” she said, swooping around into her usual seat. The coffee was there, but so were two huge hunks of indulgence cake. “Oh, sweetie.” Rainie reached across to take his hand. “Did he leave already? It must be so difficult living apart.”
He cleared his throat, his focus locked on the table between the two plates of cake. Worry welled; she’d never seen him so dejected.
“We broke up.”
That was the last thing she expected to hear. “Oh my God!” she said, clutching his hand tighter while dragging her chair closer. “Oh no, baby, I’m so sorry.”
Throwing both arms around him, she pulled him close until his head rested on hers. They sat there in silence. He’d need time to reflect, her embrace was the only strength she could hope to give.
Sitting back, she took his hand in both of hers and stayed close. “Okay, talk to me,” she said. “What happened? Did you have a fight?”
After inhaling, he breathed out an ironic laugh. “Yeah, we did.”
“I’m so sorry. Don’t worry. I’m sure you can fix it.” When his eyes sprang to hers, she smiled and touched his cheek. “Talk to him. I’m sure he still loves you. One fight doesn’t—”
“It’s over,” he said, examining her face. “You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever met, Rainie Tait.”
“I’m here for you, Alex. For whatever you need. You’ll get through this and when you’re ready, we’ll get you back into the game.” She laid a hand on his chest. “Whatever you feel in here now, the pain that’s there. It won’t last forever. I know it’s cliché, and it doesn’t help right now, but you’ll see… You’ll get through this.” Leaning back, she picked up a fork to scoop up a piece of the chocolate cake and offered it to his lips. “Chocolate helps.”
Conceding a subtle smile, he parted his lips to accept the cake. After he swallowed, he gathered her hand into his again.
“Thanks.”
“Do you want to talk about it? What went wrong? Were you fighting for a while? Was it sudden? No one really knows what goes on inside any relationship except the people in it, I know… Was it him traveling? The business trips?” She smiled. “I ask if you want to talk about it, then don’t shut up and give you a chance. Sorry. You go.”
Instead of saying anything, he took the fork from her fingers and stabbed it into the cake, taking off another chunk.
When he offered it to her, she was quick to accept. Tit for tat. He needed someone to accept him. Someone on his side and she’d be it.
“It’s been a long couple of days,” he said. “Do you think we could just… talk about anything else?”
“I can tell you about Stacey being chewed out in front of the whole office.”
“Perfect,” he said, forking up another piece of cake to feed it to her.
“Mr. Donal came down from up on high all stressed out about something. He went into Stacey’s office, the back wall of it is all glazed and isn’t exactly soundproof. They were arguing… Well, I guess you could say he was yelling. Something about expenses on the Northberg account… They did really well with Viva a few years back then went to a cheaper agency.” Alex fed her another piece of cake. “Viva tempted them back, I don’t know how, that’s above my pay grade. Anyway…” Another taste of indulgence, then she leaned closer and lowered her volume. “Word is, they’ve racked up this huge bill with Viva and their payments aren’t covering it. Some say they’re about to go bust. If they do, Viva might not get paid… which could leave a lot of people, namely me and my department, jobless.”
“Do you think Donal is worried? It can’t be Stacey’s fault the higher-ups extended their line of credit too far.”
When he tried to feed her more cake, she stole the fork from him to place the tasty treat in his mouth instead. The chocolate was supposed to make him feel better. It wouldn’t do that if he wouldn’t eat it.
“I guess that’s the catch twenty-two with marketing,” she said.
“Speculate to accumulate.”
“Exactly. I don’t know,” she said, selecting another hunk of cake. “Like I said, it’s not my department. But if they downsize because they can’t keep their numbers in line, relations will be the first for the chop. Especially if the yelling was because Stacey authorized a big chunk of change to keep Northberg happy. Viva absorbs some of those costs for clients, but if Northberg is already in the red with us and Stacey did it anyway…”
Teasing him with the fork, she offered it to his lips only to steal it back the moment he opened them. Smiling, she tried it again, but he caught her hand and guided the food into his mouth.
As he consumed the bite, the light of his smile reached his eyes. Oh, it was a pleasure. Such a relief to be helping, to have lightened some of his burden.
He swallowed and reached over to tuck a loose wisp of hair away from her face. “You like to tease, don’t you?”
“Nothing wrong with having some fun once in a while,” she said. “You said you didn’t want to talk about it, but if—”
“I don’t,” he said, easing away to pick up his coffee. “I want to talk about you having fun.”
If he wasn’t what she knew he was, she may have taken those words and the light in his eyes as a different kind of mischief.
“Talking about having fun,” she said, eating a piece of cake herself. “You will never believe who I got an email from yesterday. Well, he actually sent it like two weeks ago, but I just dragged it out my junk folder when I was looking for something else.” She rested her chin on her shoulder to add, “I forgot I spammed his ass after we broke up.”
“Demetri?” he asked, straightening up.
“Demetri,” she said, cutting another chunk of cake with the side of the fork. They were fast running out of cake. “Can you believe it? Months of radio silence and then just out of the blue…”
“What did he want?”
She put down the fork to have a drink instead. “Just checking in, or so he said.”
“Did you reply?”
“Sure.” Alex seemed surprised. “When my relationships end, I get mad or sad, stay that way for a while and then…” She shrugged. “I don’t hold grudges. I’m friends with every guy I dated.”
“Every guy?”
His astonishment wasn’t an unusual reaction. “Gwenie makes it a point not to be friendly with her exes. Tia doesn’t really get the chance since most of her break ups are so messy. But I don’t know, I guess in my case, in the long run, I realize the breakups were for the best.”
“For the best?”
Acutely aware that he’d just separated from his partner, she had to be careful. Her horrible habit of saying the wrong thing in the wrong moment could hurt him more than he’d already been hurt.
“Have you done any work today?” she asked. “I don’t know much about consulting, but I can do paperwork if you need help to keep up with things?”
Sometimes when grieving a relationship, it was impossible to focus, even on tasks that were important.
“Don’t change the subject,” Alex said, catching her in the act. “I want to know. Why were your breakups for the best?”
The conversation was one she’d had many times with Gwen and Tia. “Because they couldn’t give me what I wanted… I’d never have been happy, so I’d never have been able to make them happy.”
“That’s important to you.”
“Of course it is,” she said, bowing over the table as she popped the lid of her cup to tip some slush into her mouth. “Happiness is what life’s all about. It shouldn’t come at the detriment of others’ happiness, but, yeah, that should be everyone’s aspiration. Happiness.”
He leaned closer. “And what is it that would make you happy? What do you want, Button?”
“We need more cake,” she said, pushing out her chair. “Wait here and I’ll get it.”
Alex needed a friend. One who didn’t rabbit on about relationships while he was still raw. She could do it; she could be a friend. It wasn’t in her blood to abandon someone in need. Right then, and maybe for a while, Alex needed her.