Julie typed, then erased. She typed a few more words that felt flat and cliche and quickly erased them, too. What the hell was she going to say? She had no idea what drinks meant. Shit. What kind of vague question was that? Drinks?
The only safe thing to do was wait for him to say something else. Anything else.
Nico: This is not a hard one. Yes, will do.
Gah! I’m such an idiot. He had to see me typing.
It was two words. Drinks tonight? Simple words at that, but Julie couldn’t help herself. It was in her bones to analyze, overanalyze, and analyze it some more.
Drinks tonight? Practically a loaded question, if she imagined all the ways to read into his text. Was he asking her to join him for drinks tonight? Or, was he asking if she was having drinks tonight—not including him?
Why is it so hard to tell?
She hated that she wasn’t as carefree and confident as Liz. Miss Puerto Rican Princess would say something flippant and cute, like “sure” with a Pantene hair flip and guys would fall all over themselves for the simple fact that she had responded at all.
But this was Nico. The guy who had done everything in his power to disprove her opinion of him. The guy who literally and figuratively saw her fall flat on her face.
Kind of hard to live down.
Julie sat up taller and squared her shoulders, figuring what to say next. She wanted to sound confident and sexy, flirtatious without being awkward. Somehow in a text message, be someone worthy of the compliments and kindness he’d shown her.
This could take a while.
Her phone pinged again. Another message.
A notification alert dropped down from the top of the screen. This time, it wasn’t from Nico. It was only a phone number. No name, but those ten digits were ingrained in her memory, along with the face of the man she’d once hoped to marry.
With a quick swipe upward, she pushed it from her sight. Then, another one popped in.
+1 (702) 555-0348: Are you working today?
+1 (702) 555-0348: I’m here.
Julie’s eyes shot up. They darted through a crowd that now trailed out the front door. How could they be busy now? For seven hours the place had been as empty as a politician’s promise, now, all of sudden, a quarter ’til close, the masses arrive in time to block her view.
She glanced over to Elise to make sure she was still waist-deep in Beckstand’s call. The phone remained glued to her ear, but her squinted eyes threw daggers at Julie. Once Elise had Julie’s attention, those sharp daggers flickered toward the main door.
Out of the corner of her eye, movement captured Julie’s gaze. She lifted herself slightly off the chair in hopes of a better view and the sea of people parted. All the blood rushed from her feet and her brain and lodged in her throat.
Being strong was one thing when Patrick wasn’t around, or when she was sparring with her trainer and only saw his face. It was a completely different story though, when he was moving steadfast in her direction.
Patrick’s gaze landed on Julie, and she wished she was invisible.
She wanted to remember all the times he’d disappointed her. It should have been easy to focus on how he had deserted her when she’d lost her grandmother, or when he made it clear that she wasn’t good enough to be a part of his family. But as he veered in her direction, images of the nights they’d played strip Scrabble, and the way she’d catch him looking at her appraisingly in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth, shot pangs of yearning through her spine.
It was his weird idiosyncrasies that left her drawn to him. Not many guys would admit that watching her cook made him horny as hell, or that he had an insane aversion to Starbucks for the mere fact that some of the patrons curled up with bare feet on the chairs that others had to sit on.
She cursed her traitorous mind.
The right thing to be was pissed.
He was engaged and expecting a baby, so why was he here?
Her mind raced through a mental image of her apartment. He hadn’t left anything at her place. She’d made sure of it, and he wouldn’t have dared let her leave even a hairpin—or heaven forbid, a hair—at his place.
Julie had seen him less than a week ago, and he just stood there holding hands with Celeste without even a mere blink in Julie’s direction. Everything that needed to be said had been said. What could he possibly want?
And why would she even be inclined to listen to anything the lying, cheating asshole had to say?
“Jules.” All six foot five inches of confidence and cologne towered over her with only the desk between them.
When speech evaded her, he filled in the silence. “It’s good to see you, too. You’re looking well. I like this new hairdo on you.”
Absentmindedly, Julie ran her fingers over the strands of her short asymmetrical bob.
Despite the burn of her Brazilian, she thanked the lucky stars now that she’d worn a low-cut blouse and fitted pants to show off the inches she’d lost already. With his eyes on her, she felt sexy against her will.
Her brain still juggled with the possibilities she could attribute to his visit.
“It suits you. Gives you a hint of mystery. You look…interesting and thinner.”
Typical, he went straight for the jugular. He hadn’t said boring, but his backhanded compliment failed to slip under Julie’s radar.
“What can I do for you?” She deadpanned. “Are you looking for a new account, or can I interest you in a loan? We have some great rates right now,” she said in her sweetest voice.
He seated himself without invitation or a glance backward to see if anyone else waited to be helped. As always that air of entitlement he carried was worn like an overcoat. “I was in the neighborhood and I thought to myself, it’s been a while now since we ended things, Julie and I should be able to be adults about this. After all, you and Celeste are friends, so why should we not be?”
Seriously? We?
She knew how the wheels turned in his head. Somewhere in the back of his warped mind, this actually made sense to him. The three of them cheerfully attending one of his parents’ dinner parties or frequenting a fundraiser, taking in tea as a chummy threesome. That sort of shared existence was doable to him. She refused to feed into his ego.
Julie grinned and folded her hands on the desk. On the inside she wanted to deck him in his smug face. On the outside, she was cool as ice. “Perhaps, an appointment with our wealth advisor?”
“Jules, you and I both know that I’m not here about finances. I’m here to talk about us.”
“Us.” Us? You have got to be kidding me.
Calm and collected, she opened her mouth, then closed it again before answering him. She exhaled. “Maybe you missed it, but there is no longer an us. That ship sailed about two months ago when I became so ‘boring.’ Or, should I say, when you got ’sick and tired’ of me?”
At her short measured words, he sat up straighter now and leaned forward, forming his hands into a steeple on the desk. He inhaled deeply through his nose, then exhaled through his mouth. “Well, I know you’re about to close, so how about we have lunch together tomorrow?” He completely ignored everything that she had just said. “We can talk about everything then,” he suggested.
Without waiting for her response, he continued, “Seeing you the other day brought everything to the surface. I miss you. I miss us,” he said, as if it had just dawned on him.
Almost every single day for two months, she’d been on her knees begging for those words to come from his mouth. She had made bargains with God. Today, her unanswered prayers made sense.
In that moment, she felt weightless, breathless. She had been waiting for this. She’d been waiting to be completely and totally over him. Damn, it feels good.
Julie shuffled her papers into a pile and tapped them on the table to straighten them. Finally, Patrick didn’t matter.
When she looked back to him, he’d gone silent, his face turned an unattractive shade of tomato red. Apparently, her lack of anger was a surprise to him. The funny thing about it, she didn’t give a rat’s ass about his feelings, or his surprise, or his regrets.
Across the room, Elise stood at the frame of her door with her fists planted on her straight hips. Patrick had been in the bank many times when they were dating, and it was apparent that Julie’s conversation with Patrick was anything other than business. By the grimace plastered on Elise’s face, she’d found yet another reason to add to her ever-growing list of reasons why Julie wasn’t ready for management.
“You have to go,” Julie whispered to Patrick. She stood with her arms folded across her chest at the edge of Patrick’s chair and waited for him to stand.
When he did, a lost look of disbelief washed over him as he took a final glance at Julie and tugged at the bottom of his pressed jacket. She had spoken—rather, dismissed him without even raising her voice—the way no one likely had before.
“Please don’t come back here again,” she said.
And as his brow lifted into an unmistakable question mark, somehow, it felt like a challenge had been offered.
When the door closed behind him with a stuttered bang, Julie picked up her phone and responded to Nico.
Julie: Yes.
She slipped her cell phone back under the desk and walked with steel nerves to Elise’s office to await her scolding.