The One That Got Away by Bethany Chase

Author:Bethany Chase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

17

The next morning, I spend the two-hour site meeting for the Balm expansion smiling into Jamie’s guilty, anxious face and pretending that I’m not still seething with bitterness. Throughout the meeting, she makes such an obvious point of praising my work on both the original space and the expansion that I am embarrassed for both of us. As we are packing up to leave, I sense her hovering, building up steam to apologize yet again, which isn’t going to be anything other than awkward; so I make good on the only acceptable option, and bolt.

On my way home, I decide to check on Eamon. The phone rings through to voice mail, so I figure he’s sleeping, but a few minutes later he calls me back.

“How’s the invalid?” I ask, trying not to sound concerned.

“Still feel like hell. Whatever this is, it’s persistent.” He sounds like someone left him in the washer overnight.

I am overwhelmed by a rare attack of nurturing instinct. “I’m right down the road from that Whole Foods on Lamar—want me to pick up some soup for you and bring it by?”

“Ah, really? I’d love some soup…. I don’t think I’ve eaten anything since yesterday morning.”

“Then you must be mostly dead. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

When he answers the door, his skin is the same tentative off-white as the walls of his rental house, except for the peppery stubble shadowing his cheeks. My pathetic heart goes squish like a wet sponge.

“Free delivery with purchase!” I announce, brandishing my grocery bag. I breeze past him and begin unloading the bag on his kitchen counter. “I brought you chicken noodle and some sort of curried potato stuff…I thought the spice might help fumigate the virus,” I explain with a sideways smile. “And ice cream, just in case.”

“This is awesome,” he says, surveying the feast. “Thanks, bud.” My nostrils flare as I realize he has just addressed me with a term usually reserved for young boys and puppies. Yes, Nicole, this man is quite simply quivering with lust.

We load up our bowls and sit down at the kitchen table to eat. But between his flu and my bad mood, neither of us seems to feel much like talking.

“Hey,” he says after a few minutes of unaccustomed silence, “everything okay? You seem down.”

I haven’t wanted to talk about it with my stepdad or Nicole, because they are both too loyal to be impartial; and I haven’t talked about it with Danny because I haven’t yet forgiven him for being right. But unexpectedly, Eamon is exactly the right person. I tell him all of it. And he listens. He even makes me go out to my car to get my laptop so I can show him the renderings.

“The worst part is,” I say, staring glumly at the gray water diagram I’d labored over, “I’m just so pissed at myself. I was so far up my own ass with this stupid green wall design—I was so convinced it was the right thing.

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