Then I pace the kitchen for ten minutes. No text back. I try calling her office line and a message greets me explaining that Karina is working in the field today and won’t be back at her desk until tomorrow morning. She’s still seeing her texts, though, right? She’ll still be able to pull the piece.
My stomach starts to churn. Maybe I’ll email her, too, in case she’s monitoring that. This is important. I need to try every available avenue to reach her.
I walk into the bedroom and stop short. Tobias is sitting up in bed, his bare back in the pillows, his hair still in disarray from my fingers. My laptop is open on his stretched-out thighs.
Every hair on my body stands up straight.
He doesn’t look up immediately when I walk into the room, but when his guarded blue eyes finally tick to mine, my stomach plummets to the ground. “I was going to change your background to a picture of me, but the email caught my eye.” His voice is flat, not jovial as usual and heat instantly presses up behind my eyes. “I was curious which piece she was referring to, so I looked back at the attachment on the previous email and…wow. Egomaniacal adult film star, hmm?”
“Tobias, I wrote that before.” I sound like I’m choking. “I wrote it before everything changed. And I didn’t think it would actually get published—”
“Ah, but it is. Congratulations. Guess taking your shortcuts worked out this time.” He sets aside the laptop and swings his legs over the side of the bed, standing. “Were you just hanging around until you had enough material for the sequel?”
“What? No. No—”
“You think I’d be used to this by now. Someone taking advantage of what I am so they can further their own interests. But I feel like dying right now, so I guess not.”
His words hit me like a brick to the throat. “You can’t be comparing me to your manager—”
I stop short when the front door of the house opens and closes. Two sets of footsteps move through the living room, approaching the hallway. When the voices reach me, I know it’s Banks and Gabe. They’re talking about the fact that Gabe’s brother is parked properly in the driveway and I want to turn and run into their arms, but all I can do is stand stiffly as they walk into the room. They absorb the tension immediately and grow openly confused.
“What’s going on?” Gabe asks, setting down a brown paper bag that smells like it has cookies or some other baked good inside.
“You okay?” Banks mouths at me, frowning.
Tobias speaks before I can. “Where do you keep the bubbly, Gabe? We’re celebrating.”
“Bubbly what?”
“It’s champ—never mind,” Tobias sighs at the ceiling. “Elise is getting published. Thought you might like to celebrate, but apparently, we’ll have to do it with Budweiser.”
Banks’s chest rises and falls. “Elise, tell me you didn’t submit the mole story. The whole situation is way too volatile—”
“The article is about us, actually,” Tobias interjects. “It’s about us.”
Gabe shifts right to left, hesitantly amused. “You wrote an article about us?”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Banks asks, his expression unreadable.
“Perhaps she wanted it to be a surprise for her—and I quote—rugby coach with debilitating mommy issues and an emotionally bullied construction foreman.”
The twin devastation on their faces is almost too painful to witness, but I force myself to stand there and take it in. The ground is moving underneath my feet, my breakfast on the verge of coming up. I can explain this to them and repair the hurt. I can. They will read the article and they will forgive me. Tobias is angry, lashing out. They’re sure to follow. But I can mend this.
That’s what my heart is telling me.
My gut is another story. It’s telling me this is the beginning of the end that I predicted since getting involved with these men. Everything was shiny and new and wonderful, but this is going to burn away the top layer of what we have. Then we’ll argue again in the future and another layer of this relationship will get skinned off. Another and another until we’re down to the bone. And then someone is going to leave. The thought of that happening, the idea of any of them walking away is causing a horrible, serrated punch of pain in my midsection. I’ve avoided any situation that might cause me to feel a sense of loss, the kind I felt so many times growing up, but here I am. I’m in the thick of it. I opened myself up for this.