“I’m going to get Mr. Cook,” Jordyn says, jogging from the window box.
My throat is closed up too tight to call after her. What would I say anyway?
No? Don’t get Aiden?
There’s no one else to intervene on my behalf.
Unless…he believes I took those earrings.
As I’m led out of the window box and through the riveted main floor, the security guard holding my purse at his side, my left wrist locked in his other hand, I can barely feel my own embarrassment. I’m too busy envisioning Aiden’s disappointment, hot pressure blooming behind my eyes at the possibility of it.
*
Aiden
“Are you sure I can’t send a driver to pick you up on Thursday?” I ask Edna through the receiver of my office phone. I’m picturing all kinds of sweat-inducing scenarios that end in my tiny aunt getting abducted or lost in the wilds of JFK airport. “I’ll come get you myself.”
“I’ll hear of no such thing,” she says, cackling down the line. “You don’t have time to traipse out to the airport in the middle of your busiest shopping day of the year. I’m an independent woman—” She muffles the receiver. “Hank, if you roll your eyes at me one more time today, I’m going to carve them out with my painter’s knife.”
I know better than to utter a single syllable when Aunt Edna and Uncle Hank are having one of their classic stare downs. It’s a scene I can picture in my head clear as day and it’s probably taking place in their screened-in porch. Paints and canvases and half-drunk glasses of sweet tea are taking up every surface. Hank is probably patting at the sweat on the back of his neck, watching Edna on the phone like it’s a spectator sport, never actually getting on the horn himself.
“As I was saying, I’m more than capable of getting a taxi to the party. Just send me the address and don’t worry about a thing. Save your fretting for coaxing me off the dance floor.”
She curses when something scatters in the background. A mason jar full of beads or some such art supply. “I’ll clean that up later. Now are you going to tell me about the girl or are we going to drag this out another twenty minutes?”
I sit up a little straighter in my chair, shooting a glance toward Leland. Keeping my voice low, I say, “How did you…？”
“You’re doing a hell of a lot of sighing, Aiden Cook. Tell me what’s up.”
“You are,” Leland stage whispers from across the office. “Sighing a lot.”
“You can hear this?” I shoot back, pointing at the receiver.
He becomes engrossed by something on his computer screen.
I sigh again. Loudly. Lord, how many times have I done that? No wonder Edna is on to me. I sound like a deflating bouncy castle. Feel like one, too. It’s not getting any easier keeping my distance from Stella. Granted it’s only been three days since the last time we were face to face, but a year might as well have passed. I woke up in the cookware section at three am this morning with a whiskey hangover and had to do the walk of shame past a dozen judgmental mannequins to the outside world where I took an Uber home to shower. Now I’ve got a headache and a big chunk carved out of my chest. Sighing doesn’t relieve me of the hollowness, so I have no idea why I’m doing it or what it’s for.
Maybe when a man is flat out miserable, his body insists on letting the world know about it. Like an unconscious cry for help. I have the heartache version of a man cold.
Reaching toward the front of my desk, I brush a finger over the binoculars she picked out for me the night we traded gifts. “I wish I had something good to tell you,” I say, trying for a chuckle but it sounds like someone stepping on a bullfrog. “You’d…love her.”
There’s a pause. “Well if I’d love her, she can’t be stupid. I’d consider it pretty stupid if she let you get away.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated is a love triangle with a rodeo clown. Hank.” The zing of metal on the other end of the line tells me she’s made good on her painting knife threat. Or at the very least, she’s brandishing it like a weapon. “I swear. Roll your eyes one more time. I never loved that clown like I love your crabby ass. But we lived in the same house and you hadn’t spoken to me in nine months. Nine. Not a bless you or a how’s it hanging.”
There’s a grunt in the background.
“I’m crazy about you. But I’ll still carve out your eyeballs.”
Grunt. This one more affectionate.
Edna returns to the conversation with a sniff. “I can’t convince Hank to come with me to New York. He thinks there are too many people in our local Dairy Queen, let alone Fifth Avenue.”
I picture Hank standing in the middle of Times Square in his coveralls and it almost makes me want to smile for the first time in days. “You’ll bring him back something nice.”
“I’ll consider it. Now back to this girl. Why is it complicated?”
There isn’t a whole lot I can say in front of Leland and that’s the issue, isn’t it? I want to talk about Stella freely, but even the fact that I am harboring a reservoir of feelings for her is against policy. The company’s and my own personal one. Damn, I’ve wanted to break the rules every other minute since I walked out of her apartment. I’ve gone down to her window box just to catch the scent of her, to stand in the space she occupies every day and feel close to her. Countless times, I’ve thought to myself, go downtown. Make love to her. She will come around. She will see that we’re right.
There’s a roadblock inside of me, though, that I can’t seem to bypass.
I won’t sell us short or start a relationship with a lie. I won’t inadvertently put her in a position to feel…required to stay with me—or worse, sleep with me—because I employ her and she doesn’t want to lose her job. By now I hope she has some confidence that would never, ever happen, but assumptions are reckless and I won’t make them, especially in this case. Especially with someone who is crossing a vulnerable bridge in her life, like Stella.
All of this reasoning doesn’t keep me from missing her, though.
From needing her like hell.
I didn’t even turn my Christmas tree lights on this morning. Just sat there in the dark like a sad sack wondering if her apartment in Chelsea gets sufficient heat.
“You’re sighing again, Aiden.”
I drag a hand down my face, bristle scoring my palm. Did I forget to shave?
“I’ll tell you about it when you get here, Edna—”
My office door flies open. Linda, the receptionist, is standing there shoulder to shoulder with Jordyn. Wait. What is Jordyn doing all the way up here? She manages the main floor. And now she’s approaching my desk in a hurry, gesturing for me to hang up the phone. I don’t know how I’m positive in this moment that something isn’t right with Stella. I just know.
“Sorry, I have to go, Edna. Call you back.” I drop the phone into the cradle and it takes me a few seconds to place it correctly, my hand is suddenly so useless. “What’s wrong?”
Jordyn twists and twists the bracelet around her wrist. “Stella…”