I swear to everything, I want to jump up in the air and raise my hands over my head in victory while I celebrate. I can’t help the smile that fills my face. “I’ll take it.” I nod. “I’ll wait for your text.”
I start to walk out of the room, ready to escape while I can, and then I stop suddenly. I turn to her. “This isn’t like a trick, right?” I look at her, getting lost in her eyes, wondering what she’s seen in the past two years that I haven’t. Wanting to know all the memories she’s made. Well, maybe not all the memories. I don’t want to know shit about who she dated.
“What isn’t a trick?” she asks.
“That you say what I want to hear and then never contact me.” I put my hands on my hips.
She rolls her eyes at me. “You know where I work.” She raises her hands toward the walls, and I can’t help but throw my head back and laugh. Like real laughter that I haven’t had in a while. “How far do you think I can get before you realize I’m not contacting you?”
“You got that right,” I tell her in a way that she has to know she can run but she can’t hide. “See you later.”
I jog down the steps to her office, making my way to my car. Once I get in, I pull up her name, and instead of texting her, I call her. I’m more surprised than anything that she actually answers instead of sending me to voice mail. “You just left,” she says instead of saying hello. “I literally still see you outside.” She walks out of the door, standing at the top of the stairs. I just look up at her, wishing I could take the elastic out of her hair.
“I know.” I laugh, my finger tapping the steering wheel. “I was just wondering how much longer you think you will be?”
“What?” she says into the phone while still looking at me.
“If you aren’t going to be long, I can wait for you,” I tell her, and she just shakes her head.
“I have an appointment in thirty minutes, it should last maybe an hour. I will text you when I’m done.” All I can do is stare at her. “I promise I won’t ghost you.” I’m about to say something when she continues. “At least for today anyway.”
“I’ll wait for your text, then,” I say into the phone, and she turns to walk back into the office. “You look beautiful, by the way.” She stops mid step, never turning back around. I couldn’t not say it. It’s been at the tip of my tongue since I first saw her again, which makes me the biggest asshole ever.
“I’ll talk to you later.” That is all she says before the door closes and the line disconnects. I pull out of the parking lot and head toward my house. My body is filled with nerves and what feels like endless energy. Even though my body is exhausted from the game we played against LA, I feel like I could run a 5k.
Pulling up the phone feature on my screen, I call my father, who answers after one ring. “Hey,” he says, “how’re you doing?”
“Um,” I say nervously. “Do you think you can come down this weekend?” I ask.
“Of course.” He doesn’t even wait a second before answering me. “I will, however, have to bring your mother, or else I won’t be able to return to this house,” he says, laughing. “Apparently, according to her, I will lose some precious body parts that I would very much like to keep.”
I laugh, knowing how hard this must be for her. “Yeah, bring the whole family,” I tell him. “We can even do family lunch at my place on Sunday.”
“Are you sick?” my father interrupts me. “Did you get hit in the head?”
I laugh again, twice in less than an hour, this must be a record. “Nah,” I reply, leaving out that I’m hoping Sofia also joins us so they can meet her again. “Just miss you guys.”
“Okay, I’ll make a few calls,” he says.
“Put out a few feelers,” I mimic my uncle Matthew.
He laughs. “We’ll catch up this weekend, yeah,” he says. “Now I’m going to go and make your mother happy with the news.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I tell him as I park my car, “for everything.” He says he loves me before he hangs up and I get out and walk into my house and wait for her to call me. I was kidding before, if she doesn’t call me—I know exactly where I’m going tomorrow morning.
sofia
“As you can see,” I say as we walk into the big venue space, “we can accommodate up to a thousand people.” The bride and groom look at me with big eyes. “There are walls that retract on both ends.” I point at the walls of the slide, making the space bigger. “Or we can make it more intimate by closing two more retractable walls.” I point over to the side where two more walls are now open but can be closed.