What. The. FUCK.
8
“You know each other?” I said and they both stared at me as if I spoke a foreign language.
Neither of them answered for a second and then Violet started to laugh.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re here. I had no idea. How long has it been?” Her face went from white to red and Lucah’s did the same.
“Uh,” Lucah said, clearly flummoxed. I waited for him to get his bearings. I’d never seen him so off balance before, except the time when he was confronted by an ex-girlfriend. “It’s been a really long time.”
“Since high school,” she said, nearly finishing his sentence. Oh. Wow. She knew teenage Lucah. I’d gone through the photo album and there had been a few pictures of him as a gangly teenager (I still would have found him attractive, though), but apparently this girl had been there. Known him. How well? That was the ultimate question I was waiting for the answer to.
“Uh, Ror-Miss Clarke, Violet and I went to high school together. We, ah, we were friends.” I almost felt bad for him, because clearly he was freaking out. I’d never seen Lucah freak out like this before.
“Wow, small world,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” Violet wasn’t looking at me when she said it. Then Mrs. Andrews cleared her throat and the spell over Lucah and Violet shattered and they came back from wherever they’d been. Memory lane?
“Well, you two should catch up later, but I have to take you, Miss Cooper, down to see Dawn so she can get you all set up with your email and so forth.” Thank you, Mrs. Andrews. She hustled Violet down the stairs and I was left with a still-stunned Lucah.
Until I knew the entire situation, I was reserving. So I waited.
“Oh my God.” It seemed to be the only thing he could say. People kept walking by, and this wasn’t the kind of conversation we could have in the middle of a hallway. So I tugged on his sleeve and nodded toward my office. I could have a chat with my former assistant if I wanted to. And right now, I wanted to.
“I just have to ask Mr. Blythe about a project we worked on a few months ago,” I said to Lilia as I opened my office door and he stepped in. I gave her a look that I hoped she understood meant “hold all my calls” and shut the door behind me.
“Sit.” He sat. I poured a glass of water from the pitcher Lilia had set up on a little table. She also kept little snacks there and always had a fresh cup of coffee in my WORLD’S GREATEST BOSS mug. I handed him the glass and he sipped at it. His eyes were practically bugging out of his head.
“Calm down,” I said. “Just breathe for a second. No pressure.” He nodded and gripped onto the glass. He was shaken up. Was it just the shock of seeing her? Or something more? Questions tumbled through my brain at a crazy rate, but I kept them to myself and waited for him to pull himself together.
“We, um, we were friends in high school.” How close? I said in my head. Out loud, I said nothing. “She was one of my only friends. She lived in the same trailer park as us and we used to walk to school together. We got . . . we got really close, but when I bailed for college, I cut ties and never heard from her again. Until now. I . . . I really never thought I would see her again.” Clearly he didn’t.
“Wow.” What else was there to say? “She seemed just as shocked to see you, too.” I hoped Violet said something to Mrs. Andrews so I could go and talk to Mrs. Andrews about it later and try to piece this together.
Lucah coughed and drank more of the water.
“She was my first girlfriend.” There it was. The thing I knew he was going to say, but that I hoped he wouldn’t say. I mean, I couldn’t be jealous of him dating a girl in high school. That was ridiculous. Right?
“I never thought I’d see her again,” he said again. He looked off into space, as if waiting for some sort of revelation.
“She looks exactly the same,” he said in the same shocked tone. I almost snapped my fingers in front of his face, but I waited. I waited for him to pull himself out of it.
I didn’t have to wait much longer. He shook his head once and stared up at me.
“Oh God, Rory. I’m so sorry.” Why was he sorry? Hell, I hadn’t told him the entirety of my dating history either. There were some things that were better left unsaid. But I couldn’t help that little bitty twinge of jealousy and hurt that he hadn’t told me, irrational as it was.
“For what? For not telling me every single detail of your life? It’s not your fault that through some weird twist of fate she ended up here. That’s life. Unless you have control over the universe, then there’s nothing to be sorry for.” Wow, I sounded calm and collected and almost wise. Where the hell had that come from?
“We’ll handle it, like we’ve handled everything else. Okay?” I got up and got on my knees and took his hands in mine. “And there’s nothing really to handle. Isn’t this a good thing? Connecting with an old friend?” I didn’t say anything about the ex-girlfriend part. I was going to avoid that as much as I possibly could. Wait and see, again.
“I have to get back to work. We can’t be alone in your office. How long have we been in here?” He got up in a rush and went to the door.
“Lucah. Calm down.” My voice was sharp. The voice I used when something I’d asked to be fixed wasn’t after the third time of asking. “We’ll talk later. Call me if you need anything. And if you need to leave, then go. Whatever you need to do, that’s what we’ll do.” What a strange role reversal where I was the calm one, and he was the one losing his shit. It was good to know that when I had to be the strong one, I could be. It was also good to know that Lucah, like me, could freak out sometimes. It made him more human. And made me love him more. Everything he did made me love him more.
“I love you,” I said, even though it was strictly forbidden to say such things in the office.
“I love you.” I got a tight and unconvincing smile as he opened the door and headed back downstairs.
Lilia stared after him and I could tell she was dying to know what was going on.
“Just checking up on a project,” I said, smiling at her, and trying to channel my mother.
“Uh huh,” she said, not even bothering to pretend that she didn’t believe me.
I went back into my office and closed the door. I needed a moment. I grabbed Lucah’s discarded water and tossed the rest of it back.