Page 86 of Common Grounds

“This is my life, Emery.” He sounds resigned. Almost flat. “I can’t just go get a job somewhere else.”

Sure, he could. He has a whole portfolio of skill sets the coffee shop has given him. How is it any different than me being laid off and finding my job at Baker’s Grove Living? “Why not?” I ask. “I did.”

He releases a frustrated huff, running his hand through his hair again. “Yeah, and you’re super happy there.” His voice is laced with sarcasm.

I reel back. “It’s just a job. Having a job isn’t necessarily about being happy. It’s about paying bills.”

“My grandfather would say otherwise,” he snaps back.

I laugh humorlessly. “You’re stuck in the past.”

“And you’re stuck in the present.”

I bite my lip so hard I think I taste blood. “I really need to go.”

Trevor shakes himself as if coming out of a trance. He steps forward and cups my elbows. “What is going on here?”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “I’m a shitty web reporter for a shitty lifestyle magazine, and I did a thing that’s, at best, of questionable journalistic integrity. At worst, it hurt you. Now I’m leaving.”

“You don’t have to leave. We can talk this out,” he insists. When I shake my head, he frowns. “People have feelings, Emery. I am allowed to feel something about this. That doesn’t mean we call it quits.”

His amber eyes are stormy and intense. His fingers press gently into the skin at my elbows, as if he can keep me here with him. But I stiffen and step back, even as he grips harder to keep me there.

People have feelings. I’ve heard that before, too. People have feelings, but I don’t.

We had fun together. I stepped out of my comfort zone and stayed a few nights with him. I may have toyed with the idea of wanting something more. But it doesn’t change the facts. I’m cold, and he’s warm. I’m adrift in the present, and he’s anchored by his family’s past. I’m willing to do anything to win a workplace bet, and he’s just trying to keep his work afloat. And I hurt him in the process.

Everything goes fuzzy at the edges, and I can’t think. I can barely breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t have to see him anymore. So my eyelids can keep the tears at bay. “Please. Let me go.” I sound pathetic even to myself, but he must hear the plea in my voice because his grip on my elbows loosens, and his hands fall away.

I look at the tiny, half-empty cups of coffee, the rumpled bedsheets, the light finally streaming in through the singular window in his small apartment. Anywhere but at him. My movements are robotic as I put my phone in my back pocket, slide my shoes on, pick up my purse from the ground, and leave Trevor in his stunned silence.

As the door clicks behind me, it sounds like a finality I’m not quite ready for. I stand there for a few minutes, praying the tears won’t start to fall. I could go back in there and talk it out like he wanted to. I probably should. For a moment, I convince myself of how good it would feel to lay it all on the table for him. To tell him that this is me, that what you see is what you get. And beg him to want me anyway.

But I don’t. What’s done is done, and I don’t think I could handle the rejection if that’s where it led, anyway. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, the tears receding. And as I make my way outside, I have myself at least halfway convinced that this is the way things are meant to be.

Chapter thirty-two

Trevor

“I have absolutely no clue what started it.” I’m sitting at the counter of the shop, and not even the sounds of porcelain clinking and conversation flowing around me is enough to soothe the ache in my chest.

After Emery left, I didn’t know what to do, so I went to the shop thinking I could get to work. But Mike sat me down at the counter on the other side of the espresso machine and told me I was, under no circumstances, to lift a finger to help. James brewed me up a surprisingly decent latte, set it in front of me with a look of pure sympathy, and Mike has been letting me fill him in on the events of the last twelve hours while helping customers ever since.

“That must not be entirely true,” Mike says as he pours steamed milk over espresso in a large, red mug. “Something must have happened, even if it wasn’t obvious. Did she seem off today at all? Or last night?”

“Not last night.” I’m miserable all over again at the memory of her hot tongue on my body, and the thought that it might never happen again. “Maybe this morning. She woke up early and said she had a weird dream. She got a couple of messages before we started talking, too. She never told me what they said.”

“You think they were from her sister? About whatever the crisis was the other night?”

“I have no idea. Maybe?” I perk up slightly. “Do you think that’s what happened? She got freaked out about something totally unrelated and used those comments on her article as a reason to pull away?”

“Hard to say unless you talk to her.” He shoots me a pointed look as he hands off the red mug to James for him to deliver it to a table. He leans against his elbows on the counter between us.

“She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Were you upset about the comments?” he asks, clasping his hands together.

“It’s not the comments so much as what they mean. I was under the impression she was taking this seriously, and she wasn’t.” I chew on the inside of my cheek, suddenly unsure. I don’t know if upset is the right word, exactly. I wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t going to break up with her about it, either. I meant it when I said I wanted to talk things out.

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