Page 86 of Love Off Course

“Sounds like good friends.”

“The best.”

“Is that why you’re warming up to me and reaching out?” Helen asks.

“I’m finally seeing what’s around me rather than what’s out in front of me. I’ve been so goal focused, I haven’t done much of stopping to smell the roses.”

“They smell sweet. Beautiful too. I used to be like you, you know.”

I frown. “You?”

“Until I met Wayne. I got pregnant and things changed. My career wasn’t as important as growing my family was. Paychecks were nice, but they didn’t make me feel the way my husband and kids did. My priorities became different.”

“I think I can understand that for the first time in my life,” I admit. “I just don’t know what to do with myself. I met a guy…”

She grins and I wave her off.

“It was apparently a fling. Nothing permanent. He changed me, though. I can’t stop thinking about him. I fell in love with him. Fast and hard. But he broke me.”

“A girl like you, Miss Reid, doesn’t break. She might get rattled or knocked down or cracked, but she never breaks.”

“I’m not that tough,” I argue.

“I beg to differ.”

“You think I’m something I’m not.”

“I know exactly who you are. You’re a daddy’s girl who lost her mother at a young age. You spent your entire life clinging to your father and trying so hard to show him how wonderful you are. He sees, sweetheart. The man can talk my ear off for days about how perfect you are.”

My eyes well with tears and I laugh. “I’m his princess.”

“He wants you to be happy,” she tells me. “You’re strong and resilient, but he wants you to be soft and vulnerable. To experience love and happiness like he’s known with both yourmother and Mona. You deny yourself of basic human emotions, honey. It’s time to feel.”

“It hurts to feel,” I snap.

She doesn’t flinch, simply shrugs. “It’s better than being numb.”

I close my eyes and allow the pain to seep into my bones. God, I miss him. So much. “Doesn’t feel all so wonderful,” I grumble.

She laughs. “In life we take the good with the bad. It’s not all or nothing.”

“Why have you been holding out on all this life advice, Helen? We totally should dock your pay retroactive for three years,” I tease.

“Is it too late to quit and take that doubling my salary offer?” she jokes back.

“You quit and I’ll hunt you down,” I threaten with a grin. “This company needs you.”

Her phone buzzes and she perks up. “We can negotiate my salary later over lunch one day. Right now we have a meeting with Mr. Birch and Miss Villegas.”

“We can’t let Damian distract me,” I tell her as I stand. “He gets onto the topic of hot pilots and I forget what we were talking about.”

She chuckles. “Crack the whip and keep the meeting on task. Got it. This is why you pay me the big bucks.”

“Double the big bucks,” I say with a wink. “Now earn that money and make sure to mute that boy the moment he starts talking about his glittery glowstick.”

“His glittery what?”

“Don’t ask. Seriously, just mute him.”

---