Page 3 of Mostly My Boss
Only Ethan and I had access to that floor and I hadn’t set foot up there since he left for Japan.
Which meant only one thing. He was back.
I walked inside the building and stopped when confronted with all the images in the lobby. The jet planes, the pictures of nurses and doctors, our logo, which was now seen around the world as representing one of the most transformative companies of the twenty-first century.
This was Ethan Moss.
And this had been me too. But I couldn’t do it. Not anymore.
I took the glass elevator up the fifteen floors to the top and used my access key to open the doors. The entire office was open with floor to ceiling glass windows. Built entirely to Ethan’s specifications.
My office, similarly constructed, was the floor below his.
Jordyn had been right. The lights were on. And I was right about what that meant. Ethan sat with his back to me behind the massive desk that was still too small for the space.
He had a private bathroom on the other side of the floor and it looked like he’d recently showered—as I got closer I could see his hair was wet. But it was still the burnished brown color that sometimes looked redder in the sun.
Of course he’d heard the elevator doors open. Of course he knew it was me.
He swung his chair around and I caught my breath. He was leaner than usual, the angles of his face more sharply defined. Scruff covered his jaw and…
“Your eyebrows need to be trimmed,” I said.
He ran his hand over his face and sighed.
“Jules…” he started and then stopped. As if he didn’t have the words.
The sound washed over me and I shivered.
Then I looked at him more closely. The lines of his face were severe and his eyes, always so sharp, so laser focused, told the story of the brilliant brain behind them. They were red, likely because he’d just gotten off the plane after a twelve-hour flight.
He was exhausted. Or grief-stricken. It was hard to tell.
“I know I owe you an explanation,” he began. “I wrote to you. Did you get any of my letters? I tried to tell you…but you didn’t write back. You always used to write back.”
I pulled the envelope from an inside pocket of my jacket. The one I’d typed up the day after he left three months ago. When I knew that I couldn’t go on living this life. With him. Without him.
I set it down on this desk and slid it toward him.
“Don’t do this, Jules,” he said obviously understanding my intent. That was the thing about us.
We always got each other.
“Jules…”
“Read it,” I told him.
“Did you get my letters?” he asked me instead.
I had gotten them. But I hadn’t read them. Not a single one. Because receiving those letters, holding them in my hand, I’d realized something important about myself.
I was an addict. Addicted to something that wasn’t healthy for me. And the only way to break an addiction was to quit it.
Those letters were the unopened bottle of whiskey I wouldn’t drink.
“Please, Ethan. Let’s try to end this without a lot of drama…”
He shook his head and pushed the letter away. “So you’re quitting? That’s your solution to this problem?”
