Page 121 of One Night Only
His smile fades but I promised him after all. I’m going to be honest.
“Why?” he asks suddenly, a challenge in his voice.You say it firstit seems to imply.
Now I’m the one to smile, lacing my fingers on my stomach. “So what do you want to do?” I ask. “If we’re going to stay professional tonight?”
“We’re going to watch the sun come up.”
“We’re…what?”
“We’re going to sit here,” he says. “And watch the sun come up.”
“The sun doesn’t rise for another five hours.”
“So take a nap.”
“What if I have to pee?”
“There’s toilets inside, Sarah. Stop ruining the moment.”
He’sthe one who ruined the moment. And he must realize it too because he turns to me, his brows raised. “I’ll make it up to you when I get back,” he says, a wicked look stealing across his face. “Trust me.”
And this time I do.
25
We stay up all night to watch the sunrise.
Doing so made me wonder why I never had before. Especially considering all the late nights I’ve had in this city. But usually, I spend them in clubs, stumbling out into daylight that was already there. Never waiting for it. Waiting for it even when I didn’t want it.
Sunrise means Declan getting on a plane and me going home wondering if he’s right and if my mind will whir and doubt and change. But in the hours we spend talking it doesn’t change once. It doesn’t change when he walks me out of the hotel, his jacket around my shoulders. It doesn’t change when he kisses me goodbye and puts me into a cab behind a bleary-eyed driver at the end of his shift.
When I get home, Claire’s bedroom door is shut and Mark’s tie is draped over the back of the sofa and I smile and I smile and I smile as I sneak into my room and drop instantly into an exhausted sleep.
He doesn’t give me time to change my mind.
If I had any doubt our professional relationship was officially over, it ends the moment I wake and see the first text from him. He continues to message constantly over the next few days. Random, inane things that don’t help my increasingly tetchy need for him to come back. He sends a photo of his breakfast, his lunch. A selfie at the airport, in his hotel room. And questions. Endless questions. Where do I want to eat when he gets back? Have I ever been to the Natural History Museum? Have I ever been to the Natural History Museum at night? What’s my favorite bird? How do I not have a favorite bird?
They’re all stupid. I cling to every one of them. More than cling. I jump every time my phone vibrates. And when the hours go by with nothing from him, I stare at the dark screen as though willing the next text come through. Sometimes I turn it off and put it in my purse or my desk drawer to try and wean myself off it but I never last. Barely ten minutes will pass before I’m frantically turning it back on, waiting for the one that tells me he’s back in New York.
I wouldn’t put it past him to show up randomly either. The mere thought of it sends me into a panic, upping my personal grooming routine and canceling plans in case he returns. Claire tells me suspiciously at one point that she’s never seen the apartment looking so clean and I take to sitting at my bedroom window with what I know must be a “when will my husband return from war” vibe. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic. And I don’t give a damn.
“You could just ask him,” Claire tells me at one point as if it’s that simple.
I mean it is. But it’snot.
A few dayshe said. Only a few days go by and he doesn’t return. And he doesn’t mention anything about it. There’s no,see you soon!orhey, can’t wait to have sex again!Just another check-in. Another selfie. Not even a sexy selfie. Can I ask for a sexy selfie? I take a dozen ones of myself but chicken out of sending them.
Maybe I’m just hormonal. Maybe I’m a paranoid woman with no self-respect but it’s hard to stop the various reasons for why he doesn’t come back, running from the most likely (he is busy and will be back in a few days) to the extreme (he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere or is on the run from the law).
But if he’d justfreaking text me.
“Ben’s jumping ship.”
I look up from my phone as Will slides into the seat opposite me. The office kitchen is empty except for us, most people taking advantage of their lunch break to go lie outside in the sun.
“Where’s he going?”
“Stovers,” he says, naming one our biggest competitors.
