Page 74 of Art of Love
Something like that would be good and help distract us from the looming elephant floating over our lives with that damn job.
Truthfully, I didn’t think about it. I’d successfully pushed it out of my mind, and it worked. I knew though that the time was fast approaching when I would have to think about it.
I knew I wasn’t acting like a guy who wanted the job badly. I was acting like a guy who was obsessed with his girlfriend.
Shit. I didn’t even know if I could call her that. Would she freak out?
Last night when I was at her place, something got me thinking about her family. While I talked about mine a lot, I noticed she never really spoke about hers.
It was sad that her mother, brother, and grandmother had died, but she never even talked about childhood memories, and she absolutely never talked about her father.
I babbled on about family recipes and crazy stuff my brother and I got up to. I shared stuff about where we lived in England, the summer home in the South of France, and trips to Europe that Dad cocked up, but her... it was nothing.
All I knew about Jia was she had two friends. Samantha, who was supposedly the best friend who got involved with the wanker who stole Jia’s money, and Bernice, the lawyer who helped her out.
There was her niece, Lana, at university, whom Jia was close to, and it sounded like she’d played a big part in her life after her brother died, but that was it. I hadn’t asked about the family emergency that made her leave Impasso because we weren’t technically talking about work.
I guess I was just really interested in knowing all that because I liked her so much. Honestly, it was more than like.
“What’s the situation with the job? How are you guys dealing with that?” Devon gave me a curious stare.
I set the bottle of water down on the bench and brought my hands together. “We try not to talk about that.”
Devon furrowed his brows. “But you kind of have to, right?”
“I don’t know. It’s weird. I want to, but it feels so awkward. I wonder what will happen to us when either of us gets the job, but I can’t see past the present.”
“Hunter, if you don’t get the job, will you be okay?”
That was a good question.
I sighed. Honestly, with my present way of thinking, I hadn’t considered that.
“Yeah, I’ll be sad because it’s a good opportunity and one that I wished I could have had years ago, but if I don’t get it, then I don’t get it. I think I’d be okay and probably look to doing something else.”
“Art related?”
“Absolutely. I don’t want to go back to law, ever. This is it for me now. Onwards and upwards. I’m more than okay financially, so I want to do what I want to do.”
Devon smiled. “I like that. Have you thought about her? Do you think she’d be okay? I mean if you got the job.”
I considered that and thought about all that she’d told me. I knew when she got to L.A., she was broke and probably only lived on the salary we got now. I didn’t think she’d be okay financially, but emotionally, I thought she would be really hurt if she didn’t get the job, and that hurt me.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s one of those things, isn’t it? Where you just have to see what happens.”
“Yeah.”
“I think as long as you two are cool, then it will be fine.” Devon sounded positive, but I was fixed on it now.
It was hard, and like I knew it would, things would only get harder. But here I was, thinking again if I should be worried that I was more fixated on being with her than the prospect of not getting the job.
I didn’t even know how she truly felt about me. I knew she liked me, but liking someone and taking things further were two different things. It was also something that scared me.
Trust was a big thing. I was the trusty guy you could count on all the time. The trusty boyfriend who got cheated on, the trusty friend who would never believe his best friend would cheat on him with his girlfriend.
Fuck. What a mess.
