Page 69 of A Discovery: Love and Other Things
I could feel a migraine coming on, the all-too-familiar pressure crushing my forehead. They had been frequent visitors the last month, and I was pretty sure I was starting to develop a tolerance to over-the-counter pain relievers.
I pulled out my tightly wound hair-tie and let my curly tresses cascade over my shoulders. Digging my nails into my scalp, I tried to massage out some of the tension.
A break was needed since I wasn’t getting anywhere with my task. I pulled my phone out and scrolled through Instagram. A notification came up with a memory from May.The internship.
It was one we had taken after our first day. All five of us were all covered in dust, but we had the biggest smiles on our faces. Even Isabella looked like she’d been having the time of her life. Who knew you could look so fulfilled from shoveling sand?!
My smile stretched so wide in the photo that I could feel my jaw aching as I took in every detail of my face. Everything had been new and exciting that day, as if we w about to uncover the discovery of our lives even though I had sorted pottery pieces for three hours.
My heart twisted remembering how close we had been at the beginning. We had shared a bond that one would only know if they had spent two months in a foreign country working on an excavation site for the first time.
Sean’s smile caught my eye. He’d gone back to England after the internship and was currently in his last year. Luckily but not surprisingly, he had been accepted into graduate school at Cambridge and would be starting his PhD next fall.
I still kept in touch with him sometimes, but I knew that he talked to Angela way more often than she admitted. She had been so cagey when I had asked her what she planned to do during her London vacation over winter break. Instead, I should have askedwhoshe planned to do.
As for Isabella...well...we didn’t speak. I had never really been able to connect with her other than that night we’d spent together for her birthday. After everything had blown up when she’d found out about James and me, she’d grown cold. She had judged me for sleeping with the boss, but I couldn’t fault her for that. It was only natural to be critical when you didn’t have all of the facts.
Regardless of her opinions, I wished her well. Sean had said that she was currently on track to graduate with full honors and had been accepted to apprentice under the Ministry of Antiquities in Peru.
Aside from spending holidays with Sean, Angela was only a semester away from graduation. According to her GPA, she ranked at the top of the graduating Stanford archaeology class, and I could not have been more proud of her. She hadn’t received her acceptance letter yet, but she was hoping to join Sean in Cambridge for graduate school.
I noticed the owner of the arm around my shoulders in the photo.Felipe.After all this time, my stomach still squeezed with disappointment when I thought of him. I’d thought our friendship had been real, but sometimes things were just not as they appeared to be. We hadn’t kept in touch after the internship. He had sent a few emails, but I hadn’t opened any of them. I couldn’t move past the deceit. I wished things had ended differently, but I couldn’t forgive him for setting Isabella up to catch James and me.
Angela had heard through Sean that Felipe was thriving in school and that he had applied to be a part of an excavation team in Pompeii. I hoped he was selected, even if we weren’t friends anymore.
My eyes fixated on the final figure. He wasn’t the center of the photo, but he was suddenly all I could focus on.James.With his arms crossed over his chest and a circle of crewmen around him, he popped out of the background like a star in the night sky. He had most likely been issuing orders that he’d have expected to be carried out at lightning speed. His brow was furrowed in the image, just like it always was at work. The stubble on his jaw was thick enough to give him that sexy five o’clock shadow any time of day. My mouth watered at the way the fabric of his shirt stretched across his broad chest. I could remember how it had felt to touch his bare pecs for the first time—smooth skin over hard rock. And his scent, it always reminded me of the books in his office mixed with liquor.
A loud click sounded down the hall. I turned in my seat to look out the door to see what it was. “Hello?” I called out, but no one answered. I had set the alarm on the front door—or at least, I thought I had. It was probably nothing. I turned back around to face my laptop, which was on the desk against the window.
Suddenly, red flashed before my eyes, and I nearly jumped out of my seat.
The object became clear.A rose.
I clutched at my chest, trying to catch my breath, eyes traveling down the stem and up the arm that held it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” James asked, his thick fingers holding onto the stem as if it were fragile.
“I am.” I yanked the rose from his grasp and sniffed its floral sweetness before placing it on the desk. Little gestures like this always set the butterflies in my belly to vibrating.
“Instagram Memoriesis work?” he teased, eyeing my screen.
“You revisit the past every day, but when I do it, I’m slacking off?”
“Those are your words. Not mine.” He leaned over me, his boozy book scent enveloping me, as he examined the photo. “I remember that day.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He chuckled. “You seemed so uncomfortable when I was going over my expectations for the internship.”
“Well, yeah! It was hot as Hades and I was wearing clothes that were two sizes too small for me.” I shuddered at the memory of shoving myself into Angela’s micro-wardrobe while my suitcase was lost.
“That’s not why.” He bent over, his face hovering over mine. I couldn’t have missed the way he looked at my bottom lip, like he was hungry for a taste. He pulled at it with his thumb. “This lip was trembling when I first addressed you. I made you nervous,” he said, his voice gravelly like he was about to own me.
I puckered my lips, anticipating him closing the space and pressing his mouth against mine. But he pulled away, his cheeky grin teasing me.
Instead of mourning the loss, I smacked his bicep. “Haveyouever worked for you?!”
“I’m not that bad.”
