Page 94 of Level With Me
“You look like you’re glaring at me,” she laughed. “Like that time you caught poor John in the hallway.”
I laughed hard at that one. “I wasn’t glaring, I was just seeing if I recognized him.”
“You were embarrassing.”
“That’s what big sisters are for, isn’t it?”
Chelsea made a sound but picked up speed so she was in front of me. She craned her neck as we passed through some trees, as if looking for something out on the water.
“Why do you keep doing that?” I asked. She’d been doing it the whole run. In fact, she’d been acting strange since she knocked on my door to get me this morning, which she never did. I was always the one dragging her out.
“I’m not doing anything,” she said.
It was the same thing, I realized, that Eli had said to me last week, after forwarding me a news story he said I might be interested in. He hollered it across the hallway, as he often did, asking if I wanted to see it, and I’d given him the thumbs up just to get him to leave me alone. Then I’d gone back to the document open on my screen—the same document I’d been working through for the past two and a half months—the Harringtons’ implementation plan for the review they’d completed on time and under budget.
Though I still hadn’t paid for any of their services, despite emailing Blake a few times.
He’d kept brushing me off with, “Soon, I promise”. Which would have been less irritating if I didn’t also feel like I was getting punched in the stomach every time I saw his name anywhere, on any document.
And especially in my inbox. Even when I’d emailed him first.
I’d been doing okay in the weeks since Blake had left. Mostly.
I was sad, sure. Okay, devastated. I missed him all the time, and was even considering asking Eli if we could change offices just so I didn’t have to sit looking at the spot he’d sat all that time.
It probably would have helped if I’d gotten rid of his fishing rod. I’d first discovered it was still in my office when I’d had a meeting with Seamus a week after Blake had left. I’d needed to distract myself with work, so I’d gone all in, speaking with people I knew I’d be considering for various parts of the implementation plan down the road. Per Griffin’s recommendation, I was meeting with Seamus to see if he’d want to submit a proposal to do the east wing renovation, which wouldn’t be happening until fall at the earliest.
It had been funny seeing Seamus wearing a suit. He looked handsome, I’d realized. I’d known him since we were kids, but I’d never seen him in anything formal. I’d only seen him in jeans and a t-shirt, like he’d been wearing the week before in the east wing; workout gear; or his baseball uniform, when I dragged myself to one of Eli’s games.
We chatted briefly about Chelsea—he’d run into her downstairs—and I knew he was trying to politely ask if she was okay. He was worried about her, too. “She’s seeing someone,” I said, trying to reassure him. When his face fell, I realized how much that wouldn’t help. He was into her. And now he was crushed.
Join the club.
I was about to say something—an apology—when he brightened.
“That’s great,” he said. Seamus gave a half smile, and it looked as if maybe he was actually happy for her. Maybe he wasn’t crushed the way I was, just a good person.
A better person than me. I couldn’t think of Blake without my heart feeling like it had flattened.
Seamus had clearly wanted to move on with the work meeting—he’d sat up straight and adjusted his tie. But that’s when I realized Ihadseen him in a suit—that very same suit, I was sure—for Mom’s funeral. As if that hadn’t been sobering enough, when he readjusted his long legs under the chair, he’d knocked something with his heel. When he reached down and came up with Blake’s reel, he’d been deeply confused, and then horrified when I’d started to cry.
“Oh shit,” he’d said, standing up. Now he looked panicky.
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s unavoidable.”
He had no idea what I meant, but he’d offered to snap the offending rod in two.
I’d laughed, teary-eyed. But it wasn’t like I could snap my memories of Blake in half.
Blake Harrington was all over the resort, in every room and hallway. As we started actually implementing their plan, it was like stitching him even more deeply into place.
It was fine,Iwould be fine, I knew I would. I just wasn’t quite there yet.
But I was treating myself with grace.
I’d been journaling and seeing a therapist, like I promised Chelsea I would. Chelsea had gone to a few appointments, I knew, but I suspected she’d stopped going recently. I had a note to ask her after giving her some time.
My therapist was helping me focus onself-love,she called it, and it was helping. It would be the key, I knew, once this fresh pain from Blake settled down.
