Chapter 3
Present
After a month of working in the office next to Sebastian, Emily was weirdly okay. She was very surprised by this turn of events because being around Sebastian here had never been easy for her, including when they were just fresh-faced interns.
Other than one “You made them delete the group chat, didn't you?” she was able to avoid any conversation with him. They kept it strictly professional. It helped that Sebastian was still finishing his mandatory training. He hadn't started working yet, which Emily knew was about to change very soon.
She was glad he had stopped sharing their past excursions with the team, though. Small wins! She would know if he was because Marissa wasn’t just good at her work, she had superhearing and an oversharing problem, too. She was the perfect assistant.
Emily looked at the time again and sighed. Maybe Sebastian stepping up wouldn’t be the worst thing. All the late nights were making her cranky.
Or ‘more cranky,’ as Marissa had corrected her.
Emily’s phone buzzed suddenly with a FaceTime call, a name on the screen she unfortunately couldn't ignore.
“Emily Ruth Bailey, don’t tell me you’re still at the office! It’s after 11 pm, babe!” her best friend’s concerned face said on her phone screen.
“Yeah, yeah. Why are you up at 11 pm, though? I thought you were trying out the adult people schedule?” Emily deflected. It had become disappointingly easy to distract Ray lately.
“Your goddaughter is refusing to let me sleep,” Ray complained, countering it by looking down adoringly at her belly. “I have to use the bathroom five times a night, so I thought I would try this new routine where you go to bed when you’re so tired your brain just gives up on waking you,” Ray said.
“Well, that sounds like a good plan,” Emily sympathized. “How is Jess taking the new routine?”
“Oh, she decided it was a better idea to adapt after suggesting once that I should reconsider,” Ray said, looking behind the camera with a smirk. Did her eyes glow for a millisecond?
Emily felt her goosebumps rising. “What did you do to poor Jess?” she asked. She completely believed that if something could make the unflappable Ray snap, it was pregnancy. She needed to know if she had ‘body hiding’ in her future.
Ray laughed. That didn’t ease Emily’s worries. “Nothing!” Ray said. “The first step of conflict resolution is conversation, remember?” she assured her.
“What’s the next step?” Emily asked hesitantly. Might as well be prepared for the future.
“Oh, you’ll know,” Ray said ominously.
So, Emily shut her laptop, giving up on getting any work done tonight, and gave her full attention to Ray’s switching from complaining how every minute was so annoying to stressing how she was literally performing a miracle right now.
But she regretted her decision when Ray changed the topic. “How’s my lovely ex treating you?” she asked. She didn’t even try to be subtle about her curiosity. Emily wouldn’t be surprised if this was the entire reason behind this late-night call. Sleep tended to lower inhibitions, and Ray was just evil enough to use that against her.
But who was she kidding? She needed to talk about Sebastian with someone, and Ray was the best person for thejob. So, she decided to be honest after all. “Almost alright. But it kinda feels like the calm before a storm, you know?”
“I don’t know why you’re so worried, especially for someone who can’t stop declaring she doesn’t care about him anymore,” Ray commented.
Urgh, how did Emily forget Ray was pro-Seb? “Of course, I don’t care about him! But I also don’t trust him, so it’s not the best to have him working here,” Emily countered.
“What do you think he’ll do, Em?” Ray asked patiently, making Emily feel like a child complaining about minor inconveniences. “He’s good at his job. That’s why your father let him come back,” she hammered in. “Besides, he’d never do anything to hurt you.”
That made Emily scoff. “Are you sure?” she asked, raising her eyebrow. “I don’t know why you keep taking his side after everything,” she said, feeling abandoned. “I know you guys were closer than us, but he left you, too!”
“First, you know that’s not true, Em. You’ve been my best friend for as long as I can remember. It was just one thing I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. It had nothing to do with my relationship with Seb,” Ray said, repeating the same reassurance she’d given Emily for years.
And Emily did what she always did after she brought up their past. She apologized. “You know what, you’re right. Sorry for bringing that up. It was so long ago, it doesn’t matter.”
As always, Ray let it go, even though Emily was sure she wasn’t convinced. Emily hated that she still felt residual hurt every time this conversation came up, but it wasn’t Ray’s fault. It was Sebastian’s! Emily wasn’t sure how, but she had decided it was. “Why do you still trust him?” Emily asked, genuinely curious.
“I just do,” Ray said, looking sure.
“You’ve been talking to him, haven’t you?” Emily asked, trying to hide how much Ray’s answer was going to hurt her.
“He reached out after we came back from Mexico, and we might have met a few times since,” Ray said, too focused on fixing her blanket over her to look at the screen.
