Keeping Pace (14 page)

I unlocked the building, at once influenced by the silence. Something about being the only person moving, the only noisemaker, made me want to honor the still air by not disturbing it. I moved unhurriedly, glad I’d chosen sensible flats over heels. Although most of the offices were carpeted, the hallway would have echoed the staccato sounds of my shoes if I’d worn them.

A noise from one of the offices drifted to me, and I slowed my pace. Since I’d been the one to unlock the doors, I’d been the first through the building. Right?

Maybe it was nothing, but my gut insisted I should cautiously investigate. At this time of the morning, no one would normally be here. It didn’t mean someone couldn’t be here, obviously, but I was curious to know who could have beaten me.

As I moved closer, the noise became more pronounced. And it wasn’t noise, at least not in the sense I’d thought of it earlier. I listened to the throaty sounds of a woman’s voice speaking. She sounded familiar, but her speech was a little breathy as if she’d just finished exercising. Her volume, and therefore, lack of stealth convinced me she wasn’t afraid of being discovered, which put my warning bells back on silent.

“Hey—”
Beth
fell from my lips after I turned the corner. I’d finally recognized her, all right. Finding her sitting on a desk, a man standing between her spread legs, had been unexpected. His hand covered her bare breast, the skin turning white beneath his grip. He was still wearing a shirt, his pants bundled around his ankles, while Beth’s shirt was open, her bra pushed above her ample breasts. Whatever skirt or pants she’d been wearing were absent from my view.

They must not have heard the start of my salutation, because he continued to thrust into her while she issued commands to him, using words I hadn’t realized she knew. “That’s it. Fuck me,” she said after a long moan. “Fuck that pussy, Lou.”

I’d almost backed away in time. Really I didn’t care if she was having an office tryst. But the moment I realized it was my boss—the friend who’d come on to me time and again over the past month—the same one who’d promoted Beth standing there, I came to an abrupt halt.

The betrayal stung as if my face had been slapped. Heat flooded both cheeks, though, enough to make my vision cloud with anger. I stalked into the room, shaking with barely contained rage. How long had this been going on? How close had I come to resuming a romantic relationship with Lou? I’d believed him when he said he wanted something long-term. I’d almost been willing to give up Josh for him.

Beth was young and impressionable. I could easily forgive her naiveté in sleeping with the boss. It’s one of those life lessons that isn’t fully appreciated until the repercussions come back to haunt you.

But Lou? He’d been my friend.

“Good morning!” I announced loudly, with enough cheer to make it seem I spoke to a room full of kindergarteners. Ignoring their frantic scrambling, I strode to the light switch and found great satisfaction in flicking it.

“Damn it, Regina—” Lou had the nerve to sound ticked off.

“Don’t tell anyone, please…” Beth pleaded at the same time.

I watched dispassionately as they struggled to get their clothing back in place. Lou’s cursing and Beth’s pleading left me strangely unmoved.

Hands on hips, I asked, “How many others are you fucking, Lou? How many women are believing the little seduction act you’re perpetrating?” I looked down my nose at Beth. “Did he tell you he was trying to get into my pants for the last couple of weeks? Guess that makes two that we know of. You should ask him how many more he’s sleeping with. And look at that…you without a condom.”

Beth’s flushed face paled. She glanced into Lou’s angry face. “You said—” Her voice trembled.

Still in mock-falsetto, I kept going. “I’m leaving for the day—no, I’m taking a leave of absence.” My voice hardened. “Beth can handle whatever projects I have outstanding and whatever she can’t, you can.”

“Don’t do this.” The muscle in his jaw ticked as he spoke, and that evidence of his emotion served to ratchet my own ire.

“Good-bye, Lou. I’ll be back. Maybe in a few weeks. Maybe in a year. Maybe not at all. Either way, you save my job for me.” I stared him in the eyes. “I hope we have an understanding.”

I turned on my heel, not bothering to wait for his reply.

Chapter Fifteen

Despite the way my stomach churned, emotion eating me from the inside out, I forced myself to pull into a local coffee shop. Inside, people milled about, customers already forming a line, employees moving efficiently to control the tide of orders. My phone had rung twice already, and my heart fell while my anger rose when both times it had been Lou’s number on the display screen.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on
. Cursing wasn’t a part of my everyday language, but if anyone deserved it, my boss did.

But as angry as I was with Lou for his betrayal, I was angrier with myself for wanting to believe his duplicity. I’d let myself believe we would be good together, despite the past proving the very opposite. While Josh might be young, he’d never once made me doubt his intentions toward me. If anything, it was the way he wore his heart on his sleeve that sent me running. I’d conveniently used Josh’s age as a reason for why things couldn’t work between us, when in fact, they were working just fine. When I let them, at least.

By the time I’d finished consuming the coffee and bagel breakfast I’d ordered, my conviction about Josh had grown until it was unshakable. The only hindrance now was my worry that he’d finally had enough, and no matter what I said, would reject me on general principle. I wouldn’t blame him. Nor would I let what we could be together go without a fight.

During the drive home, I rehearsed the speech I wanted to give him, in between telling myself I should just go with the flow and say whatever came naturally. Maybe I’d do something in between. Probably I would.

But when I turned down the road leading to my house, my gaze went past my home and to the house next door. The bagel turned into a rock in my stomach the moment I realized the Range Rover was gone.

I pulled into my driveway, minutes past the time I would have normally left it for the day and tried not to let his absence get me down. I’d simply go inside, and wait for him to come home again. The car still idled while my mind instantly rejected that idea. Was I really going to sit back and wait for Josh to return, hoping he’d forgive me, hoping he wouldn’t reject my love?

I put the car into reverse.

Or was I going to find the man and do whatever it took to make him understand the depth of my emotion, the sheer idiocy of my earlier rejection of his feelings? I’d been hiding behind the safety of my husband’s memory, trudging from day to day through something that wasn’t really my life. Not the life it had once been. And then I’d met this man who dared to gently nudge my mourning to the background, who with ever increasing patience helped me baby-step back into a life worth living. No—he didn’t deserve to be left bewildered by my recent behavior for too long—and it had been too long.
 

Thanks to a lead foot, my trip into the city took just under thirty minutes. I headed straight for the university, muttering a plea that I would spot a familiar Range Rover in one of the many parking lots. Hopeful? Yes. Probable? Doubtful.

I used the time getting to the busy university devising a plan. At this time of day, Josh would most likely be in one of two places. If he’d gone to the library as I suspected, I stood a chance at finding him. If he’d taken a break for breakfast, my odds of finding him dropped dramatically. He ate with the enthusiasm of a gourmand, but after he entrenched himself in studies, it was difficult to tear him away. My heart placed heavy bets on finding him hunched over a book. I hoped it was right.

Once there, I realized even finding the library would take more effort than I wanted to spare. The signs along University Drive all seemed to point in different directions to the same place. I didn’t know who designed the damned things, but if I ever found out, they’d receive a scathing letter the likes of which they’d never encounter again. How could the library be both straight ahead and to the left?

By the time I pulled into the correct lot, something inside me was howling with frustration. My hands trembled from excitement and exhaustion, and my stomach churned my breakfast as if I’d eaten lead. After turning into a spot marked for visitors, I fought back the urge to vomit.

I didn’t think it was a case of nerves that sent me on the brink of a ledge. No, it was the prospect that Josh might reject me once and for all that affected me so strongly.

Dozens of students wandered past me, none of them paying me any attention. A lot of people had earbuds wedged into their ears or a cell phone in hand. A few walked while reading, somehow managing to avoid crashing into other pedestrians. All of them moved with purpose. Just like me.

I pushed through a large glass door before being forced through a turnstile. Surrounding the turnstile, ominous and looming, stood an obvious metal detector. It gave me reason for a momentary pause, until I realized the contraption caught potential thieves of library books. I wouldn’t be forced to submit my purse through a baggage check nor have a wand passed over my person.

“Excuse me,” a girl behind a large desk called, waving in my general direction. “May I help you?”

There were a few people milling past me, and at first it didn’t register she’d spoken to me specifically. When I turned to catch her gaze, I frowned. “Me?”

“Yes, you need to check in here, please.”

Baffled, I tried to figure out how exactly she’d figured out I didn’t belong, until I saw that other people had little cards in their hands. Every person with a card swiped it while walking through the turnstile, while, of course, I had not.

Blowing out a breath, trying not to focus on the fact Josh might be somewhere close by and I was being delayed in getting to him, I went to her. “Yes?” I asked, more to get her attention than anything since, for some reason, she’d chosen to start ignoring me as soon as I headed her way.

Seconds crawled by as I waited for an acknowledgement while my impatience grew. She’d gone back to perusing a stack of books piled next to her. I shifted into her sightline.

She looked down at her monitor. I drummed my fingers on the desk.

Either she would look up soon, or I would lose my cool.

Dear God,
finally
, she pushed a scrap of paper in my direction. “If you’re not a student, please fill this out. The fee for temporary library access is five dollars.”

“Five dollars? For what? I’m just looking for someone…”

Bored brown eyes rolled in my direction. “That’s fine, but you still have to pay the access fee. Five dollars today, or you’ll have to go to the Student Union and get a student ID, which is ten dollars. Your choice.”

Scowling, I snatched a nearby pen, got to scribbling my vital statistics for her before whipping out a twenty and slapping it on the table. “Here you go,” I said with a toothy smile plastered on my face.

She frowned this time. “Hmm…not sure if I can break that.” Her gaze moved past me, and she leaned forward, obviously intent on finding someone to assist in the financial dilemma. “There’s a Starbucks just outside to the right. If you could please ask them—”

I leaned forward, obstructing her view until all she saw was the determination in my eyes. “Honey, keep the change.” I shoved the paper forward. “Are we done here?”

“Y-yes, I think so.”

Still grinning with intentional syrupy fakeness, I said, “Now if you’ll just point in the direction of the physics section, I would be ever so grateful.”

“Third floor stacks. Take a right off the elevator and head to the back. You can’t miss the signage.”

The smile fell from my face. “Thank you.”

Fortunately for my shattered nerves, her directions took me where I wanted to go. The elevator sat next to an elegant set of winding steps, and only the idea of trudging up three flights, to meet Josh while breathless, made me settle for waiting on the slow contraption.

The sign reading “Physics” hung in white lettering on black where she’d said it would. Beneath, two rows of tables were littered with dozens of books, some cracked open. A few had pencils or pieces of paper marking spots the reader didn’t want to lose. At set intervals, old-fashioned lamps illuminated the tabletops for the three people sitting in wood chairs. None of them interacted with his or her neighbor. None of them was Josh.

I knew this might be a possibility, I tried to tell myself. Still, no matter how many times I swallowed, I couldn’t get the lump in my throat to move. Disappointment at missing him, assuming he’d ever been here, tightened my insides until I could barely breathe.

Not knowing how else to handle my roiling emotions, I stepped into the stacks and let the musky scent of books envelop me. As someone who lives for academia, I felt some measure of comfort from that aroma, enough to battle my disappointment into control. Not finding Josh now didn’t mean I would never find him. It was just a temporary setback.

About to turn toward the exit—maybe see if I could negotiate the return of my money—I hesitated at the sound of tinkling laughter. It wasn’t so much the feminine giggling that caught my attention, but the familiar male chuckling harmonizing with it.

I stood rooted. Unable to move. Unable to speak. So desperate to run to him, to babble everything I was feeling, to beg his understanding, I could do none of those things. Instead Josh rounded the corner, holding a stack of books yet staring into the face of a young woman who looked adoringly back at him.

Time stretched on as I memorized them, their body language. Josh, my Josh, huddled so closely to this woman. Her dazzling white smile next to flawless skin. Her hair tied up in a ponytail while careless wisps dangled past her ears and onto bare shoulders. Pert breasts above a barely there waist. Short shorts. Long legs.

Youth.

Eyes burning, I whirled and bolted for the elevator. I pushed past a startled patron, making my way away from the twin rows of desks. My scalp tingled from the heat blazing across my face and leaking to the rest of my body.
How foolish I’ve been
. I thought we stood a chance. I thought maybe…