The Girlfriend (The Boss) (6 page)

In the past, Neil had always reacted to any sign of upset or tears on my part with a well-intentioned, but ultimately stifling, attempt to instantly make everything better. He didn’t do that now. He just sat beside me, holding my hand as I curled up in the tub and cried. We talked when I initiated the conversation, but for the most part Neil was content to sit in silence with me.

Half an hour was just long enough for the water to cool and my emotions to level out.

“Feel better?” Neil asked after he helped me from the bath and wrapped me in a towel.

I nodded. “I’ve just got a lot going on. I think the hormonal thing wouldn’t be so bad if everything else in my life was nice and calm right now.”

“I don’t think unintended pregnancy is ever anyone’s idea of nice and calm, Sophie.” He tilted my head up and kissed me. From the other room, we heard the intercom buzz. “That will be the food. I’ll go while you get dried off.”

Once I was all dressed and dried, with my hair combed, I felt way more normal than before. If what I’d just gone through was anything even remotely like pregnancy mood swings, I had made the right decision. I passed over pjs in favor of yoga pants and a long-sleeved tee, and bounded out to the living room.

We sat on the couch to eat, me with my burger and fries, him with a salad. The takeout containers were super fancy, and I smiled to myself. He would never get some things quite “normal.”

With pregnancy no longer looming in my mind, my thoughts turned to all the other stuff we had going on. We. It was a weird way to think about it, but we were pretty much moving in together. At least for a while. “Hey... What’s it like, living with you?”

He took a swallow of water. “I suppose it depends on who you ask. According to my daughter, I’m very boring and have a terrible habit of entering rooms too quietly and startling people on purpose. You also might falsely accuse me of reading your diary.”

I laughed and wiped my mouth on one of the sturdy napkins. “You never read her diary?”

“Absolutely not. I was too damned busy trying to make sure she didn’t have anything interesting to write about in it.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know what it will be like for you to live with me. I’ve never had great success as far as cohabiting with romantic partners is concerned. I liked living with Valerie and with Elizabeth, but I like time to myself, as well. And I haven’t always been easy to work with in terms of renovations or new furnishings—”
 

“Whoa, let me stop you right there.” I held up my greasy burger hands. “I’m not in the market to remodel your place or get new couches. I’m coming with you so I can be with you. I’m still keeping my place here. I’m not going to bring along my bed or demand a new walk-in closet.”

“I do want you to feel at home, though. This has the potential to be somewhat long term. I don’t want you to feel like a guest the whole time.” He paused, remembering something. “You’re going to have to speak with my lawyer about immigration forms. He emailed me yesterday. You can stay in the country for up to six months as a visitor. After that you’ll have to apply for something more official. But he’ll take care of everything.”

“Six months in a different country. That’s exciting,” I said, then fell quiet. I got a lost in my thoughts as I ate. Neil and I were moving in together, in a totally different country. It was beyond insane, but since everything else in my life was insane, too, it seemed like a sensible plan to me. I looked up and said, “This is kind of a big step we’re taking.”

“I was just thinking that, myself,” Neil admitted. A cloud of uncertainty shadowed his eyes, his brow drawing down as his gaze fixed on some invisible point between us. “I’m worried that you’ll get tired of me. Or that you’ll feel neglected. I do tend to spend a lot of time on my own, working or reading, or what have you... I like my space. I know we get along when you spend the weekend with me, but even the people we love can become unbearable when we’re getting used to being with them.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, too.” I sat up a little straighter. “I like to spend time alone. I’ve honestly had doubts that I would ever live with anyone in a non-platonic way.”

He considered. “I suppose if we have our own doubts, we’ll be more conscious of each others’ feelings. At least, I hope we will be. I want to do this right, Sophie.”

“Me too,” I agreed. “But hey, look at us. One crisis out of the way, and I think we handled it pretty well. Next up is—”
 

“Christmas with my family.”

“I was going to say your cancer, but wow, is Christmas really going to be that bad?” I laughed, my stomach all jumbled. Meeting Neil’s family. This was going to be weird, when he’d only gotten divorced a few months ago.

He looked like he was mentally revising his opinion as he said, “No... I don’t think it will be. I will warn you that Emma’s mother will probably not care for you. I get the sense that Valerie is not pleased that I was involved with someone in the company, and especially with what she’s heard from Rudy.”

“Oh, yikes, I hadn’t even thought of that.” Now I was really not looking forward to the festivities. That, and I wasn’t sure how Emma felt about me. Sure, she’d called me when Neil was in the hospital, but that had been a decent thing to do, whether she liked me or not. All her actions proved was that she was a good person.

“But don’t worry. It’s going to be a small gathering, I’m sure my sister will love you. My mother can’t wait to meet you, now that she knows you’re coming, although that might change by the time we arrive. She has difficulty remembering things, since her stroke. My brothers and their families aren’t coming over this time. They still live in Reykjavik.”

The concept of siblings was so utterly bizarre and foreign to me. My mom was close to her sisters, but it wasn’t the same, watching a sibling relationship from the outside. I did know that I couldn’t imagine one of my aunts not coming home for the holidays. None of them had ever moved further away than Houghton/Hancock, and my mom could get all of her sisters together for Sunday lunch, if she wanted to.

“Do you ever go and visit them?”
 

“Occasionally. I do like the city. I went to school there.” There was a touch of homesick pride in his voice that was adorable and endearing. “I go back once or twice a year for stockholder meetings. I’m on the board of my father’s company, but my brother, Runólf, is the managing officer.”

I laughed and almost choked on my burger. “Oh, wow. You really lucked out with ‘Neil,’ didn’t you?”

“My parents took turns naming us. I was born on mother’s turn.”

I tilted my head, considering. “Where does Elwood come from? If your father was from Iceland?”

“My father’s father was an Englishman,” he explained. “So my family has had generations of practice at blending the two different cultures.”

“Do you have different traditions and stuff from us? Besides being English?” I’d never been in a relationship with someone from another country before. I keenly felt the pinch of my isolated, arrogant American upbringing.

He looked amused at my ignorance. It reminded me of the first time we met, when I’d blatantly asked him if he was into “stupid girls,” because he had responded so positively to my fumbling conversation attempts. Ten minutes after that, he was in love with me. At least, according him.

He finished chewing before he answered. “I suppose I’m not as entirely English as I might consider myself. My daughter’s middle name is Úlfhildur, that’s not exactly Jane or Anne, is it?”

“Oh my god, poor Emma!” I held my sides, I was laughing so hard. It didn’t help my cramps, but it felt so good not to be tense and guilty and relieved and confused all at the same time. “I can’t believe she still talks to you!”

“I think Úlfhildur is a beautiful name!” Neil protested with a chuckle of his own. He raised his voice over my hysterical giggling, and that only made it funnier to him, too. “I had a very nice piano teacher named Úlfhildur. She had the most enormous breasts; I wanted to pay them tribute.”

My face and abs both hurt. “That is not true!”

“No, you’re right, it’s not,” he confessed. “But it would be an amazing story.”

I felt a little bad for teasing him about what he’d chosen to name his daughter, but Emma Úlfhildur Elwood was such a tragedy of a name. “I shudder to think what you’d name a kid of ours.”

I need to refine that skill where you realize you’ve said something stupid before you say it. I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m sorry, that was so insensitive.”

“Not at all,” he responded easily, but it was polite, his entire demeanor instantly restrained.

All at once, that crushing sadness came back. Not at the decision I had made, but at the fact that Neil and I weren’t on the same page about it. That I might have caused him pain.
 

It was unfair that there had been no way to be fair.

My burger didn’t taste as good anymore. “I want to go to bed.”

Neil cleared up our food while I stumbled into my bedroom, trying to hold back irrational tears and failing.

When I got to my room, I stopped dead in my tracks. Holy shit. This would be the first night Neil and I spent together without having sex. We’d even fooled around the night before, mostly because we’d been so nervous and in desperate need of a distraction.
 

I straightened the covers a little bit before I slid into my bed. I dimmed the bedside lamp to its lowest setting and lay on my side, an arm under my pillow. I wanted to be sure to leave enough room for Neil.

He came in just a moment later and leaned over his bag, pulling up a phone charger. “Plug?”

I gestured to the nightstand. “You can just unplug my alarm clock. I’m not going to want to deal with it in the morning, anyway.”

I watched him silently as he went about the mundane task of plugging in his phone and taking out his contacts. He pulled his shirt over his head and took off his pants, coming to bed in just his boxers.

Millions of people in relationships were going to bed like this tonight. It was so... domestic.

This was weird, and it felt like too much to deal with. What the hell was happening?

“You know,” he said as he climbed in behind me. “It occurs to me that we’ve never done this before.”

“Go to bed without fucking?” I asked, and when I said it out loud, it sounded ludicrous.

“Exactly.” His arm fell across my waist, and I wriggled back, letting him spoon around me.

“I was just thinking that myself. It’s kind of... I don’t know.” I sighed, not exactly unhappy, but not entirely happy, either. “Is this it? Is this the night we become a boring couple? I’m going to bed in yoga pants.”

“I don’t think we’re ever going to be boring together.” He nuzzled my ear. “And I happen to think those yoga pants make your bum look fantastic. But it can’t be all paddles and orgasms, can it? No relationship ever is.”

“I suppose you’re right. I just hate admitting that we’re changing. That our lives are changing. I’m kind of afraid. I’ve never done this before.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asked, kissing my ear. “I’ve never done this before, either, because the circumstances of each relationship are different. I’ve never lived with and made a serious commitment to Sophie Scaife before. I have run away from you before, but I promise you, this time I’m not going to run.”

I nestled against him, choosing sleep over my out of control emotions. But it was far too quiet. “Can we listen to some music?” I asked softly. “I’m kind of used to falling asleep here to the sounds of Holli cackling at
Workaholics
.”

He leaned over me and snagged his phone, dropping it into my waiting hand. “You pick.”

“You trust me to look at your phone?” He might as well have trusted me to rifle through his dresser drawers. Phones were so personal.

“Use this power for good,” he said dryly.

I liked what we’d been listening to before, so I left it on Sigur Ros and set the iPhone carefully back on my nightstand. Then I reached up and clicked off the light.

In the comforting shelter of his arms, I let myself drift with the melancholy, hopeful strains of the music. The lyrics weren’t in English, and it took my sleepy mind some idle wondering before I remembered that Neil could probably translate them. “What’s this song about?” I murmured sleepily.

I heard him swallow, felt his deep, sudden breath at my back. “He’s describing weathering a storm at sea, in a sailboat. Landing on a rocky shore, thankful just to be alive, while the storm goes on around them.” Neil’s voice was rough, thick with emotion. “We will come out the other side of this, Sophie. And we’ll be stronger for it.”

He wasn’t talking just about the abortion; I didn’t even have to ask to know that. We had a tenuous new start on our relationship, and many challenges ahead of us.

I was grateful we had each other to cling to while we weathered the storm.

CHAPTER FOUR

On Monday morning, Neil had to return to work, and so did I. That is, he had to oversee Rudy’s switch to interim Editor-in-Chief, and I had to go empty out my desk at
Porteras
for the final time. It was a deja vu situation, since I’d just cleaned out my desk in Neil’s office a few weeks ago to switch to the beauty department.

We’d spent the night in my apartment again, although according to Neil my bed was an instrument of torture. He woke me before he left, leaning down to kiss my cheek. His face was soft and he smelled like aftershave.

“I’m leaving, darling. I’ll send Tony back with the car?” There was a note of concern in Neil’s voice, as though he were worried I would try to carry a carton of my stuff home on the train.

In the past, when we’d been fighting so hard to keep our relationship a secret, I would have rejected the idea outright. But I’d learned from Deja that my involvement with Neil was out, and a huge scandal around the office. I didn’t look forward to even showing up today, let alone doing a walk of shame with all my belongings. I nodded sleepily. “Sure. I’ll get up now and get ready.”

Even though I didn’t work at
Porteras
anymore, I didn’t want to go into the office and give everyone the impression that I was somehow defeated. I selected my clothing carefully, deciding on dark indigo skinny jeans, a loose and flowing black tunic— to disguise the post-abortion bloat that was making me feel
so
sexy— and tall black boots. I wound a gray and orange Hermes Camails patterned scarf around my neck. The scarf had been a gift from Gabriella; both Penelope and I had gotten them for Christmas the year before. It seemed crucial that I have some link to that old part of my life so that when I walked into
Porteras
no one could make me feel like I didn’t belong.