The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date, #3)(76)

She took a deep breath and forced her mind away from Theo and back to herself. She’d been on pins and needles for the past week about the job at the TV station, but she hadn’t even thought about it since the day before. They’d told her she’d hear something “within the next few weeks,” which meant she’d been on high alert every time she’d picked up her phone all week, but . . . no, still nothing. No calls, no emails. She let out a sigh. She’d forgotten how bad it was to wait to hear back from a job she wanted. It was like everything bad about dating, but even more high pressure. One of the great things about having her own business was that she hadn’t had to deal with that particular stress in years.

Speaking of her business, she’d better check her calendar and reply to her clients unless she wanted to lose a bunch of them.

In the next hour, she sent two quick “Family emergency, I need to reschedule” texts to her afternoon clients, replied to emails from five more, and uploaded the picture to Instagram that she’d meant to post the day before. As all the likes and comments popped up on her photo, she shook her head. She’d managed somehow to cultivate a cool, hip, glamorous brand for herself, but look at her now. In old yoga pants, no bra, her hair wild, and walking a tightrope of anxiety on this couch.

Finally, Theo stirred and sat up.

“Hey.” He rubbed his neck. “Sorry about that. I didn’t really intend to fall asleep.”

He looked so pathetic that she felt bad for all of her frustration with him.

“It’s okay, the doctor said you’d sleep a lot in the next few days. Are you hungry?”

He shook his head and then nodded.

“Actually, yeah. Did Ben . . . bring food here last night? Did that really happen?”

Oh, so he could remember that his brother came by, but not that he’d told her he loved her.

“Yeah, Ben came over with soup and stuff.” She laughed at the face he made at that. “I know, but you kept getting sick yesterday, remember?”

He yawned as he stood up.

“I don’t really remember that, but I believe you. Fine, I’ll go make some soup.”

She pulled herself off the couch and stifled her own yawn.

“No, I’ll do it. You’re still too shaky to be carrying hot liquids around.”

He smiled his thanks to her and followed her down the hallway as far as the bathroom.

When she came back to the living room with soup and crackers for both of them, he was staring at the back of his phone, still facedown on the coffee table.

“This is your nightmare, isn’t it?” She handed him the mug with soup and set the crackers on the table.

“All my answers are in there!” He reached into the box of crackers, took one, and snapped it in half before eating it. “I can’t remember when the last time was that I went this long without checking my phone. This is painful.”

She laughed at the look on his face. His phone addiction had always sort of charmed her, because she was almost as addicted to hers. She knew how she would feel if someone took her phone away.

She almost told him she’d google for news about the rally and read any articles to him, but she stopped herself. She had no idea what they would say, and she didn’t want to upset him further.

“Here.” She took pity on him and handed him his phone. “You can’t read anything, but call Alexa; she’ll update you.”

She really wanted to text Alexa and tell her to reassure him, and have the two of them join forces to get Theo to relax about the rally and his job and whatever else was stressing him out so he could heal. But she couldn’t do that, because Alexa couldn’t know she was at Theo’s apartment. It was one thing for her to have followed the ambulance to the hospital; she could play that off as watching over her best friend’s best friend. But it was very different for her to be at his house the next morning.

“Oh thank God.” He immediately clicked on his favorites and scrolled to Alexa’s name. Was her name in there? She couldn’t tell.

“ Hey! . . . Yes, yes, I feel a lot better. What’s going on at work? What happened with the rally? What is the mayor saying?”

When he got off the phone, he still looked troubled.

“She said the rally kept going and no one else was hurt, and while the press did write a lot about the protestors, everything will be fine, but I don’t know if I believe her.” He reached for a cracker and frowned again. “Because if the press wrote a lot about the protestors, that means they didn’t write a lot about the campaign; they have only so much space for a story. So this means we didn’t get the press we wanted, and people don’t know what this ballot initiative is all about, or why it’s so important.”

She forced herself to not smooth out his brow again.

“There’s nothing you can do about it right now. Eat your soup. It’s going to get cold.”

He shuddered.

“If there’s one thing I hate more than soup, it’s . . .”

She nodded.

“I know, I know, it’s cold soup. We went over this about gazpacho in July.”

He gave her a half smile and reached for the mug of soup.

She forced herself to look away from him.

Why had he said he loved her? Was it true? Did he really feel that way? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about this?