Say the Word(25)

There was a good reason Fae was the only girl from work I associated with.

Ever punctual, she arrived at her cubicle fifteen minutes early. She stopped abruptly as she caught sight of me at my desk, her eyes wide with surprise. For once I’d gotten to work before her. Most days, I made it in with seconds to spare before the daily morning briefing, rushing in as though the devil himself were on my heels — hair flying out of its fastenings, hastily-sipped coffee charring my tongue, and a half-done face of makeup that Fae would bully me into fixing in the bathroom at some point during the morning.

“You’re here early,” she noted, dumping her large Louis Vuitton hobo bag onto her desk. “Thought you’d be battling a hangover or calling in sick, after the way I left you last night.”

“I’m surprisingly bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning.” I smiled at her, standing up to hand her the steaming latte I’d purchased only moments before her arrival. “Here.”

“You’re a godsend,” she muttered, taking a delicate sip so as not to ruin her flawless lipstick with unwanted foam.

“Not quite,” I said. “And I’ve never really understood that phrase. I mean, who wants to be a godsend? Wouldn’t you rather just be a goddess?”

“So, I’m giving you thirty more seconds,” she told me, completely ignoring my musings as she moved around to take a seat at her desk.

“Oh?” I asked. “What for?”

“Thirty seconds to tell me who in the hell Sebastian is and what happened to induce the Merlot bath you took last night.” She glanced at the dainty silver watch on her wrist. “Make that twenty seconds.”

“Thanks for tucking me in before you left,” I said, smiling down at her.

“Fifteen.”

“Really, I appreciate it.”

“Ten.”

“So do you think Jeanine will make us do a column on that new jazzercising techni—”

“Lux Kincaid! Do not make me drag you into the bathroom by your hair and torture you for information,” Fae whisper-yelled at me, her eyes glaring daggers. “You know I’ll do it.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest menacingly.

“Oh, relax.” I grinned down at her, leaning a hip against the cubicle partition.

She arched one eyebrow and cast an impatient look at her watch. I held my hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“Fine, fine. It’s just…” I took a steadying breath. “This thing with Sebastian… It’s complicated.”

“So un—complicate it.”

“Sebastian is—” My words cut off abruptly, drying up in my throat as I caught sight of the man stepping out of elevator banks. The tempo of my heartbeat stuttered erratically, before thundering to twice its normal rate.

“Sebastian is what?” Fae snapped impatiently.

“Here,” I whispered, feeling the blood drain from my face. “Sebastian is here.”





***


In my peripheral, I saw Fae’s head spin around so fast she’d probably have whiplash for a week. My eyes, however, were locked on the shiny gold elevator doors that were sliding shut, and the man now standing in front of them. His eyes swept the space, taking in the office layout with a shrewd composure born from his years as a politician’s son. When they skimmed over me, halting for only the briefest of moments, I thought they may have narrowed in disgust or suspicion, but they moved away too quickly for me to be sure.

He was a fortress. A stony castle with walls so high no army could breach them, let alone one solitary woman. I couldn’t read him at all. Yet my own expression, I feared, was unguarded; cheeks flushed, lips parted, eyes wide with surprise and maybe, if you looked a little closer, the faintest remnant of longing. I’d been caught unawares by his abrupt entrance and hadn’t the time to gain composure or don any number of the schooled expressions that would be considered appropriate when one saw a distant acquaintance or a stranger. If he looked now, he’d see it shining from my eyes, radiating from my pores, and saturating the room — a yearning, a need that hadn’t been filled in all our time apart.

I needn’t have worried.

His eyes swept over me, through me, as though I were just another piece of the colorless office furniture littering the room. Either he was the best actor I’d ever come across, or he was sincerely unaffected by my existence. There was no emotion in his eyes, save the cool disinterest of a stranger taking in his surroundings for the first time. He looked like his mother, I realized, both startled and saddened by the thought. There was a tightness around his mouth that hadn’t been there in the years of our youth — lines weathered not by laughter but something far more trying.

One look at him, and I’d known that the boy I’d loved — the one whose very essence seemed a product of light and laughter, who’d grinned freely and joked as easily as he breathed — was gone. The man before me was a hollowed out husk, his carefree soul scrubbed clean from his perfect frame, leaving a heartbreakingly foreign doppelg?nger behind.

Physically he was nearly the same. His muscular frame may’ve filled out considerably, but those clear hazel eyes and that mop of burnished gold hair remained achingly familiar to me even after all these years of distance. And yet, at the same time, he was now a stranger.