sitting at my desk monday morning, I was still thinking about my weekend with Hannah. Things had gone better than I expected. I definitely didn’t expect for us to be together. I had gone with the hope that we could talk things out and at least be friends again. But, now? I chuckled as I shook my head.
It was something that I’d always wanted, being able to call Hannah mine, and here we were. To find out she felt the exact same way after all these years was shocking but also a little upsetting. All this time, we could have maybe been together, and neither of us had the guts to tell the other about our feelings. Not that it mattered now.
I sat back in my chair, twirling my phone around in my hand. Hannah had been texting me all morning even though she was in class. I grinned when my phone vibrated again in my hand, taking a second to read the text from her.
I miss you. Hope you’re having a good day at work. xoxo
I couldn’t complain, really. I knew Hannah felt the need to stay connected. She was afraid I was going to walk away, especially coming back to work today knowing I’d be with Amy. She didn’t say as much, but I knew she was still insecure when it came to Amy. I couldn’t blame her. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little insecure myself.
But Amy wasn’t here, at least not yet. She always beat me to work. In that last couple of weeks, I’d come to love her morning greeting, although it was a little different now. We were trying to be adults and to work together, but I could see her hurting when I’d watch her from my desk, just like I knew she could tell it was bothering me sometimes too.
I dreaded telling her about Hannah even if it was her idea.
I texted Hannah back, telling her to pay attention in class and that I needed to get to work. Then I turned my phone on silent. I laid it off to the side on my desk before looking at my computer. I really did have things to do, and I didn’t want Hannah to distract me too much. I had to put some of the client information files into the computer to help distract me from her. Well, not really.
My mind was always wandering lately. I never seemed to have a free second to myself. If I wasn’t thinking about Hannah, I was worrying about Amy. I hated not talking to her. We’d become friends so easily it bothered me that we couldn’t get back to that now. I didn’t expect anything more, really. It would hurt to be close to her knowing I couldn’t be with her. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to her finding out that I was now with Hannah after she told me to.
It was just a messed-up situation. As conceited as it sounded, I hoped she wasn’t avoiding work because of me. At the same time, the idea of her missing work because of me made me feel a little better. Then I’d know for sure she was missing me too. That really did make me a bastard, didn’t it?
Working wasn’t doing much to help me keep my mind off of everything. I grabbed my iPod out of my bag and a bottle of water from the mini fridge behind my desk before standing and walking out of my office and into the gym. I didn’t bother stretching or warming up. I just sat down on the bench beside the dumbbells.
I grumbled to myself as I put my headphones in my ear and turned my iPod onto my workout playlist. I was hating this boot more and more the longer it was on my foot. December couldn’t come fast enough for me to get the stupid thing off.
I shouldn’t complain. I didn’t necessarily need the extra workouts to focus specifically on my arms, but I liked to stay well balanced. Besides, running on the treadmill helped clear my mind, not arm curls with various weights.
After fifty reps with my left arm, I switched to my right, keeping my eyes on the mirror in front of me to watch my form. I was just a couple reps away from being finished when I noticed Amy approaching slowly.
I glanced over and had the worst case of déjà vu ever.
No, I wasn’t running on the treadmill like I was that first day, but it was pretty close. I placed the dumbbell back in the holder, pulled the earphones from my ears, turned off my iPod, and wrapped them around it. I grabbed my towel and purposefully took a little longer to wipe my face before turning to face her. I’d been dreading seeing her today anyway. When I pulled the towel away and saw the peeved look on her face, I couldn’t help but grin despite myself.
“Can I help you, princess?”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Amy frowned and glanced down, pulling her lip between her teeth for a moment before looking back up at me.
I felt about two inches tall. I hadn’t wanted to make her uncomfortable. When she was mad or annoyed with me, my calling her princess usually brought a smile to her face. I wanted to apologize for saying it, but I wasn’t sure if drawing attention to it again would make things better or worse. Luckily, she didn’t give me a chance to anyways.
“You have a client on the phone, and you weren’t answering your pager,” she said a little quietly, obviously upset.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded, and I knew she knew I didn’t mean for not answering my pager.
Before I could say anything else, she walked away. I sighed, shaking my head as I stood and followed her. Wiping my face again, I glanced over. She was now sitting behind the desk. Even though she wasn’t looking directly at me, I could tell she was looking out of the corner of her eye. This was going to be a lot harder than I thought and I hadn’t even told Amy about Hannah yet.
Once I took a seat in my office, I picked up my phone.
“This is Mark,” I didn’t even bother with a hello.
“Marcus, I’m not going to make it tomorrow for my session. Can I make it Wednesday instead? Just for this week.”
I grinned at Mrs. Kelley’s request. “Sure thing, Viv. I’ll mark you down for Wednesday.”
“Thank you, darling. Have you fixed things with Amy yet?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath at her bluntness. “No, I haven’t.”
I didn’t feel the need to tell her about Hannah. That would just open a huge can of worms I wasn’t ready to talk about yet, especially to Mrs. Kelley.
Hell, I hadn’t even talked to my parents about it yet. They wouldn’t be too thrilled about it, not matter how much they already loved Hannah. I dreaded that conversation.
“You’re not getting any younger, boy. Fix things while you can. Talk to you soon,” she said before hanging up without giving me a chance to reply.
I frowned at the phone, shaking my head and hanging it up. Something about Vivian drove me nuts and made me smile all at that same time. She meant well, but I knew I’d be hearing about this for a long time coming, especially because I wasn’t getting back together with Amy any time soon, if ever. I couldn’t. And the thought sort of depressed me.
Things between Hannah and I were good for the most part. It was both familiar and unfamiliar territory for us, both easy and difficult at the same time. I wanted it to work with Hannah. I really did. I didn’t want to be in a relationship with her in hopes to fix another one. I started out with her for the wrong reasons, but I did hope to redeem myself for that.
Hannah was everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman so why did I feel like this wasn’t going to work? Why was I suddenly second-guessing myself when I finally had what I wanted?
Amy.
She’d changed things for me. She and Hannah were so different, so black and white, that I didn’t realize I’d wanted something different until she was mine. But now she wasn’t, and I was with Hannah.
I knew I was being an ass. I knew that this wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. I was probably royally fucking up the two best relationships I’ve ever been in, and I didn’t know how to stop. No matter who I chose, I was either going to lose one or both of them.
This was the stupidest thing I could have done. I wasn’t being fair to either girl. How could either put up with me?
“If you scrunch up your face anymore, it’ll get stuck like that.”
I started at the voice and looked up to see Chad sitting in the chair in front of my desk.
“Shut up.” I flipped him off for good measure.
“I don’t really need to ask what’s going on up there, do I?” He pointed towards my head.
“You tell me, Chad.” I sighed, shaking my head.
He laughed. He actually laughed. Fucker.
“You’re the only guy I could think of to be bummed about having two girls to choose from.”
“Fuck you. It’s not like that,” I grumbled, leaning back in my seat.
“Hey,” he said with his hands raised in the air in surrender, though he was still chuckling. “I’m just saying.”
“You’d be handling this worse than I am if it were you.” I ran my hands through my hair, took my glasses off, and tossed them on the table. “I’m half tempted just to break it off with Hannah and not bother trying to be friends with either of them. No matter what I do, someone is going to get hurt.”
“You and Hannah just got together. You were right when you said you both deserve this chance after finding out you both felt the same way for so long.” he sighed and I looked across my desk at him, my vision blurred from not having my glasses on, but I could tell he was frowning in concentration.
“Well, since you know so much, what do I do about Amy?”
“That’s simple.” He stood up and moved his arms out to the side as he shrugged. “Nothing. You work together. You can’t expect to be more right now.”
I snorted, “Oh, that’s simple, is it?” Chad smirked and shrugged. We both knew he was right, but he was being an arrogant ass about it. “If you say so.”
“Look, no one said it was going to be easy, right?”
I went to put my glasses back on, only to pull them from my face again. I knew this conversation would keep me rubbing my head and my eyes.
“What are you, my therapist?” I grumbled.
He laughed, “I am today.”
I sighed and leaned back in my seat. “This is hard, man. If things work out with Hannah, I’m not so sure I can stand not being Amy’s friend.”
“But I doubt Hannah would ever be okay with that,” he reminded me. He was right, of course.
“Right,” I let my head fall back on the top of the chair and groaned. “But if things don’t work out with Hannah, I really don’t think I could just go back to Amy.” I looked back up at him, even though he was blurry. “She’s not a back-up. I can’t treat her as such.”
Chad was silent for a moment, but I could practically see the wheels in his head turning. “Why don’t you cross that bridge when you get to it? Quit overthinking. Live in the now.”
I nodded and Chad said his goodbyes. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, more frustrated. He was right, of course. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I put my glasses back on in time to see Chad taking the stairs two at a time, going up to see Devon I’d guess. I was glad he was happy. It was like the universe didn’t want us happy at the same time. Just that thought left me feeling guiltier than before.
It wasn’t that I was unhappy with Hannah. We hadn’t even really started dating. It wasn’t fair to make it out like I was so miserable with all of this. The situation itself was complicated.
No, Hannah deserved this. I deserved this. Amy and I had to make due as colleagues before I could even hope to be her friend again.
Fuck, this was hard.