Chapter 14

I lean back in my desk chair and rub my eyes. I’ve been listing properties for four hours straight and I’m sick of looking at the computer. I long for my high school years when I played football and rode four wheelers and spent eighty percent of my life outdoors with the hot Texas sun on my face. Being an adult has its privileges, but I really miss being outdoors. Out of this office. Out of this stupid desk chair.

“Hey, Janie?” I call out through my open office door.

“What can I do for you?” my assistant replies, appearing in my doorway a few seconds later. Janie is nearly sixty years old and one of my mom’s best friends. Unlike my mom, who still has long brown (dyed) hair and dresses modern, Janie looks like a grandmother. She was the assistant for my grandfather, and then for my dad, and now for me. I consider her like a part of the family.

I shift around in my chair. “Can you find me a new office chair? Something comfortable?”

She frowns. “Is that one broken? It’s only about six months old, so it’s probably under warranty.”

“Not broken,” I say with a shake of my head. “Just uncomfortable. Get something fancy with good reviews for being soft enough to spend hours in and not want to kill yourself.”

She chuckles. “Any price range in mind?”

“I don’t care. Just something nice. And get yourself one too, if you want.”

“What about the boys?” she says, referring to my cousins.

I smirk. “They can keep their current chairs.”

She smirks back because she’s not exactly their biggest fan, especially after she walked in on a conversation they were having trying to convince me to fire her and hire a “hot assistant”. I assured her that her job is safe with me as long as she wants it. Hiring some hot woman just because she’s hot doesn’t seem like good business sense. I’m here to make money, not treat women like objects.

Janie lingers in the doorway. “Is that why you’re down today? The chair?”

“Huh?” I say.

She frowns a little, like she doesn’t want to talk, but I don’t let her off the hook that easily. “What’s up?”

“Well … You’ve been … down since you got back from Arizona. Is it the uncomfortable chair?”

I think we both know it’s not the chair. But I don’t feel like talking about it, even to Janie, who is a good friend to me, even if she is more than twice my age. “Nah, I’m just tired,” I say, hoping I sound convincing. I give her a kind smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good.”

“Okay,” she says, not sounding very convinced. But she leaves anyhow, and I let out a breath I’d been holding.

Now my hurt over losing Alexa is interfering with my job. I have got to get it together. Not only are most of my waking moments filled with reliving that hot make out session in my mind, but now I’m starting to think of other things, too.

Crazy things.

Things that should be in a country song.

Like … is Alexa my soul mate? Were we meant to find each other in Phoenix and then reconnect in Texas because we happen to live so close together? Was it fate? Am I supposed to throw it all on the line and go after her and hope for the best?

Or have I just become some crazy stalker? I mean, how many times have I read posts online or seen screenshots of text messages being posted around like memes that show some desperate guy trying to win over this girl that doesn’t like him? Girls aren’t a fan of being pursued if they don’t like the guy back.

I could easily show up at her business and ask her on a date. She could also just as easily call the cops on me for being a stalker.

A restraining order isn’t exactly the most romantic thing ever.

But … I take a deep breath and shove those thoughts away.  I’m not a bad guy, and I’ve never been a creep. Girls like me. I get hit on occasionally, and I know I have a good physique because I work hard on it.

I bet I could easily go out tonight and find a girl who is interested in me. I bet I could make an online dating profile and meet a girl that way. If I wanted a girlfriend, I could get one by next week.

Up until this trip to Phoenix, I hadn’t really wanted a girlfriend. I’ve been so busy with work and life that there wasn’t much time for one.

Now I would make all the time in the world for Alexa. I would cancel appointments and shorten meetings and hire more assistants if I had to. I would do whatever it takes to be with her.

But I’m not sure if she wants to be with me. I resist the urge to look her up online again, and try to go back to my work. However, my work involves being online all day, and Facebook and Instagram are just one click away, so it’s hard to resist the temptation to find her again.

Then I start thinking, for the millionth time, that maybe she’s missing me too. Maybe the reason she left my hotel room as quietly as a mouse wasn’t because she didn’t like me, but for something else. Some other reason I don’t know yet. It’s possible, right? It occurs to me that I am pretty easy to find online, too. If she paid attention to my nametag then she’d be able to look up my business name just like I looked hers up.

I’d pop up instantly as the number one google search under Barr Real Estate. She could be looking at my website right now.

Chills prickle over my arms at the thought of it. It dawns on me that I am a grown ass man and I need to get my life together. I can’t spend countless hours sitting here longing for some woman I only met once. I either need to do something about it, or give up.

I’m not about to show up unannounced at her business, but I can do something else. If fate wants us to be together, then Alexa will find me online the same way I found her. I go to my business Facebook page since I don’t have a personal page, and I create a new post.

Had a great time at the Phoenix Small Business Convention. If we met, and didn’t exchange contact info, please message me through here. Would love to get to talk to you again.

There. That’s subtle yet obvious. I post the status and then stare at it for a while, my heart beating a little faster. This is it. My last call. My Hail Mary pass.

If Alexa likes me the way I like her, she will look me up online and she’ll see this and then the ball is in her court. If not, well I’ll have to accept that it wasn’t fate. I’ll move on with my life.

Janie pops her head into my office, nearly startling me to death. I jump and then try to compose myself. I’d been thinking about Alexa so much that I nearly forgot where I was. She reminds me that I have a client meeting in five minutes.

I grab another cup of coffee and leave the Facebook page open on my work computer. When I come back, I hope there will be a reply.

My meeting only lasts forty-five minutes, and there’s no Facebook reply when I return. I busy myself with the mountains of work I have to do for the rest of the day, but I keep an eye on the page just in case she messages me.

She doesn’t.

But I tell myself that she runs a bakery which is much different than a real estate office. I sit here at a desk all day and she’s in a kitchen. She probably doesn’t even have a computer in there. I’ll wait until tonight before I start to give up.

It has already been a week, I remind myself when it’s after nine in the evening and there’s no word from her. Maybe she did look me up, didn’t see anything important, and then stopped looking. In all reality she’s not thinking about me the way I’m thinking about her, and this is totally the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. It’s definitely the most pathetic.

I think about deleting my Facebook post.

But then I decide to leave it, because sometimes Fate needs a little help. All signs might be telling me to give up, but I’m not quite ready for that yet.