Chapter 5 – Emily
Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.
I can’t believe that I was just face to face with him. Wade Covington. My high school ex and the man I haven’t been able to erase from my mind— or apparently my body— for all this time. He had joined the military and I never thought I’d see him again, especially not here. Like me, he hadn’t come from money, had never had a lot of money.
I grab the brochure about today’s event and can’t believe my eyes. Wade was receiving an award for starting his own company. I scan what it says about him until my eyes rest on the sentence “His start up company morphed into a multi billion dollar enterprise.”
Multi billion?
Wade’s a billionaire?
Never in a million years would I have thought life would play out like this. Sure, I often fantasize about seeing Wade again but I never thought it would be like this.
For the rest of the evening, he’s all I can think about. There definitely seems to have still been a connection between us, but I keep trying to tell myself it was just in my head. And even if it wasn’t, I can’t act on it.
I have to remember what happened between us. I have to guard my heart from him so he can’t break it again.
But I’m beginning to realize I’ll have to resist very strongly in order for that to happen. Every time I return to the table to bring more food, wine, dessert or to check on them, Wade’s eyes are locked on mine.
When he thinks I’m busy serving other people and I’m not looking, I always catch his eyes all over me. There’s no denying that the attraction is mutual. I just can’t give into it.
Do nothing about the fact that your ex is here where you work after all this time, I tell myself, as I gather up dirty dishes from a table of people who have left. You’ll never see him again after this, and that’s the way it should be. He’s had his chance and he ruined it and what’s done is done. Best to leave the past in the past.
As I return to his table to begin clearing dishes, he surreptitiously slips a piece of paper onto his plate right before I pick it up. I look down at him, curious, and he winks at me.
I put the piece of paper in my pocket before dumping the dishes into the bussing tray. I’m busy bussing all the other tables and I don’t get a chance to look at it for a while. I’m not sure if I’m gathering the courage to look at it or throw it away unopened, because I assume that whatever is written on it could only mean bad news for my goal of resisting my still- present attraction to my ex.
But in the end, I know that I just have to look at it. Sometimes life presents us with an opportunity that is too good to pass up, no matter the costs.
Once all my tables are bussed, I pause in the lobby outside of the kitchen and retrieve the small piece of paper. I open it and read the words: Nice to see you again. Meet me for a drink at Suzi’s later?
My heart skips a couple of beats. Suzi’s is the swanky bar on the other side of the hotel, where fancy businessmen meet. I avoid it like the plague because I hate anything that reeks of money and status symbols. Such waste, such greed, when that same money could go towards more noble and helpful purposes than expensive drinks and food that will be devoured in just a few minutes’ time.
And I’d also get in trouble at work if I was caught fraternizing with customers. Sure, it would be after hours and my shift will have ended, but that doesn’t matter. We’re supposed to stay far away from the “regular people,” and know our place as lowly servers.
But still. I sigh as I continue to look down at Wade’s rather neat handwriting— which I remember from studying with him in high school and from all the letters he had written me after that— wishing that things were different. I wish I didn’t need this job, and I wish I could just…
…have sex with my ex? For my very first time?
I want to yell at myself for even thinking it. My virginity had been too important to give to him back then and it should be even more important now that I know how things turned out between us. And yet, after all this time of trying to find some connection, some chemistry, some something with anyone else after Wade, and realizing it’s useless, I often wish I would have just had sex with him.
Sure, I’d spend the rest of my life regretting it but at least I would have gotten to do it. As opposed to just thinking about it all the time, wondering what it would have been like. No, knowing it would have been hot— just like everything else we had done together— but also knowing that I would never get to experience it.
Except maybe now I can.
If only I could throw caution to the wind and see what happens. I’ve never been a capricious type of person. But look where that’s gotten me— pretty far in my academic career but almost nowhere at all in my personal life.
I’m still staring down at the note in my hand, letting my thoughts run away from me, when I hear a stern voice in my ear.
“Still loafing around daydreaming instead of working, I see. So typical of you, Emily. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
I jump. It’s John, of course. And he’s actually clucking his tongue at me like a hen scolding her chicks. I stuff the note into my pocket, hoping John didn’t have time to read it.
“I’m done with the buss work,” I tell him. “I was just taking a little break before…”
…starting to clean, I was going to say, but I don’t get to finish, because he interrupts me, as usual. And suddenly I’m angry. Because even though I was late, I’d been busting my ass for the past four hours and this is the first small break I’d taken. Yet I can’t do anything around here without incurring John’s wrath.
“Forget it,” he says. “You’re fired anyway.”
“Fired?”
I clench my fists, knowing I shouldn’t be surprised, but figuring that since he’d let me work my shift— or most of it, that I had been forgiven. I should have known that he was as unpredictable as he was egotistical.
“Clock out and go home and study or whatever else is more important to you than this job,” he commands.
Fine.
At least I get out of cleaning peoples’ bits of chewed-up food from the plates and the carpet— my least favorite task. I feel bad for Nathan for having to do it all on his own. But it’s not like I’m going to work for free.
I clock out as instructed and head to the parking lot. I know I should start to head home.
But then I reconsider. If I don’t work here anymore, there’s nothing prohibiting me from fraternizing with customers. And for once in my life I could use a drink.
That’s all this is about, I try to convince myself, knowing full well it’s not. I just need a drink. I got fired and I have no idea how I’ll afford my bills or stay in my beloved graduate program and I deserve a stiff cocktail to help lessen the blow.
Since I’m already at my car, I bring my bookbag in with me and change back into my street clothes. They’re not exactly Suzi’s attire, but they’re better than my work uniform.
Then I drop my bookbag back off at my car and head back towards Suzi’s. I wonder if I’ve taken so long to get to Suzi’s that I will have missed out on the opportunity to meet Wade there. Half of me hopes that I have, since my life will be so much easier that way. But half of me hopes that I haven’t, because I’m just dying to see him again one on one, even though I know I shouldn’t.