Back to work after a miserable Sunday.

I had my sister to thank for that. I knew Mona meant well and I’d forgive her in a few days.

Now that I’d surrounded myself with work and my co-workers, my mind wasn’t wandering so much. Jared was still there, at the back of my mind somewhere, but it was more like a dull aching throb. Nothing I had to worry about. In a few days, I would forget about him too. Till someone else mentioned his name again or I saw his photo in a magazine.

I had accepted this reality of my life.

My mornings usually began at eight and I was at the office by ten.

Our place of work was always buzzing; the phones were constantly off the hook, people were running around trying to look for files. I was working on a chart in my small cramped office, concentrating hard.

Highlighter in one hand and a map in the other, I was engrossed deep in thought when Melissa knocked on my open door.

“Elsie, there’s someone here to see you,” she said. I turned to look at her; my thoughts were interrupted and I was dazed.

“What? Oh, yeah, sure, send them in,” I told her and turned to the chart again.

“I didn’t realize you knew him,” I heard Melissa say.

“Know who?” I asked, still distracted. I needed to get this chart right for a presentation I had the next day.

“Jared Morin. He said you guys are old friends!” Melissa replied.

I felt my body stiffen the moment I heard the name. Was I hearing make-believe things? Was this some kind of hallucination after what Mona said the previous day? Surely, I wasn’t actually going bonkers!

I turned to Melissa slowly, gripping the map and highlighter tightly in my hands.

“What are you talking about?”

“Jared Morin. The Jared Morin. He’s here to see you and he just told us that you used to be neighbors or something?” Melissa looked concerned by my reaction.

I could barely keep standing. I felt like I needed to sit down and catch my breath.

“Elsie?”

“Yeah.” I was nodding my head furiously. “I know him. Send him in. I knew him, I mean…” I was fumbling with my words.

When Melissa left, I sat down with a thump on my chair. My office was a mess. Files and books stacked everywhere. I ran a hand through my hair quickly. Ours was not the kind of office where we had to come to work dressed to the nines.

I wasn’t prepared for this. Ten years of radio silence and now he just turns up at my office out of the blue?

I looked through the open blinds of my office wall. Melissa was leading him in, weaving him around the other messy tables. I could see many of my co-workers looking up to see him. Nobody expected a man like Jared Morin to just walk into our office.

We hadn’t spoken in ten years, but this wasn’t the first time I was seeing him in that time. Jared was a media favorite, the country’s golden boy. It was no surprise. He was worth a shit-ton of money, looked like a movie-star, and was still a bachelor. Jared was on TV a lot; he was interviewed by the papers and magazines a lot too.

There was no escaping him and now he was in my office.

My brain had blanked. I wished I could behave appropriately, but I stood up shakily when Melissa showed him in.

I knew I’d lost all the color from my cheeks. I must have looked like I’d seen a ghost.

Jared thanked Melissa and stepped into my office. In a full three-piece suit and a power tie. His sandy blond hair was styled in a fashionable quiff. I knew from his paparazzi photos lately that he favored a stubble. Smart cufflinks glittered like jewels on his wrists as he strode towards me.

“Elsie Carr,” he said my name, while his eyes swept over me.

I felt disastrously under-dressed, and no match for the effect he had not only on me but everyone around us.

“Jared,” I mumbled, trying hard to keep my head up.

“I knew this would be a surprise, but a good one I hope,” Jared said. A lot had changed about this guy I’d known since I was a child. But the one thing that had definitely stayed the same was his smile. He had a half-barely-there way of grinning and he still did that.

It had the same effect on me now that it did before. I wasn’t sure if it was actually a smile. It seemed forced, like it pained him to actually put it on. He was doing it now too.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted.

I hadn’t been able to say much since his arrival. My body and mind were both in shock. This was the man I’d tried to banish from my thoughts for ten years. Now, he was standing right in front of me and I had nothing to say to him. He had paralyzed me completely.

“I was in Chicago, and I heard you live here now. Was I wrong to stop by?” Jared asked.

When I didn’t reply to him for several moments, he walked over to the empty chair in front of my desk and sat down.

“We should make ourselves comfortable, don’t you think, Elsie? We have a lot to catch up on,” he added, staring at me. There was a roughish darkness in his clear gray eyes now. He could see I was distressed. He could see I wasn’t exactly happy to see him, but he didn’t care.

Jared Morin was the most selfish man I had ever known, and that hadn’t changed.