Page 17 of Reaching Gavin

Gavin shot me a tight smile as he strode quickly out of the office building. I’d been spotted! But he didn’t stop to chat. My heart did a traitorous flip as I watched him leaving.

“Now that man”— George began, but I cut him off.

“Is definitely off limits.”

I was standing firm and leaving no room for arguments. No dates. No romance. George opened his mouth like he was going to try to argue anyway, but before he could Trevor came running up.

“Did you see Mr. North, I mean, Gavin?” He was a little out of breath and red in the face like he’d just raced down the stairs instead of taking the elevator.

I ignored him. George did the same.

“Oh come on, guys! I’m supposed to go to some last-minute meeting.”

Why on earth was Trevor getting invited to a last-minute meeting? Maybe Gavin was playing favorites. Or maybe hiding out in my cubicle all week had got me kicked off the invite list. I tried not to look sour about it.

“He just left,” I said in a low voice, so he couldn’t hear my frustration. Thwarting Trevor, no matter how much he deserved it, wasn’t professional and I was determined to take the high road from now on.

“Thanks!” He dashed off to catch up with him.

“I don’t think we should have told him” George said with a fair amount of sass.

“He would have found him. In fact, I’m surprised he lost track of him at all. His lips are usually firmly attached to his ass.”

“That’s your other ex-boyfriend, isn’t it?” George chuckled at this and took a sip of his Americano “Girl, you’ve got a weird love life.”

I spun to face him, almost spilling my drink in the process. “Neither of them have anything to do with my love life.”

“Sure, sure. Whatever you want to tell yourself.” He held up one hand in surrender, the other still clutching his coffee a safe distance from my flailing limbs.

“Good. I’d hate for you to lose your coffee hook up.” I was joking. Mostly. George meant well, and like it or not, he was probably right about a few things.

I said goodbye, grabbed my coffee and went back up to work. The next hour and a half would pass whether I was here or at home, but once I got home it would be time to get ready for my date with Luka—and that was the last thing I wanted to do. Staring at my cubicle wall sounded like paradise in comparison. I punched the up button, George clucking his tongue and muttering to himself behind me.

No rain materialized.Instead, the evening got hotter as though to warn me I was about to enter my own, personal hell. Luka picked me up in the BMW I’d seen him drive off in the other day. He’d been driving a used Honda Accord a few years ago, and like me, he had been a scholarship kid. I didn’t think Luka’s parents were poor exactly, but they weren’t rolling in it. It had been something we had in common when we met. I couldn’t help but wonder how much his life had changed since then if he could afford something like this now. I got into the car unable to help admiring the buttery leather and gave him a small smile.

He looked me over and whistled appreciatively. “You look fantastic.”

I did look fantastic, in fact. Even though I’d been dreading this date, I decided to make the most of it. For me, that meant a little black dress with criss-crossing straps and a pair of black mesh Jimmy Choos that I had scored from a secondhand fashion site. I’d wanted to feel on equal footing on this date. I might not be driving a BMW, but I’d come a long way since we were nineteen.

“This is a really nice car.” A compliment felt in order, but I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea by telling him he looked hot. Even though he did. I’d met his parents once. He’d scored his blond hair and blue eyes from his Russian mom and his Italian attitude from his father. It had resulted in a man who knew exactly how good-looking he was.

“Thanks,” he said with a grin. “It was a graduation present to myself.”

Of course, it was.I glanced down at my shoes and wondered if other people had the same reaction when I said that it was a present to myself. “I guess I didn’t realize you graduated.”

“Yeah, it was getting harder to keep my scholarship, so I felt like I needed to get out of there. You understand.” He shifted gears and zoomed ahead, weaving in and out of the traffic. Nineteen-year-old me would’ve been impressed with his driving. Current me was terrified. Did he know how crazy traffic was downtown this time of night? Suddenly, an even scarier thought occurred to me. What if Luka hadn’t changed at all? Would that wreck my entire experiment? It was too late to back out now. It was probably too late for anything, because Luka was going to kill us. I clutched the armrests and sent a silent prayer to anyone who was listening.

Please if you get me out of this tonight, I promise to not date any more guys like this. Ever.

“You still have another year?” he asked over the roar of the engine.

I managed to nod, which given the speed he was driving felt like it gave me whiplash. “After this summer I have one more semester of classes. Then I need to find a paid internship to round out my degree.”

We were in the hell of small talk. The place where people who no longer had anything in common wound up trapped and chatting for all eternity. If this was a first date, I could hope that we would move past it—maybe into the hell of ‘tell me about your family’ or ‘what industry are you going into.’ But this far into our relationship—having already slept together—there was no hope. I already knew the next couple of hours were going to be even worse. Ninth Circle of hell stuff.

When we finally reached Pike Place and parked, Luka was out of the car and around to open my door before I’d reached one shaky hand toward the handle. I got out on wobbly feet and considered kissing the blessed concrete beneath my heels.

“Are you okay?” Luka’s eyebrows knitted together in concern. He’d asked me this the other day in the parking lot in exactly the same way. Then, it had seemed genuine. Now it felt perfunctory like he’d practiced this, as though he needed to rehearse being a decent human being.