B009R9RGU2 EBOK (16 page)

I should definitely get out of here before I blow it. I give my ticket to the valet and figure I’ll call it a night. My work is done. It’s better if I don’t see Billy again anyway.

But obviously my subconscious has summoning powers. Because I’m just thinking about him, and suddenly I feel a warm body at my back.

“Are you sneaking out?” he whispers in my ear conspiratorially. He leans into me a little, encouraging me to press my body up against him. Which feels way too good to stop, even though I know I should. I mean, we’re right out in front of the party. Anyone could see us. Or maybe they can’t, since his back must be mostly blocking me. Except that I wouldn’t even attempt basic geometry right now.

“Yeah, it’s time for me to head home. I still have to work tomorrow. If I can dig out my desk.”

“Oh really.” He has such a sexy laugh. “I didn’t peg you as a pack rat.”

“I’m not!” I hastily rush to get any unattractive image from
Hoarders
out of his mind. “Since I took on Billy Fox as a client… I can’t help it.”

“I see. And how is this new bad habit my fault?” He is now inches from my body. A little shiver shoots up my spine.

“People keep sending me stuff for you. Like, there’s the gift bag from the event last week. All sorts of stuff gets dumped in my office for you. It needs to be sorted through and then I can…” I lose my train of thought as he puts his hands on either side of my waist, on the pretense of keeping me warm. But, at this point, I’m so hot I’m likely to spontaneously combust.

“When am I going to see you again?” His voice is a low whisper, and I can feel the vibrations course through me.

“Um… I don’t know.”
There’s a clever answer
.

“Really? Aren’t you in charge of my schedule, Ms. Publicist?” he asks straight-faced, but it’s clear he’s toying with me. He leans down, and I sense his lips getting very close to my left ear…

Just as my car pulls up.

I don’t know whether to be relieved or royally pissed off. But either way, I leap from Billy’s arms and head around to the door the valet is holding open for me.

Billy’s steps echo as he follows me. He hands the valet a folded bill and takes ahold of the door. I slip past him and ease into the front seat. Billy’s hand covers mine as we both reach for my seat belt. He pulls it confidently across my front and, after the telltale
click
, delivers a very gentle kiss on the mouth.

“Call me. When you know.” And then he’s gone.

Comfy on my sofa at last, I
decide to waste a mindless hour on Facebook, catching up on others’ lives. The Internet is the perfect way to forget about tonight’s premiere and Billy’s parting words. But after smiling over Izzy’s recently posted shots of
little Charlie chasing seagulls on the beach, I find myself Googling “Billy Fox” and clicking straight to Images. Rows and rows of his now-familiar face appear.

There’s a sharp knock at the door.

What the hell?
It’s nearly ten-thirty.

Pulling a huge sweatshirt over my pj’s I look through the peephole.

It’s Jacob.

I wish I could say I had a feeling this was coming. Or some sort of omen that something was going to happen. But that would be a complete lie. I am totally blindsided to find his distorted face illuminated under the hallway light. More than anything, I want to sink down on the other side of the door and pretend not to be home. But the lights can be seen from the street; he knows I’m here. And he has a key. The knock was a courtesy. In the space of a few breaths I already feel nauseous.

I search for something normal to say as I unlock the door. Jacob stands in the doorway, an indecipherable look on his handsome face as his eyes search mine. What’s he waiting for?

“Hi.” I lean my weight onto my hand, which is locked in a death grip on the doorknob. But I feel I’ve achieved a relatively neutral tone.

“Hi.” He still hasn’t moved.

“Come in.” Whatever it is we’re about to say, I definitely don’t want all my neighbors to hear.

“It was nice to see Tru at the meeting—though not quite the same as having you there.” Jacob seems confident as ever as he paces past me into the living room. He doesn’t take off his jacket but goes right for the sofa and sits down. I follow and sit
beside him as he leans forward with his arms braced on his knees. My eyes follow his absentminded glance at the Billy Fox gallery on the open laptop. There’s a sudden stab of regret. “Sorry. I had to work…,” I mumble, shutting the laptop and moving it to the side. Jacob is so focused he doesn’t appear to notice my flushed embarrassment.

“We need to talk, Sophie.” He looks directly at me, and I feel like he’s staring right through me.

“Okay.” Understand that I’m not playing some sort of control game here, making him talk first. I am just so scared shitless that I can’t form a complete thought. Jacob doesn’t jump right in to fill the awkward silence. We sit there not talking for what seems like forever but is probably less than a minute.

“Look, I’m not sure what’s going on lately,” he finally says. “There’s been this weird tension between us, and I’m not sure why.”

“How about the horrible things you said to me last week? Maybe that’s caused some of the ‘tension’ you’re feeling.” Flashback to Girls Junior Basketball—the best defense is a good offense.

“You know it isn’t just that. Sophie, I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I
am
concerned. And I know you don’t want to hear this, but you have been drinking a lot lately. And I think it’s affecting our relationship.”

“You make me sound like a freakin’ alcoholic. Jesus. I like to have a few drinks to unwind. Big deal. And, you know, just because I’ve had a couple doesn’t mean you get to talk down to me all condescending.” I can’t just sit here like this, so I get up and start pacing around the room.

“I don’t think you’re an alcoholic. Look, I just think there’s some stuff here that we’re not saying. We have to get it out. We have to talk about what’s really bothering us or we’re not going to be able to work through it.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I turn back on him. “If I don’t admit to having a problem, you’re going to break up with me?”

“That’s not what I said.” Jacob is still looking plaintively at me. His calm tone hasn’t changed once. Part of me wants to take his hand and reassure him that everything is all right. We are good together. But then anger and doubt creep back in.

“I heard what you said. You want to know what my problems are? I’ve got a problem with you being judgmental about me wanting a glass of wine at night. That’s my problem.”
And I’m afraid that I’ve spent the last two years waiting for something that’s never going to happen
. But of course I’m too afraid to actually say that.

“Okay, look. I’m sorry if you find me condescending when you drink. I didn’t realize I was doing it. But I really didn’t come here to talk to you about that or fight. We need to figure out what this distance is between us. Sometimes lately I get the feeling that you don’t want to be around me.”

I snort disgustedly and turn away from him. Leaning against the back of the sofa, I take a deep breath. Should I tell him about Billy? How ridiculous would that sound: I’m falling in love with a movie star. Am I “falling in love” with him? Or is it just a stupid phase and in a week I’ll be dying for Jacob to come back? Oh God, I am such an idiot.

I go with a half-truth.

“I want to be with you, Jacob. It’s not that. I’ve just been really busy at work. I have a million things on my plate right now, and I mean, your work gets crazy sometimes too; I would have thought you’d understand being swamped. I try to be understanding when you’re busy.”

I just want this conversation to end. I can’t tell him about Billy or my doubts and fears of our own stalled relationship; I realize that now. But I’m not just going to back down either.

“Okay, you’re busy. We’re both busy. But we’ve always made time for each other in the past. Look—Sophie. I’m laying it all out here. Tell me what’s going on. I want us to work through this.”

Silence again. I think of a hundred things to say, none of them right. And Jacob being so nice only makes me feel worse. But I can’t help myself.

“Please, Sophie. Just talk to me.” His intensity spurs me to fight back.

“Jacob. Listen to me! There is
nothing
to work through. Nothing to talk about.” I grip the back of the sofa as I stare into his hurt and concerned face. “I just need some space. That’s all. It’s no big deal.”

“I’m sorry, Sophie. Our relationship was a big deal to me.” Same quiet, intense voice. He gets up and goes to the door. “Call me when you want to talk.” Since I’m not looking, it’s just the low click as it shuts behind him that tells me he’s gone.

Was
.

I’ve been lying in bed in the dark for hours now. I look at the clock again. 2:13
A.M
. Two minutes since the last time I looked. I can’t sleep. I keep replaying the conversation with Jacob over and over in my mind. What have I done? Did we break up? Do I want to break up with him?

I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

Elle calls me in first thing to review last night’s
premiere. It’s a tad unusual protocol, but I’m not really focused on the subtleties of work right now. I keep replaying last night in my head. Is it really the end for Jacob and me? I keep waiting to feel panicked or sad, but mainly I feel numb. I don’t know what’s been happening to me lately. I used to be able to separate work from personal life. Of course, until now, I’ve never really had a lot of personal “problems” per se.

So I find myself sitting in Elle’s comfortable office, reciting how the evening went as if I were some junior publicist on my first red carpet. I tell her whom I walked down the press line, what coverage they got, and then we gossip a little about the after party.

“Anything else I should know about?” Elle asks as the chat is winding down.

“Um… nope. Everything went well.”

She nods and then turns back to her computer, my signal that the meeting is over.

As I walk back down to my office, I dismiss the nagging question mark in the back of my mind as being overly sensitive. Elle’s chat didn’t mean anything out of the ordinary. The
premiere
did
go well. She probably just wanted an excuse to catch up since everything has been so hectic lately. Except I am pretty high up on the totem pole around here to be doing Tuesday morning quarterbacking for a little indie film premiere. Unless it’s because I
was
a little off my game at the Nintendo meeting. When did I start getting paranoid?

Having logged on to my computer, I lose a couple hours catching up on the ninety-three emails I received since last night. Responding to the crucial ones and organizing the rest requires only a portion of my concentration, which is lucky because Jacob’s parting words keep echoing in my head.

He definitely used the past tense. He said, “Our relationship
was
a big deal to me.” No matter how I look at it, it seems clear to me that we are broken up. You don’t use the past tense when discussing a current relationship.

I search my innermost thoughts for heartbreak or relief or any identifiable emotion. But all I find is the disappointed look on Jacob’s face that I can’t shake. He hasn’t called me or sent a message since the blowup.

I’m
not going to be the one to call him.

A reminder for tonight’s bimonthly book club pops up and I’m relieved. I need a nice distraction. I’m trying to remember what book we were assigned and whether I read it, when a recap email from Tru about the Tribe of Hope meeting I missed appears in my inbox. Well,
that’s
not going to help distract me from thinking of Jacob. I scan the meeting’s minutes, embarrassed to notice that quite a few discussion points were aimed at me, not to mention that several labor-intensive duties were heaped on the shoulders of the girl who didn’t show up. Great.
Now I feel even guiltier than before. Let’s face it. I am not going to be able to work if I don’t figure out this whole Billy/Jacob debate. Right now.

I bring up my AOL instant messenger and look for Izzy’s screen name. But it’s nowhere to be seen. The clock says 11:30, so it’s 2:30
P.M
. in New York. Izzy often takes late lunches, but usually she puts the “away” message up first. It’s like she never signed on this morning… And then it hits me. If I weren’t so preoccupied, I’d have remembered she’s taking some time off in Connecticut with her family. I mean, I could still email her, or call, but the reception is terrible. The last time I reached her there, we had one of those absurd conversations where we got disconnected in the middle of a sentence but I didn’t realize she was gone until I heard the recorded “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again”… and felt like a self-absorbed fool. Not to mention that she is on vacation and deserves uninterrupted family time with Simon and Charlie. I know Izzy would selflessly call me back in a heartbeat, but I refuse to have her spend her holiday dealing with my romantic crisis.

Okay, so what would Izzy say if she were here? Probably that I’m an idiot and Jacob is the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I can’t throw it all away on a fickle movie star, whom I don’t even know that well. Not to mention that he’s a client, so it would be completely unethical for me to start dating him. Or maybe not… Maybe she’d understand that it is
Billy Fox
we’re talking about here, and it’s not so easy to just say “no, thank you.” And you can’t deny that the two of us have a strong attraction. That counts for something, right? Or maybe the fact that there even
is
a Billy Fox incident happening means something
important is lacking in my relationship with Jacob. I mean, if I were totally happy with Jacob, would I even be tempted by or notice Billy beyond the usual appreciation of eye candy? So maybe Billy’s not the problem. He’s a symptom. Or have I been watching too much
Grey’s Anatomy
?