From Now On (9 page)

             
“What are you thinking about?” Emily suddenly asked.

             
Jo shook her head. “I love you, Em.”

             
Emily’s eyes widened and for a moment Jo saw her as that tiny little toddler with pigtails and a perpetual smile. Then Emily reached across the table and took Jo’s hand. “What’s the matter?”

             
“Nothing.”

             
“I know you, Jo. I know something’s bothering you. Is it the wedding?”

             
“No.” Jo squeezed Emily’s hand before pulling away. “I’m so happy for you, Emily. I want you to have a perfect wedding.”

             
Emily tilted her head, her eyes growing dreamy. “I just want to be Mrs. Ryan Henderson. This wedding is mostly for Mom, you know?”

             
“I know,” Jo said. “She’s been planning this since the day you were born.”

             
“It’s so important to her that we do everything just so. I never really thought about all the details, all the things that go into a wedding. And telling Mom that we just want a nice, simple church wedding is like telling her we want to elope.”

             
“How did it go with his parents?” Jo asked, remembering Emily’s excuse for not driving her to the mechanic, an excuse that set up the painful episode with Mark. Jo tried to push the memory from her thoughts, but it was easier said than done.

             
“They were great. Ryan’s dad is a history professor and he talked all night about the places he’s gone, the things he’s seen. It would have been fascinating if I’d known half of what he was talking about.”

             
Jo nodded, remembering a brief conversation she had had with Mr. Henderson during her brief relationship with Ryan. She remembered thinking that they would have a lot to talk about when they finally met. All those weekends of watching Civil War documentaries with her dad would finally pay off.

             
“I bet they loved you,” she said aloud.

             
Emily shrugged. “Mr. Henderson was really nice, but Ryan’s mom told him that she thought I was a little too flighty for him. Can you believe that? I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.”

             
“She just hasn’t gotten to know you yet. In time she will come to love you, Em. Everyone always does.”

             
A sadness came into Emily’s eyes. “They would have loved you.”

             
Jo shook her head. “I’m not the one their son wants to marry.”

             
“You should be.” Emily sighed. “I’m not like them. He’s a history professor and she’s a doctor. I dropped out of college after two semesters. We have nothing in common.”

             
“You have Ryan.” Jo studied Emily’s face, unsure how to deal with her sudden self-doubt. Emily had never doubted herself before. Everyone loved Emily. No one ever had a bad word to say about her. She had never had to face the naysayers Jo faced every day. It suddenly hit Jo just how much Emily really must love Ryan if she was allowing this to bother her.

             
Jo reached over and took Emily’s hand. “You’re not marrying Ryan’s parents. You’re marrying him. If they love him as much as you do, I’m sure they will come to love you.”

             
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jo,” Emily sighed with a grateful smile.

             
A week passed and then another. All Jo could think about was Mark. Sometimes she would catch herself staring out the window, thoughts of him pulling her head out of her work in a way nothing before had ever done. Work had always been something of a salvation for Jo, something she could always rely on to be her rock, her escape, in a world grown too hostile to deal with. It was predictable. She knew what it wanted from her and how to provide it. But now even work couldn’t soothe the hurt that Mark’s absence left her with.

             
It only took a few days for Jo to realize she had to be the one to make this right. From the beginning, Mark had always sought her out, had always come to her first. Now it was clear that she was going to have to go to him. For some reason she didn’t understand, he needed her to be the one to make the next move. The only problem was, she didn’t know how.

             
Again, her fear of confrontation had her paralyzed. What if he rejected her as he had done before? What if he laughed at her? What if he really just didn’t want her in his life? What if?

             
It was the what-ifs that made it impossible for her act.

             
“Jo?”

             
Jo looked up from her desk as Sandy let herself in. “What’s up?” she asked.

             
“Becca wants you to deliver that report on last year’s safety record to Kathleen before five.”

             
Jo sat back, flipping through the files on her desk. “I thought I turned that in yesterday.”

             
“You did.”

             
Jo half nodded, aware of what Becca was up to. She thought Jo had turned in everything she had on the report and therefore would be unprepared. Becca had been going out of her way to make Jo look bad in front of Kathleen ever since learning about the email she had sent about the promotion, an email Kathleen had seen two days after making her final decision. But, so far, Jo had been one step ahead of Becca.

             
“I guess it’s a good thing I backed it up on the hard drive, then.”

             
Sandy smiled, clearly relieved. “Good girl,” she said.

             
Jo printed a second copy of the report and slipped on her shoes, smoothed down her skirt, and made her way out of the office. She spotted Mark almost immediately. He was leaning against one of the flimsy walls of a cubical, having what appeared to be an animated conversation with Beth. At least it was highly animated on her part. But, then again, Beth couldn’t talk without waving her arms around with great enthusiasm. Mark looked almost bored even as he tried to keep an interested expression on his face. Jo smiled sympathetically when their eyes met. A huge mistake.

             
Mark straightened and crossed his arms over his chest, his body language shutting Jo out before anything could start. She couldn’t keep the pain out of her eyes even as what was left of her self-respect forced her to continue, unimpeded, in his direction. He continued to watch her and for a minute she thought she saw the same hurt in his eyes, but then he stepped back out of her path and said something she couldn’t hear to Beth. Beth laughed with a quick glance at Jo. Jo kept walking, leaving them in her wake with more confidence than she felt.

             
Blinking away tears, Jo knocked on Kathleen’s office door.

             
“Hi, Jo,” Kathleen said with genuine affection as Jo entered her office.

             
“Becca said you wanted a copy of the safety report.”

             
Kathleen tapped a packet of papers on her desk. “Already have it. And I must say, you have done a wonderful job, as usual.”

             
“Thank you.”

             
Jo turned to leave, but Kathleen stopped her.

             
“Do you have a minute?”

             
“Of course.”

             
Kathleen stood and walked around the desk, waving Jo into a chair. Kathleen perched on the edge of her desk and studied Jo for a minute. “How long have you worked here?” she asked.

             
“Five years.”

             
“Do you like the work?”

             
“Very much,” Jo said, wondering where this was going.

             
“If that’s true, then I find myself wondering why you didn’t try harder for that promotion. Becca was in here almost from the minute Kurt informed me of his resignation. But you…” Kathleen sighed. “You are such a hard worker, Jo. You could have so much potential. But you never seem willing to fight for anything.”

             
Jo stared into her lap, unable to express the shame those words washed over her. Kathleen reached down and cupped Jo’s chin, forcing her to look up. “I don’t usually give pep talks. I simply don’t have the patience to coddle employees. But I like you. So I feel like I need to tell you, if you don’t start standing up for yourself around here, your opportunities for advancement will disappear. And then there will be no reason to keep you around. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Jo said in a soft, defeated tone.

             
A disappointed frown marred Kathleen’s soft, matriarchic features. Then she waved Jo away.

             
Jo was in the bathroom, hiding in a stall ten minutes later when she heard a couple of her coworkers walk in. Annoyed at their presence at a time when she wanted to be alone, she drew her feet up and hugged her knees to her chest. She wasn’t about to give any of these juvenile personalities the knowledge that she had a heart that had been broken so many times over the past few weeks that she might never put all the pieces together again. And she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that she had been crying.

             
Not that they would have noticed.

             
“I heard he just went through a bad divorce. His wife took him for everything he had, even his pension from the Army.”

             
“Beth says that he has primary custody of his two kids because of his wife’s instability.”

             
“I heard that, too.”

             
“What kind of woman could cheat on a gorgeous guy like him?”

             
Jo heard water running, drowning out the voices for a second. Then the first woman said, “…I guess he’ll be making up for lost time, though. And I plan to be at the top of that list.”

             
Their voices faded as they left the room. Jo laid her cheek on her knee and thought about what they had said. They knew more about Mark than she had learned in several weeks of conversations with him. Jo began to think about what Kathleen had said, about how she was going to become useless if she didn’t begin to fight for herself. Even Mark had said she had to sell herself if she ever hoped to get what she wanted. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was time she stood up for herself.

             
Jo straightened when she saw him come out of the building. He strode toward her quickly, the slump of his shoulders belying his confident gait as though he carried the weight of the world on them. When he saw her, he paused in his step, glancing around as though looking for some sort of escape. For a second she thought he might go back into the building and take with him the last thread of strength that kept her upright. But then he continued toward her, albeit a little slower.

             
“I don’t have time for this right now, Jo,” he said.

             
Jo stepped aside, clearing his way to the driver’s door of his truck. “I won’t keep you but a minute. I just wanted to apologize.”

             
Mark glanced at her, clearly surprised. “For what?”

             
“For what happened between us. I never meant to ruin our friendship.”

             
“Jo—”

             
“You don’t know how important our friendship is to me, Mark. You made it clear that was all you wanted and I stepped over the line—”

             
“It wasn’t just you.”

             
Jo clasped her hands tightly together in front of her, trying hard not to fidget. “It was me and I am so sorry. I miss you, Mark, I miss the easiness between us, the advice and the food—”

             
“Please, Jo,” he groaned. “Why do you have to make this so hard?”

             
Jo shook her head, confused by the pain she heard in his voice. “I’m not trying to make anything hard. I just want things to be like they were before. Can’t we do that?”

             
Mark turned away, clearly unaware of how very difficult it was for her to say these things, to confront him this way. But she couldn’t let him go without fighting, so she was fighting the only way she knew how.

             
“I’m okay with just being your friend, Mark. I know you’ve had a hard time and that you’re struggling to put your life back together. And I know I’m not what you need in a romantic partner. So I’m okay with friendship if you are.”