Page 67 of The Law of Attraction
He wouldn’t have told her she was amazing if he didn’t mean it on some level.
But obviously he hadn’t meant it the way she’d taken it. He’d meant it in more of a platonic coworkers who are forced to spend time together kind of way. Or maybe even a coworkers who have become friends but nothing more than that kind of way.
But definitely not in a let’s smush our faceholes together kind of way.
“Olivia!”
Great, he’d followed her.
The sight of Adam walking toward her caused the raw, red burn of rejection to flare up anew. But even though she’d come out here to get away from him, there was still a part of her that was glad to see him. Even though it hurt to look at him and be reminded of her humiliation, she liked him too much to wish him away.
As long as he didn’t try to talk to her about what had just happened. She’d rather suck on a battery or gargle jalapeño juice than dissect her mortifying blunder and listen to Adam try to console her for being a bad person.
“Can we talk about what just happened?” he said, coming to a stop a few feet in front of her.
“Let’s not,” she said, refusing to look at him. Which was pretty easy to do with the rain running into her eyes and making everything look blurry and gray. “It’s fine. I just have a new most embarrassing moment, is all.”
“Please don’t be embarrassed.”
Her fists squeezed the swing chains until the metal bit into her skin. “Sure, and while I’m at it I’ll just stop having blue eyes too. Because it’s that easy.”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
She barked out a laugh. “Right.” So much for his dedication to truthfulness. Now he was feeding her the oldest lie in the book: it’s not you, it’s me. As if.
“I really do like you,” he said, but he’d lost all credibility. She didn’t have to believe him. “If things were different…” He didn’t finish the sentence, which was just as well, because she didn’t need to hear him describe the impossible possibilities that might lie ahead if only he liked her the way she liked him.
“You don’t have to try to make me feel better,” she told him, hoping he’d take it to heart and stop talking. “Really.”
But he wasn’t going to be dissuaded that easily. He was going to say what he’d come out here to say. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just…I can’t get involved with another coworker. I just can’t. Not after what happened with Hailey.”
She did look up at him then, but she had to wipe the rain out of her eyes before she could focus on him properly. He looked as embarrassed as she felt, which only made her feel worse. His eyes were like two hollow pools as they skittered away from hers.
He claimed the swing beside her and sat down, which was much better, because then neither of them had to look at the other, and there was a nice, defined safety zone between them.
Adam’s swing creaked as he straightened his legs out in front of him. “When things blew up between us, it made going to work a nightmare, and I swore I’d never put myself in that position again.”
Olivia watched the raindrops bounce off the picnic table in front of them. “I guess I can understand that.”
“I’m sorry if I misled you.”
“I’m sorry that I wanted to be misled.”
“I wanted it too. But I can’t. Dating a coworker is too fraught. I won’t go there again.”
She dared a glance at him and immediately regretted it. He looked like the walking wounded. He was one of those people shuffling around a hospital ward with his IV stand after surgery. Even though the incision had been all stitched up and wasn’t bleeding anymore, every step was a painful reminder of the wound that hadn’t healed.
“That’s okay,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light. “It’s cool. How about we just forget all this ever happened? Do a reset and roll back the clock like Daylight Savings Time. The last hour is a total wipe.”
“Sure,” he said. “I can do that.”
“Great. It never happened, and we’ll never speak of it again.”
“Sounds good to me.”
The problem was she didn’t know how to go on from here. How to get back to where they were before she’d ruined it all. What were they supposed to talk about now? How were they going to spend the rest of the day cooped up together in a tiny motel room? How in the holy cheese-covered fuck were they supposed to sleep in the same bed tonight?
“Do you want to go back inside now?” he asked, giving her a sidelong glance.
