Page 88 of The Law of Attraction
She nodded and stepped back. As he moved past her into the apartment, she caught a whiff of the blissful Adam scent of his skin, and it made her want to throw her arms around him.
But she didn’t.
He stood in the middle of her living room, hands shoved awkwardly into the pockets of his work slacks, still wearing his leather messenger bag across his chest.
“Look, Olivia—” he started, but she held up her hand to stop him. There was something she needed to say to him first.
“You were right.”
“I was?” He seemed wary, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which was smart, because she was juggling a whole closet of shoes, and she was trying her best to keep them in the air, but any second now they were going to start crashing to the floor around her.
“I overreacted earlier. You’re right that what you said to Gavin before shouldn’t change anything between us now.”
“Okay.” He nodded, slightly mollified. “Thank you.”
“Maybe what’s wrong now has always been wrong.”
His face didn’t move. Not even a twitch. “Is that what you think?”
“I think it’s a sign.”
“A sign,” he repeated. The fact that he just sighed wearily instead of insisting there was no such thing as signs was probably another sign. A bad one. He couldn’t even be bothered to argue anymore.
“I’m just not sure intense mutual dislike is a great foundation to build a relationship on,” she ventured.
“I don’t care how you felt about me before.” He’d removed his hands from his pockets and was squeezing the strap of his messenger bag.
“But I do,” she said. “I care. And I don’t know how to stop caring about it. I want to, but I don’t know how. Maybe it’s my Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or just a lifetime of insecurity, but I don’t know how to get past it, and I’m afraid it’s going to keep cropping up, and every time it’s going to feel like this, until eventually we both get sick of trying.”
He looked down at the floor, and she wished she had a mirror she could lay at his feet so she could see his expression. Whatever emotion he was experiencing so strongly he needed to hide his face from her while he steeled himself, she wanted desperately to see.
But then he looked up, and he hadn’t steeled himself at all. The emotion was still on his face plain as day. It was anguish. He looked utterly anguished, and it was because of her.
“Don’t you get it?” he said, his voice coming out rough and cracking a little. “I didn’t like anyone. I didn’t feel any differently about you than I felt about everyone else in that office. I never let myself think about you or know you because I didn’t want to know anyone.”
She could almost believe it. As much as the voices in her brain were trying to tell her it was all about her, that he must have harbored a special dislike for her because she was obviously The Worst and always would be, she could remember well enough how distant he’d been with everyone. How he’d never joined in on group lunches or after-work drinks, never chatted in the break room or showed up to the holiday party. How she’d never once seen him acting chummy with anyone or talking about anything but work.
“But…why?”
“Because I hated myself and I hated everyone around me. I had completely closed myself off from everything and everyone. After Hailey, I was so miserable, all I could do was go through the motions every day. I put all of my energy into doing my work and going to the gym, even though I hated it, and I acted like kind of an asshole, because it kept people from trying to be my friend. I was miserable for so long, I forgot how to be anything else.” He shifted his messenger bag, hugging it against his stomach. “So it didn’t have anything to do with you. It wasn’t you that I disliked—it was myself.”
“But you asked Gavin to send someone else in my place.” Why would he have done that if he’d despised everyone just as much? That had to have been about her specifically.
“Because I felt guilty for refusing to give you a recommendation. I wouldn’t have liked whoever else he sent any better, but at least they wouldn’t have been looking at me all week like I’d taken a dump on their birthday cake.”
“I didn’t look at you like that.”
“No, you looked at me like you wanted to kick me in the nads.”
“That’s because I did.”
“I know.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “It was hot.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Everyone at this job is always trying to kiss my ass. No one ever calls me on my bullshit, because I’m the CIO’s golden boy. All I ever hear is how great I am.”
She couldn’t help how salty she sounded. “Must be terrible for you. What a hardship.”
