Page 58 of A Lifetime of Afters
They stayed with me when I slipped the key in my lock and scooped up a belligerent Bruce who was so happy to see me, he couldn’t put forth the effort to play hard to get.
They stayed with me the next day when I hit the bluffs again. The trail to the top had closed, but the path down to the beach welcomed me. I could almost hear us laughing, the sound echoing back through time with the churning of the waves.
And they stayed with me all through that long night when I heard not one word from Hawk.
They were with me still when I walked into work Monday morning and knocked briskly on Harley’s office door.
Betraying her mood, Harley barked, “Who is it?”
I froze, wondering how to answer. It’s your bestie? Not your favorite person at the moment? The woman who shagged your brother and would happily do so again?
I heard a feminine growl come from the other side of the door. I raised my eyebrows and grinned to myself. Time to take the bull by the horns.
Opening the door, I sang, “Good morning, bestie.”
Harley’s brows lowered, and she raised a hand. “I am not in the mood for this right now.”
“I get it,” I replied. I stepped inside and registered the exact moment her nose caught a whiff of the deep-fried bear claw covered in cinnamon and cream cheese. Setting it on her desk with her regular coffee order, I pulled up a chair. “If I go, I'll take the bear claw with me.”
It was not a huge gamble. Harley rarely ate breakfast, often suffered from low blood sugar from forgetting to eat, got migraines due to her caffeine addiction, and harbored a major sweet tooth.
“You can stay for as long as it takes me to eat it,” she grudgingly allowed.
“Can I speak?”
Looking at me sidelong, she grumbled, “Let me at least enjoy the first bite before you start.”
When we were kids, there were only two offices set up for use along this back hallway. The rest of the rooms, Harley’s present office included, sat empty.
When she was on bite number three, I pounced. “This was our room.”
With her index finger full of cream cheese and halfway up to her mouth, she paused. “What?”
I circled my finger in the air to encompass the room. “This was our room. The year your mom started working here full time, she and your dad gave us this room. We had a dollhouse over there,” I pointed to her bookshelf, “and I believe…I can’t believe we did this, but I believe ‘the portal to hell’ is behind your fish tank.”
She smirked. “It’s still there. I wouldn’t let them fill it in when they renovated the offices. Hawk’s office is on the other side. We had a tiny door installed.”
I smiled at her. “I can’t believe we didn’t get in trouble for that.”
“Some of us did,” she laughed. “Hawkley took the fall for all of us even though it was Max and Hunter’s idea.”
“And we were fully invested,” I murmured.
Harley carefully contemplated the surface of her desk. “He always felt so responsible for all of us.” She looked up at me, a challenge in her eyes. “He took Hunter’s death the hardest. I lost both my brothers that day.”
“I know it’s not the same, but I lost them, too.”
Her frustration boiling over, she demanded, “Why would you get involved with him, Noelle? You had to know screwing around with him would not end well.”
I looked her in the eye, making sure she heard each word. “I’m in love with him. I’ve been in love with him for over a decade. He’s the reason I left, the reason I haven’t been able to make it with anyone else.” I shrugged. “I’m not screwing around.”
Harley’s eyes widened at my bald revelation. “A decade?” she whispered.
“More,” I whispered back.
She leaned over her desk, still whispering, and suddenly we were back to us. “Why didn’t you ever tell him?”
“I did. Right before Hunter’s accident.” A tear slipped down my cheek. They were so commonplace at this point, I barely noticed. “He told me he wasn’t interested.”
