And it was the kind of relationship I dreamed of having one day. The kind when you wanted to be with the other person so much you could be doing anything else, but you still wanted to be beside them.
We sat down and looked over the menus. The waitress let us know that several of the menu items had already sold out for the night, so we chose from what was still available and she walked away. As she did, Tom took a sip of the water the hostess gave us when we sat down.
“Amanda, I want to thank you again, so much, for coming out here. I know it’s going above and beyond, and it means a lot to me.”
“You don’t need to keep thanking me,” I said. “This is what you needed me to do, so here I am. It’s fun having a change of venue. It’s like I’m a secret agent on assignment.”
As soon as I said the words, I wished I could shove them back into my mouth. I could not believe I’d said something that stupid to him. Here he was, my older, dignified, and completely gorgeous boss, and I just told him I’ve been running around playing pretend as a secret agent.
He didn’t seem to notice. Or he just had the decency to not make fun of me. I decided to try to drive back some of my dignity with a more serious direction for the conversation.
“You were telling Ava we don’t have any specific timeline for how long we’re going to be here,” I said. “Do you have any idea at all? Even a ballpark?”
“It might be a little while,” he said. “I need to handle all of this and oversee the bar reopening. I think we can manage work from here just as well as we could from the home office if we use somewhat of a creative approach. But I completely understand if you need to go back to San Francisco at any point. You just let me know, and I will arrange for you to go back.”
“I can’t see any reason why I would need to go back sooner than you do,” I said, hoping that sounded professionally willing and not overeager. “And speaking of a creative approach, I know Landon is prepped and ready to be handling the meeting tomorrow morning but are you still considering using videoconferencing to be there?”
His widened eyes told me he had completely forgotten about the meeting.
“What time is that meeting?” he asked.
“Nine,” I told him.
“Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without you. Yes, I still want to do a video conference into the meeting. He is more than capable of managing it, but I want to be there and see how it goes. My brain is just in a thousand places right now, and I barely even know what the meeting is about.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have notes, remember? We can go over them as a refresher.”
I was glad to have transitioned the conversation over to work. It helped him get his mind off the bar and everything going on with that and took the heat off me. I accessed the notes I’d saved to the cloud through my phone, and we went over them as we ate.
We talked about work for the rest of the meal, and by the time we were finished eating, it was obvious we were both exhausted. It had been a long day, and it felt like it all had just suddenly hit me. We went back up to the room, and Tom unfolded the sofa bed.
“Convenient,” he said.
“Are you sure you’re going to be comfortable?” I asked. “You can have the bed.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I will be just fine out here. Remember, I have the gaggle of brothers. I have slept on sofa beds, cots, sleeping bags, and any manner of makeshift bed more times in my life than I can count. I want to make sure you’re comfortable.”
“Thank you,” I said. I gestured behind me. “Do you want to hop in the bathroom and brush your teeth and everything before I change into my pajamas?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Let me just grab my stuff.”
It took another half an hour for us to jump in the bathroom back and forth and for me to finally get into bed. When I did, I fell asleep instantly.
9
Tom
I was up bright and early the next morning, opting to go down to the gym in the hotel to get a quick workout in. It helped me clear my mind a bit and relieve some of the stress of the last few days.
When I got back to the room, Amanda was up and dressed, ready for the meeting. I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing she was always the first to the office. I still had a little time, so I hopped in a quick shower and got dressed. When I got back in the room, it was ten minutes until the meeting start time, so I sat down at the desk, Amanda beside me on her own laptop, and started the call.
Landon was the first one to join a few moments later, and then around nine, the rest of the crew joined in. When I had the whole group of investors and team members on, I greeted the group. I didn’t know how many of them could tell that Amanda and I were clearly in the same room, so I figured I would go ahead and let the cat out of the bag.
“I am glad you were all able to teleconference for this meeting today. Landon has been terrific running things while I have been back in my hometown, but just so I made sure I was up-to-date fully, Amanda joined me. Before we get started, I wanted to express my gratitude to the both of them for going out of their way for me these past few days,” I said.
Amanda looked at me over the lid of her tablet and grinned.
“No problem,” she said, more to me than to the screen. I smiled back at her.
“We always have your back,” Landon said from his tiny box on the screen.
“Thanks, guys,” I said. “Now, I believe Landon has a few updates for us about the marketing campaign and a few new ideas he has been tooling around with. Take it away, Landon.”
For the majority of the call, I stayed back, letting Landon take the lead. He had come up with a few ideas that were very promising, and after I tinkered with them a little, I was certain they could help catapult us into doubling our profits for the rest of the quarter. This was obviously great news to the investors, and the team was ready and raring to go at implementing the changes needed.
After spending some time fielding questions from the investor gallery, I signed off the meeting early and closed the laptop. Stretching my arms high over my head, I looked over at Amanda, who crumpled her eyebrows at me momentarily. I tried to smile, but I knew it was a pitiful attempt at masking the stress. Standing, I went over to the couch and sat down, leaning back and shutting my eyes for a moment.
My thoughts went to the bar and the image of it smoking. It was so devastating, and I felt the loss not only for myself, but for my brothers, too. I needed to get to the bottom of it and this Danny character as soon as possible, and the added stress of the meeting had doubled up on me. I simultaneously felt motivated to figure out what was going on with the bar and wrung out completely dry and like I wanted to go to bed.
Amanda ended the call and turned off her tablet before turning to me. I could feel her eyes on me, so I opened my own and peered at her across the room. When she opened her mouth to speak, I lost track of what she was saying, distracted by her ruby-red lips. Shaking it off, I asked her to repeat herself midsentence.
“That’s what I was talking about,” she said.
“What?”
“You seem awfully distracted. I don’t know how many of the other investors noticed, but I did, and so did Landon. He messaged me privately during the call to ask if you were okay. Are you okay? I mean, I know things are stressful, but is there something else going on?”