“I guess I felt like we were a thing. We spent a lot of time together.”
When Andrew smiled at her again, there wasn’t any heat in it. It was the same smile that he gave to network executives and recalcitrant cast members—only slightly less saccharine than the one he gave to “friends of the show” who overstepped their bounds.
“I shouldn’t have come.” Alex rose and backed up toward the door.
“No, it’s just—” Andrew held up his left hand, twirling his wedding band with his thumb.
Alex’s face heated. “I didn’t come to start things up again. I just—I feel like this”—she pointed at the ring—“is a thing.”
Instead of looking weary of her presence, Andrew looked befuddled. He motioned for her to sit again.
After a split second of hesitation, Alex accepted his invitation. Andrew’s assistant appeared with a tray of water and coffee, as if she’d been summoned by magic. Alex guessed that Andrew had a button in his desk, and she was lucky that it wasn’t a button that made a hole open up under the feet of unwanted visitors.
“The last I heard you were seeing that venture-capital guy?” Andrew asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee with a heart-stopping amount of heavy cream. While they were dating, he’d explained that it had to do with intermittent fasting, but if fasting involved heavy cream, Alex would be fasting all the time when she ate dessert.
Alex poured her own coffee. “He was in mergers and acquisitions. And we broke up.”
“So you came here to find out why I dumped you?” Andrew sat back in his chair. “Because one other guy dumped you?”
“It’s more than one other guy, okay?” Alex felt her hackles rising, which was probably a clue as to why she was frequently dumped. She wasn’t very agreeable.
“I mean, you’ve been dating for a long time.” Alex gave him a look, and he backtracked. “Not that long, but long enough to know that men are fickle beasts.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“It’s also clear that you couldn’t be less interested in committing to one person.”
That made Alex’s heart stop for a second. Alex and Andrew had dated years ago. Early on, when she wasn’t quite so negative about her long-term prospects, she’d thought she was open to something serious. And she’d never told Andrew that she wasn’t sure that long-term relationships were viable. It tended to be a bummer when she started quoting divorce statistics. She’d learned to keep her mouth shut when people asked why she had never given marriage a try. It didn’t make sense to her in the long run. Sort of like an investment that was nearly guaranteed to fail or leave one without a home to live in. Why make that kind of investment when one could make others that might not have as high a yield in happiness but were infinitely less risky?
“I never said I wasn’t interested in commitment. I said that I think marriage is foolish.” Alex looked down at his ring. “I mean, not your marriage. Your marriage is fine. I’m sure you’re very happy and will have decades—centuries—of memories to share.”
Andrew’s mouth quirked up on one side, and Alex remembered why she’d found him so charming. “You know what your problem is?”
Again, her hackles were raised. It was one of those weird things. When she used to ask her father why she couldn’t spend time at his house during her summer visits, he always made it about her having a problem or wanting to pin him down. But Andrew didn’t know that, so she couldn’t blame him for making this—her showing up at his office to ask why their relationship hadn’t worked out when he’d clearly moved on almost immediately—about her. “What’s my problem?”
“I never felt like I could make you happy,” Andrew said. “You never let me in or let me know how you were feeling.”
“That’s not true—”
“After sex once you high-fived me and said, ‘Good game.’ ”
That was true. She had done that. But she never knew what to say right after sex. She would have wanted a cuddle but never wanted to seem clingy. She could see how post-sex performance dissection might push a guy away.
“I see your point.” Alex smiled and picked up her purse to leave. “That’s a good note. Maybe I’ll try silence next time.”
“Honestly, it would have been charming if I’d thought it was a joke. But I knew then that you were never going to let me in.” Andrew looked a little bit sad about it.
“I’m sorry.” Alex wasn’t quite sure what to say, but that seemed appropriate after walking in here and dredging up ancient history.
Andrew smiled and looked down at a frame on his desk that Alex guessed held a picture of his wife. “It’s all right. Things worked out for the best.”
“For you.” She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Andrew looked her in the eye and said, “They’ll work out for you, too.” She didn’t know how he could seem so sure of that, but part of her wanted to believe him. Maybe seeing Jason on that show was a wake-up call of some kind. She wasn’t sure yet what she was meant to wake up to, but she was starting to think that fucking and running wasn’t good for her. She wasn’t sure she could hack it at celibacy, so she might actually have to open up.
She opened her mouth to thank Andrew but didn’t get the words out.
The door to Andrew’s office opened, and the last person she expected to see there walked in.
Immediately, Will Harkness looked at her, and his face screwed up. He crossed his beefy arms across his chest and said, “Alex, what the hell are you doing here?”
Alex could never stop herself from talking back at Will Harkness. It was a disease. So she responded in kind. “I could ask the same thing of you, but you’re always devising new ways to ingratiate yourself into my life and annoy me. I presume you had a tail on me and followed me here.”
“Why on earth would I do that, when you just show up wherever I happen to be?” He stepped closer to her, much closer than someone who was practically related to her would step. She could smell him. He must have been cooking today because the scents of lemongrass and sage filled her nostrils. Or maybe that was just how he smelled, clean and earthy. It was both intoxicating and infuriating.
“I do not show up wherever you happen to be.” And then she realized that she might have to explain what she was doing here, and that would be unacceptable. The last person on earth that she could show any doubt or weakness to couldn’t know that she was doubting a whole a lot about herself. He’d made it very clear years ago that he was not attracted to her, and nothing he’d done in the interim indicated that he’d changed his mind.