Deranged Delusions

12. A Whole New World

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been back home for a few hours. It seems like I never left. It was annoying as hell to walk into Paul’s to find Tammy Lou Barker shopping there too. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her annoying as hell screech when she saw me. I could tell Justin’s ego took a massive beating because, for once in his life, people weren’t fawning all over him and asking him questions about his life. I would think he would take that as a breath of fresh air, but seeing, as he’s an egotistical ass I’m not surprised that he acted the way he did.

Shocker of the year was finding out that Gretchen had four kids while I was away. Four kids. Two of them twins and then the other two one right after the other. She’s the same age as me, we used to run around Worden all the time when we were little girls and now she’s married and has four kids. I don’t know how she does it because I can’t even take care of a grown man. If I weren’t so apprehensive about taking care of four little kids, I’d consider trading her jobs, but then again, Justin has been acting rather civil tonight and I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because he’s around people he doesn’t know that well, but I’m not sure. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After helping Will with ‘his’ horse, we settled down for dinner and it was a rather enjoyable experience. True to our western hospitality, the conversation always turned towards Justin and what he does for a living so he seemed to like that considerably. Gretchen and Peter were pleased to find out that Justin comes from a small town as well although not as country or wild as Worden. His words, not mine.

Once I finished eating the best steak of my life, I managed to sit down and talk with Gretchen about life and get the latest scoop on the town while Peter went out to take care of the sheep and Justin played with the kids.

“He’s really good with children,” Gretchen remarks as we take a break in our conversation on the porch. James and Will are currently climbing all over Justin’s back while Georgia is giggling on a blanket and Lizzy is watching with keen interest. Apparently they’re playing the appropriate, Cowboys and Indians and I believe Justin is playing the part of Indian. “Does he have any of his own?”

“Justin?” I snort before I take a sip of my coffee, “Please, he can hardly take care of himself. I’m sure he wants them…”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“God no. Justin’s my boss, we don’t talk about things like that,” I explain with an involuntary shudder.

“If he’s your boss then why is he up here with you. I would imagine a boss gives an employee time off to visit home, not follow along like a dutiful boyfriend,” Gretchen says with a huge grin on her face. I nearly get up out of my rocking chair and move away in disgust.

“Boyfriend? Please, Gretch, he isn’t my boyfriend and I think hell would freeze over before I even considered that thought! We aren’t even friends!”

“Then why is he here with you?” she implores and I want to smack her for her curiosity.

“Because he can’t function properly without me,” I snarl back with gusto before I moodily sip my coffee.

“See, that’s love right there,” Gretchen says with a cheery smile, “The fact that he can’t let you out of his sight for a few days means that he can’t live without you. That’s sweet…”

“No,” I say firmly, “it just means that he can’t take care of himself without someone there to tell him what to do. And sadly, I’m that someone.”

“And you love doing it,” Gretchen explains, “Else wise, you’d have come home a long time ago or at least stopped working for him.” I sigh heavily and watch as Justin picks up Will and tackles him to the ground softly. The boys are laughing their heads off and before Justin knows what’s hitting him, Lizzy has jumped in on the fray and now it’s three against one. Gretchen’s words are mirroring Neal’s and I don’t want to keep hearing what they have to say because in a way, they’re right. If I weren’t happy I would have been out of there a long time ago. But that doesn’t mean that I love him or he loves me. I refuse to believe that because, ew, it’s Justin for Christ’s sake.

“It has its perks,” I finally say and Gretchen nods her head before we continue to watch the battle before us. He has James pinned down with his left leg and his hands are busy tickling Lizzy and Will at the same time. The kids are laughing hysterically and their peals of laughter mix with his own and soon I’m closing my eyes and leaning back in the rocking chair reveling in the sound.

“Uncle Jussin! Uncle Jussin you win!” Will shrieks and I open my eyes to make sure Justin isn’t killing Gretchen’s kids and suddenly he and I are looking right at each other. He smiles that mega watt movie star smile that makes thousands of girls weak in the knees and he laughs that awful dork laugh that is usually followed by me making fun of him and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m smiling back and it isn’t the forced smile I usually give him…what the hell is happening to me?

I break the contact and look down in my lap before I finish the rest of my coffee. I do not need to be thinking any of these things and I definitely think looking at him is making my head fill with silly notions that I know are false and would never happen. Besides, I’m missing Neal a whole lot and I don’t want to fall back into something this quickly.

But am I falling back into something, and with Justin? Nah, I couldn’t possibly. I refuse to feel anything towards him that’s remotely romantic or liking, or anything! I’m going to blame being back home for these retarded thoughts. That’s it; I’m feeling this way because I can feel my biological clock ticking. I mean it’s not exactly the most comforting feeling in the world knowing your old best friend is happily married and has four kids with the intention of having more. But I don’t want to be tied down at twenty-five, almost twenty-six. That’s what my thirties are for.

There’s another huge dorky laugh from Justin Timberlake and I find myself requesting something a little stronger to drink. The last thing I need to is to let my thoughts stay on these rather troubling feelings because I’ll probably end up doing something really, really stupid.

Needless to say by the time we roll out of Gretchen’s house I’ve got a little buzz going on. Nothing dangerous or anything, and I don’t have a drinking problem but really, I don’t want to think about Neal, I don’t want to think about how lonely I’m feeling right now, and I definitely don’t want to think about Justin.

“That was a really nice evening,” he comments as I start to drive down the deserted road. It’s close to ten o’ clock, which is a late night for most people here in town. It’s going to take us about forty minutes to get back to my house but I have a little something I have to show Justin before we settle in for the night. “Her kids were cute.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure they’re little tyrants when guests aren’t over. I bet they take after their mother in that regard,” I quip and Justin gives a little chuckle as he rubs his hand over his chin. Why am I talking to him? Why am I trying to have a conversation, just shut up, Lauren!

“It was cool watching you ride like that. I didn’t know you could ride at all,” Justin responds after a few moments of comfortable silence. I nod my head and I’m glad that it’s dark so he can’t notice the blush that’s beginning to show on my face. I used to be a hot shot little teenager, but now I don’t like to talk about my past achievements. I keep my new life very separate from my old life, there’s no need for any one now to know about my humble home roots and for all they know I just came from a major city in Montana and not a town that had trouble pushing five hundred at the 2000 census.

“Yeah, it was a hobby,” I state casually as we continue our silent drive. Truth of the matter is I don’t know how to talk to Justin when I’m not lecturing him, reprimanding him, or just being extremely pissed off at him. We’ve had our moments were we’ve acted something like friends but that was only when one of us had gone through something extremely emotional and heart breaking. I’m pretty sure the only reason why he invited himself on this trip was to see if I could make that transition from employee to friend and now that that moment is finally here I want to make the effort, but another part of me just wants to keep that gap between us as big as possible. “I miss it sometimes, but when you do it every once in a while it feeds that hunger.”

“So you call eight years every once in a while?” he questions and I sigh heavily before I lean back in my seat and keep my tired eyes on the road. He just wouldn’t understand… “I mean I understand that you wanted to move on to bigger and better things, what with that whole college business and getting out of a small town but there are things you didn’t have to give up. I might have stopped doing the whole *NSYNC thing but I didn’t turn my back on the people in it. And there are parts of my boy band past that I am definitely not proud of, but I still admit to them and laugh about it and remember every once in a while. It’d be nice if you did the same, especially with your hometown.”

He has a point but I don’t want to tell him that he’s right. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to never tell Justin that he’s right because then you wouldn’t hear the end of it. The ego would erupt and then the only thing the conversation turns to is himself. And so far he’s been doing pretty well with not being all about him, and I want to tell him that, but again, the ego would come straight out.

“You looked really good up there…” he mutters and I’m almost positive he didn’t mean for that to come out of his mouth. I practically slam on the breaks and we both rocket forward, he puts his hand on the dashboard to steady himself and I’m gripping onto the steering wheel so hard I can hear my knuckles cracking over our heavy breathing.

“What the fuck was that for?”

“There was a rabbit,” I state quickly, “didn’t you see him? I don’t know about you, but I break for animals.” I take a deep breath and continue down the road only instead of a comfortable silence, it’s extremely awkward. He clears his throat and pulls out his sidekick, settling in his seat to answer a crap load of text messages and emails. Well I kind of asked for it…but then one of our rare, friendship conversations enters my head and instead of heading straight for home, I turn down a different street and keep driving. Justin is so preoccupied with his damn phone he doesn’t notice that we’re not heading back to my place.

After another ten minutes of steady driving, I pull off the side of the road and turn off the car, the headlights still illuminating a fence not far off in the distance. “What are we doing?” Justin asks, finally noticing that we haven’t reached my house. “Is there where you’re going to kill me?”

“Very funny. Get out of the car,” I instruct and he gives me a skeptical look before he pockets his sidekick and opens the door. I meet him at the front of the car just as the headlights turn off. We’re completely surrounded by darkness; the only sound the noise of our breathing and the distant chirping of crickets. Really romantic if I was going for that effect.

“Lauren, what the hell?”

“Jump the fence,” I order. My eyes are getting used to the darkness and the clear night is actually helping my eyesight. Justin is more than just a blur in the shadows; I can make out the confused look in his eyes and the nervous twitch in his movements.

“No. Not until you tell me what’s going on.” Well if he’s going to pussy out of this then I guess I’ll have to go myself. I lock the car from where I’m standing and, putting the keys in my pocket, I jump over the fence and start to jog away from the car and Justin’s questioning cries.

I hear a grunt and the sound of a body hitting the ground a few seconds later and soon, I can hear Justin running to keep up with me. We’re jogging up a small hill, the other side hidden in obscurity but I already know what’s on the other side. That is if the place is still here after almost a decade.

“Lauren would you tell me what’s going on? It’s fucking freezing…”

“Shut the hell up! You’re going to wake them up,” I snarl in a whisper as we reach the top of the hill. I stop my running and hold out my hand to keep Justin from running down the extremely tall hill. Looking over the small valley, if you want to call it that, there’s a huge expanse of land. To our left is a large farmhouse that is complete dark save for the back porch light, which illuminates twenty feet of the backyard. In front of us is an enormous corral that houses at least fifty…

“Cows? You brought me all the way out here in the freezing cold to watch some fucking cows?” Justin demands and I sit down on the damp grass and look up at Justin who’s still seething at the fact that I would drag him out of the warm car to come look at cows.

“We aren’t going to be watching them for very long,” I say with a huge smile on my face as he finally relents and sits down beside me. He releases a huge breath from his body and I can see the cloud his breath makes spiral up into the cold night air. He looks at me and then the corral of cattle before the knowing look finally dawns on his face.

“Oh hell no. You didn’t drag me all the way out here to go cow tipping,” he says his voice filled with negativity. I laugh and spring up to my feet turning around to look at him. “Lauren, I’m not some country hick who goes cow tipping in his spare time. I just want to go to sleep and this is majorly cutting out on my sleep time.”

“Well if you don’t want to do it,” I begin coyly. I know exactly where this conversation is going and I know for a fact that by the end of it, he’ll be tipping some bovines by the end of the night.

“I don’t want to do it. This is so stupid and juvenile.”

“I can understand if you’re going to pussy out. Because it is cold and it is pretty dangerous and I can understand you wouldn’t want to get caught and you value your sleep like the next…”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Justin says as he holds up his hands to stop my talking, “I know you did not just say I was going to pussy out.”

“Well aren’t you?” I ask and I’m smiling so big you’d have to be blind as a bat to not see it. Apparently Justin is playing the part of the bat tonight because he thinks I’m serious. But then again I’m calling out his manhood and he takes that very, very seriously.

“No of course I’m not. I was just stating the obvious that it’s cold and I’m tired. Let’s do this,” and before I can explain to him the rules of cow tipping or what the hell he’s supposed to do, he takes off down the hill and towards the corral, a swagger in his step.

I catch up to him at the side of the corral where he’s watching the sleeping animals intently. Looking up at him, I lean against the rail and let my gaze land on the cows. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Haven’t got a clue,” Justin explains, “I mean this has to be difficult right?”

“No,” I state with a simple shrug, “You just hop the fence, run up to a cow and push it over.”

“No shit?” he asks nodding his head as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. I nod my head in agreement and he laughs a little too loud and I quickly silence him with a glare. “Sorry,” he mutters as he wipes his hands on his jeans.

“Nervous?” I ask him as we hop the fence together. He looks over at me and gives me a playful push.

“Not a chance in hell, Walters,” he adds before he takes off at a sprint towards the nearest cow. I hang back and watch as his outstretched hands make contact with the animal and with a surprised ‘moo!’ the cow flops over onto its side and stays there. Justin comes rushing back towards me, a look of triumph on his face. “That’s how it’s done,” he crows and I roll my eyes in his direction.

“Now that you’re done gloating, care to help me?”

“Why, does the great Little Laurie need help tipping a cow?” Justin coos and I return his earlier push.

“Actually I do need help,” I explain, “Seeing as I’m under a hundred and fifty pounds and the average cow weighs half a ton I might need a little assistance in pushing one over.” He grins and stands right beside me, a little too close for comfort. His shoulder rubs up against mine and I can feel my breath catch in my throat. “Ready?” I ask hoarsely and he jumps away from me and looks over with a curt nod. “Let’s go.”

We take off towards a cow standing in one place, both of us running side by side. Laughter catches in my throat and we’re about to make contact with the animal when suddenly she moves aside with a quick grunt. I lose my balance and, with a squeal of surprise, I fall on the ground, the wind knocked out of my body. Justin manages to regain his balance and stands over me, a goofy smile all over his face.

That’s before a dog starts barking and a light inside the house turns on. The smile on Justin’s face disappears and you can see the words ‘oh shit’ start to form on his mouth but the sound of someone moving about inside the house and the constant mooing of the cows drowns his cry of shock out.

Reaching down, he grabs onto my hand and yanks me to my feet. The back door opens up and someone fires a round into the air. Justin ducks down and covers his head, I don’t think he’s ever been shot at before but for me, it’s just like I’m still in high school, cow tipping on this same property every weekend.

“What in tarnation? You kids better git off my property!”

“Oh my God, he’s going to kill us!” Justin squeaks as we continue our dash towards the top of the hill. He’s still covering his head with his spare arm and I’m trying my best to keep up with him. The boy can run, and fast. We jump the fence and soon we’re rushing up the hill, his hand squeezing the blood out of my own.

We reach the top of the hill and the man fires off another round and Justin yelps again and keeps on running. I’m too busy laughing and trying to catch my breath to feel anything other than sheer amusement and it’s only when Justin realizes that we aren’t going to die and that we’re more than likely not going to get caught, he starts to laugh too.

Finally, we make it back to our car, the two of us still laughing like complete idiots. “That,” Justin starts his breath labored due to running and laughing, “was insane.”

“But you had fun,” I state with a smile and he laughs loudly and nods in agreement.

“Yeah, yeah it was fun.” And I feel a sudden pressure squeezing my hand. It isn’t until now that I realize he still has a firm grasp on my hand and we’ve been standing here in front of the car for a good three minutes. Realizing that we don’t need this physical contact anymore, I let go of his hand and hurry off to the car. A couple seconds later and Justin is sitting in the passenger seat and we’re speeding off into the night.

It isn’t until we’re on the road for a good ten minutes that Justin starts to laugh again. It’s that kind of laugh that people do when they’ve had a near death experience or just weaseled their way out of a shit load of trouble; it’s that nervous laugh, a combination of ‘holy shit did that just happen?’ and ‘holy shit that was awesome!’

“You okay?” I ask him while he leans against the window for support.

“I can’t believe I just did that…like, we could have died.” Obviously he’s overly dramatic because I have yet to hear about anyone who has died while tipping over sleeping farm animals. But then again it is Justin and he likes to blow every single dramatic event out of proportion. That’s one thing that I love…

Okay maybe not love. I don’t love Justin because that is just freaking ridiculous. He’s my boss, he’s an ass, and he just isn’t my type. End of story. I should rephrase that and say that the way Justin blows some things out of proportion is a trait that I find endearing…

Okay that doesn’t work either. I should not be trying to think of different terms to describe my boss right now. I should be living in the moment and laughing along with Justin and not be thinking about how I love the way his nose crinkles up when he laughs or the way his hand is sprawled open across the window as he tries to keep his dorky laughter in check…

Ugh, what am I doing? What am I thinking? Get. A. Grip.

“You know,” Justin says once he finally has a grip on his laughter and I’ve managed to get a grip on my wandering thoughts, “it’s times like these when I really miss being country.”

“Being country never really leaves you,” I explain, “You can take the kid out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the kid. You can think that you’re the biggest city slicker on the face of the planet but at the end of the day, you’re just a little boy from a small town in Tennessee and that’s always there. You can’t escape that and you shouldn’t try to. It made you the way you are and you shouldn’t change that…” I start to say and I catch myself before I can go on further. There are just some things I don’t want to say to him right now and getting into his personality is one of them.

I can tell he’s about to ask me about my little tangent of how he shouldn’t change and I brace myself for the question that I know I’ll have to give a smart ass answer to, but thankfully salvation comes in the ringing of my cell phone.

Thank God.

Don’t look at her. Don’t look at her. Don’t look at her. Dammit I looked at her. Why is it when she’s dressed in country clothes she looks normal and, dare I think it, cute? And why am I sitting here and thinking of Lauren Walters, of all people, like this? She just went on some philosophical bull shit that I was hardly listening to because I was too busy looking at her lips moving and now I’m wondering if she can kiss better sober than drunk and…

Jesus Fucking Christ Justin, what the hell? This happens every single time I find some girl attractive, I start to think with my dick more than my head and it gets me in trouble. Thank God her phone starts to ring because I know I’m about to say something that would probably make her slam on the breaks and kick me out of the car. Although I have no idea who is possibly calling her at midnight.

“Lauren Walters speaking,” she says in her tone of voice only reserved for very important calls. I don’t know why she has to answer it like that since I’m the only one who gives her very important calls and I’m sitting right next to her. But as soon as the person on the other line starts to speak, her demeanor changes and she laughs loudly, her eyes lighting up the entire car.

Oh God…I need some sleep or something, or maybe that farmer really shot me and I’m losing tons of blood and by the time we get back to Lauren’s house I’ll be a shriveled up prune. Then she’ll be sorry and it’ll be like a scene from Romeo and Juliet or something and…

I need to stop.

“Thanks so much Melissa.” Well that’s someone I don’t want to hear about for a long time. I’m still a bit bitter that she dumped me, “No I’m driving back home right now,” she pauses and bites her lip. Sexy. Stop it. “Yeah he’s with me…No he hasn’t tried that yet but I’ll be on the look out.” She pauses again, “Yes, now that I’m older I’ll definitely be wiser to that kind of irresistible charm you claim he has.” Has Lauren not noticed my charm? She’s only been working for me for almost four years, has she been immune to it all this time?

Apparently so because we would have been going out a long time ago. Stop it, dammit! Just stop it! After a few more minutes of chatting, Lauren finally gets off the phone with a final ‘thanks’ and ‘love you too.’ I look over at her and watch her for a second before I ask, “What did Melissa want?”

“Just wanted to call to wish me a happy birthday.”

Oh balls…her birthday is today? Fuck. “Your birthday? I didn’t know it was your birthday,” I say in a very, very small voice. I’m so freaking thankful that it’s dark inside the car because I’m blushing and I don’t think I could live that down at all.

She sighs heavily and rubs her temple with a free hand and I can feel the guilt filling my stomach. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Justin. You’ve never really taken the time to get to know me, which is why we could never be friends. You don’t really know the first thing about me.”

That is so not true! Okay, so maybe there is some truth to it, like the whole not knowing it was her birthday today, but sometimes I forget my own birthday so I should be exempt from that small blunder. And I might not know her parents’ names or what her favorite color is but a lot of friends don’t know those types of things about their other friends so why should this friendship be any different?

“Well you don’t know me that well either,” I point out and she actually pulls the car over because she’s laughing so hard. What the hell? She may be cute, she may take care of me, but this girl is fucking insane. Maybe she gets crazier with age, which makes me wonder what she’ll be like at thirty. I shudder at the thought.

“I don’t know you that well? It’s my job to know you inside and out!” Oh baby, is that a promise?

Oh fuck, Justin you really need to get your mind out of the gutter and in the present. Head. In. The. Game.

“Really?” I ask her my voice raising a challenge, “So tell me something about me. Something that someone wouldn’t know, something that Trace wouldn’t even know.” Oh I’ve got her there. Trace knows pretty much anything and everything there is to know about me so this is going to be a challenge. I’ll be astounded if she can dig up one thing about me…

“You’re scared shitless,” she states matter of factly and I look at her with a confused expression on my face. What the hell is she talking about? “You’re completely and totally scared shitless of this new album, of this new step in your life. You may not show it on the outside, but on the inside you just want to crawl back to your mother and have her protect you from the people who will judge you, who will step on you, who will totally and completely tear you down if you put one foot out of line.

“This isn’t like Justified. People thought you were just making that album to see what would happen should the group finally waste away into boy band obscurity. You surprised them with that album and once you were done promoting that album you took four years off. You’ve had those four years to work your ass off on an album that’s closer to you than your first album ever could be. And you’re scared because you’re putting your heart and soul on the line this time. You’ve spent over a year getting this thing ready and now you’re presenting your baby to the world and they can either love it or hate it.

“You’ll sit there and say that it doesn’t matter what the critics say, you just want your music to be heard, but in your heart of hearts you know that if you don’t get the reviews you so desperately need you’ll be no better than the other boy banders who tried to go solo. If it’s shit then the people who you’ve been trying to get the attention of will completely pass by and go onto the next hot thing in music and leave you in the dust.

“You’re scared that if this doesn’t work out you’ll have no choice but to go back to your old group mates and ask them for another go around with *NSYNC even though you were the one who didn’t want to go back.

“You’re scared that even though you have thousands of girls who want to be with you and would stop at nothing to get your attention, you’ll end up without that love you so desperately want and crave. You’re afraid that one day the world is going to wake up and realize that you’re just a normal human being who can just sing and dance better than the average person and that you aren’t some force to be reckoned with or some ‘very special gift from God’ and that’ll be the end of your career. Don’t sit there and give me that face because you know it’s true. You’re scared that even though you have everything in the world right now, you don’t know if it’ll give you true happiness and satisfaction in the end. And that is something you would never have the balls to tell Trace because you don’t want to seem like a huge sissy in his eyes.”

And for the first time in my life, I am completely and totally speechless.

“Of course you know this is all bull shit because you could probably record yourself shitting out the biggest shit of your life and you’d still sell over five million records,” she adds dryly and for some odd reason I’m laughing again despite the fact that everything she just told me is one hundred percent true.

I am scared shitless.

“Well let me tell you something about you,” I say in response and she stares at me in the dark with an expression that seems to say, ‘bring it.’ I’m pretty much going to be talking out of my ass here because Lauren is right when she said that I don’t really know the first thing about her other than she gets stressed out easily whenever I make her do things out of the ordinary (which is a lot), and that she throws a pretty good fast ball. Oh, and she has a pretty short temper. And I know when her birthday is now, so I know a bit more than I used to.

“You act like you hate this town and everything about it. You were the biggest thing to hit Worden since sliced bread and that lack of privacy and always being in the center of attention scared you. What if you screwed up? What if people realized that you were nothing special? There’d be nowhere to hide here seeing as it’s such a small town. So you got out as quickly as you could. You went to a place where you could just be a number and be exactly like everyone else. I don’t see why though, seeing you here has made me realize that you aren’t some frigid bitch who only cares about making a buck and making her boss happy. You aren’t just a number here, you’re a real person and you’re having fun and that’s why I’m…”

I have to stop there because I will not say those five words that would make this whole trip shoot straight to hell. I don’t even know if I believe those five words myself, which is why I’m not going to finish off that sentence with ‘falling in love with you.’

Good God this is so fucked up.

“You’re right,” she says after quite a bit of awkward silence, “I guess you have been paying attention…”

“No, I just know how to observe and read people. You find that you pick some things up when your job’s main focus is to entertain and please the general public,” I state quietly before she starts to drive the car towards home again. She stifles a yawn and I would offer to drive so she could rest but I have no idea where the hell we’re going. Apparently Worden doesn’t believe in roadside lights.

“I guess so,” she says quietly and finally the car turns up the driveway to her house. I have never been so happy and yet so upset to see a house in my life. Part of me wants to keep driving with Lauren because I know sooner or later what I want to say will come pouring out of my mouth, but a much bigger part of me is grateful that I don’t have to reveal what has apparently been hiding below the surface for quite some time. I don’t even want to begin to think what would happen after I told Lauren that I was falling…

Yeah, not going to think about it.

The car stops and she turns it off before opening her door. Turning to look at me she smiles and says, “And to think my boss wouldn’t be so understanding.” And that word hits me harder than Neal did almost a week ago.

Boss. I think that’s all I’ll ever be to her, and for some odd reason that hurts more than any rejection.

***