Chapter 22

22

Lloyd sneaks off to use the shared bathroom down the hall, borrowing my dressing gown for a little modesty, and I lie on the rumpled bedsheets, dizzy and breathless and elated. When I hear him coming back a couple of minutes later, I suddenly feel cold and exposed, sprawled naked on my bed like this, and grab the sheet, tucking it around myself.

Lloyd shrugs off my dressing gown and hangs it back on the door, then slips back into bed with me. I don't hesitate to burrow into the warmth of his embrace. He reaches for his phone on the nightstand, clicking the screen to life.

"Half past four," he says, turning to me.

"Somewhere to be?"

"Just wondering how late we made it this time. Beats our record, I think."

I remember our conversation at Keye it's a stark contrast to the larger-than-life attitude I'm so used to.

Then Lloyd reaches for my hand and lifts it so he can press a lingering kiss on my knuckles, his fingers squeezing mine as he places our hands back on his chest. He smiles at me as he says, "So I should probably sneak out now while everyone's asleep, huh?"

I don't argue, and I kiss him goodbye at the front door.

But there's an uneasy feeling curdling in the pit of my chest, and I can't help but think that smile didn't reach his eyes.

—

I'm not sure whether it's weirder if I text Lloyd throughout the rest of the weekend, or if I don't. In the end, I decide against it—he doesn't text me, either, and we'll see each other soon enough anyway. There are butterflies in my stomach as I envision more stolen touches in the queue in the canteen like last week, or maybe another night working long past when everyone else has gone home, a quiet place for another kiss, maybe being able to sneak him back into the apartment again after the others are in bed….

—

On Monday morning, when I join a few of the other interns for our usual early commute to the office, Tasha falls into step beside me and asks pointedly, "So how was your weekend, Anna? Did you get up to anything fun ?"

She does this all the time, asks when she knows I didn't have any exciting plans or skipped out on something the rest of them had planned. Based on her comment about how I couldn't handle my drink, she probably thinks I spent the whole weekend nursing my hangover from Friday.

She reminds me of every bully from school. The people who thought they were so much better than me and that I didn't deserve their time of day. The nasty, catty girls from my college halls who were always quick to put me down and make me feel so silly and insignificant.

And I'm so, so sick of it.

I remember all those pep talks about "not stooping to their level," or not giving people like Tasha the satisfaction of knowing she's got to me, but I so badly want to bite back at her, knock her off the pedestal she's placed herself on.

She sneers at me, and whatever retort I might've come up with falters on my tongue.

And that's not because I'm the bigger person.

It's just because she makes me feel so small.

—

It's Tuesday before I see Lloyd again. I get back from a meeting with Laurie and some of the Finance team, laptop and notebook tucked into the crook of my elbow, nodding along as Laurie asks me to write up some actions and then give an update (aka "send an email with some bad news") to the project team for the Vane engine.

Butterflies erupt in my stomach at the sight of Lloyd, and I fight to keep my expression neutral, to not give anything away. For once, I hope he's here with some work-related excuse to talk to me.

Laurie says, "Ah, there he is! Heard I missed some incredible juggling skills at the party last week—you'll have to give us a repeat performance sometime!"

Lloyd pauses his conversation with some of my team to reply, "Absolutely. Hey, how was Disneyland?"

As she tells him how "harrowing" it was, a story I've already heard, I have to bite my tongue to refrain from saying how much I'd like to go, how fun it sounds. Somehow, I don't think that will make me sound like the sort of competent grown-up who would be offered a permanent role here when summer ends.

Laurie returns to her desk opposite mine. Lloyd, who has been lounging against my desk with his hands braced against it and legs stretched in front of him, straightens up and moves out of my way when I approach to put my things down, like maybe he's worried that if he's too close, he won't be able to keep from touching me. He's usually willfully ignorant of my personal space; I can sense tension crackling in the air between us now.

"All right?" he says to me, and maybe I'm imagining it, but his smile looks strained, not quite reaching his eyes.

"Yeah," I say, then clear my throat because it came out too breathy. "Great."

"Have you taken lunch yet?" he asks, which is a ridiculous question when it's only a few minutes past twelve.

"No. But I have some stuff to write up from that meeting, before I forget any of it."

He nods, but then, more loudly, says, "Michaela, you can spare Annalise for half an hour, right? I just wanted to follow up on some questions about the Phoebus IV before I drop by the labs tomorrow."

Weird. He's going a little overboard to cover up us spending time together at the office. Lately, he just drags a chair over to my desk without asking Michaela's permission to interrupt my day.

"Hmm?" My manager looks up, Lloyd's hundred-watt smile blinding her to the confused face I can't help but pull. She smiles back, waving a hand. "Absolutely. That's not a problem—is it, Anna?"

"Sure," I say, not having much choice either way. "No problem."

"Meet me downstairs at half past?" Lloyd says. "We can go grab a coffee."

"Okay."

A mix of nerves and excitement fizzes through me as he strolls off, leaving me to write up my notes. He's invited me out for lunch. Is it like a date? A little privacy away from the office?

At half past, I find him waiting just outside the lifts on the ground floor. His smile looks a little too wide, too casual, and we swipe out of the barriers in silence.

We end up a few streets over, at a café far enough away that I don't think anybody from the office is likely to stumble across us. Or if they do, at least we can pretend it's about work. Like we're just two normal people on a normal lunch break. Not people who can't seem to stay away from each other…

Lattes in hand, we pick a table in the corner by the window. I face the door so I can be on the lookout just in case anybody we know comes in. Namely the interns. Namely Tasha.

Hands clasped around his caramel latte and shoulders hunched, Lloyd seems tense. Nervousness traces its way around the frown that furrows his brow, and it catches me off guard. I assumed he was acting weird because he was compensating for trying to be so normal around me in front of everybody else, but…

But.

Why do I feel like I'm about to be dumped?

"I've been thinking. About what you said the other morning. About how people can't know." He lifts his eyes to mine. "I don't want to feel like some dirty secret. That's how I ended up feeling last summer, and it was shit. "

Oh my God. I am being dumped. He slept with me, and now he doesn't want anything to do with me, and—

"I want to go on a date with you, Annalise. A real one, not some weird, covert one involving stolen cake or late-night lurking while your roommates are busy."

Yes.

Where? When? Anytime, yes, I'd love to.

A montage of how this summer could be, if I let it, flashes through my mind. It's sweet, enticing…and it sours quickly, when I imagine how people at Arrowmile might react, how they'd assume the worst of me.

"Lloyd…" My mouth is dry and I swallow, hard. I catch myself fidgeting with the napkin beside my coffee and snatch my hands into my lap. "I can't. You know why."

Lloyd's body language shifts in the blink of an eye. He relaxes in his chair and reaches a hand across the table to me, an invitation, his eyes brightening as he smiles at me, optimistic and resolute—not just hopeful, but completely convinced of whatever he's about to say.

"I know you're worried what people will say, but you're halfway through the internship already! They've seen what you're capable of. They know what kind of person you are and how hard you work—dating me isn't going to change that."

"You can't know that," I say, and my voice comes out as a whisper, scratchy and thin. I feel shaky, hollowed out. It's no longer a creeping sense of dread—more like a solid, leaden doom, in the face of his optimism.

"Nobody has to know we met before the internship, or anything else. We could just go from here. I just think…" He trails off, but only to chuckle, his smile stretching even wider. "Whatever we have, Annalise, it means something. And that's worth a shot, isn't it?"

Of course it means something. It means so much.

But—does it mean enough ?

My mind starts careening through what actually dating Lloyd might mean, and it heads straight for disaster. Whispers behind my back about the times he's stopped by my desk and how maybe I was too busy flirting to do my job, vicious murmurs laced with truth. Not getting a permanent job offer because nobody thinks I earned it. Getting a job offer, and having people wonder if it was only because I'm with the boss's son. Interviewing at other places only to have them find out about it when asking Arrowmile for a reference…

I spent years at school knowing that when I was grown up, everything would be better. Focusing so hard on making sure my future would be something worthwhile, successful, important. At college, that felt close enough that I could almost reach out and take it.

Is whatever I have with Lloyd worth risking the future I've been working so hard toward?

Immediately, I know the answer.

Just like I knew it after I failed that midterm because I'd been paying more attention to my relationship than to my degree.

"I don't want you to feel used," I tell Lloyd, wondering if I can talk him out of it. He seems so determined, but he's right. We do have something. Surely he can't want us to just throw it away because I can't date him? Isn't this a negotiation, not an ultimatum? "You know that's not what I'm doing. What's so bad about…the way things are?"

A muscle ticks in his cheek and his smile stiffens. "You mean where you kiss me and look at me like you do, then panic and push me away again? Put your walls back up, act like someone else? Because that makes me feel pretty shitty and used, Annalise."

Like you're so great at letting me in all the time? Like you don't do your own version of that, hamming it up around the office?

Not a negotiation after all, I guess. Hurt bleeds into his voice and I know how awful I felt the first week at Arrowmile, when he acted like we'd never met; he must've felt the same way every time I rebuffed him.

He told me he wanted me to let him in, that he kept looking for the girl he met that first night. Someone more honest and vulnerable and real. Someone warm, and likable.

I'd like to be her. I really would.

But I can't. I'm this person, who has to be pragmatic and do the sensible thing, who doesn't get swept away on the tides of a summer romance.

"I don't mean to make you feel like that," I tell him honestly. "And I'm sorry. You make it so easy to be around you, even if…even if it's a bad idea. You want to think the best of people—and I admire that about you, really, because it's not something I've ever been able to do. But you can afford to do that; everybody at Arrowmile practically worships the ground you walk on. You've grown up there, know it inside out, and they all know you'll be running the place someday. Nobody has a bad word to say about you. Why would they? You go around with that smile, chatting to everyone, charming them, making them feel like—like they're so special, as long as they have your attention. Like they deserve to feel that way. It's impossible not to like you, Lloyd.

"But it's not like that for me. It never has been. I can't coast along on my dad's name and legacy. I'm cold and unlikable—remember? You've had everything handed to you, so maybe you really can't understand where I'm coming from, but I've worked too hard to get here to risk throwing it away now, not when there's only six weeks left to go. If that's really how you feel about us, then maybe we can be friends, and if you need someone to hang out with every once in a while, then maybe that can be me, but I can't be more than that. I can't mess this up. It's too important to me."

More important than you are, than you could be if I let you.

Lloyd's confident attitude finally vanishes. I watch the hope dim in his eyes, the glitter of it replaced by something dark and wounded as he lowers his gaze to the steam curling off his coffee instead. He turns the mug so the handle is at a ninety-degree angle to him, then traces a warp in the wooden tabletop with his fingertip.

"Well," he says. "I guess that's it, then."

"I—I guess so."

There's a beat, and the world seems to stop for a moment, hinging on our next decision. Me: waiting to see if he'll say it's okay, we don't need to make a big song and dance about dating all of a sudden and can carry on as we were, that he understands. Him: waiting to see if I'll realize what I've just done—what I've cost us both—and if I'll blurt an apology, change my mind.

I don't, and neither does he.

Lloyd pushes to his feet, abandoning the latte he hasn't touched. He's doing a good job of concealing his hurt. A heroic effort, really, because even with the pain of rejection heavy in his eyes he musters up that charming smile I'm so used to seeing, and it seems real enough.

"See you around the office, then. Civil and polite, right?"

That's what I asked for, weeks ago, when I thought it would be easy to stay out of each other's way.

"Right."

I watch him leave and I'm trembling, reeling from everything that just happened. What I've done.

But I had to. It's what's best. This internship could shape the rest of my life. How can that compete with a boy I've known for only a few weeks?

It can't.

It didn't bother me when I broke up with my ex-boyfriend. That was the smart, sensible decision then, too, just like this is. But this leaves me uneasy, full of regret, wishing things were different.

In a daze, I head back to the office. I'm swept into meetings for a couple of hours, peppered with questions and asked to take notes, kept blissfully busy and distracted for the rest of the afternoon. It doesn't leave space for heartache.

I manage to not think about it, or him, until that evening. Louis is out on another first date with someone he matched with on an app, and Elaine gets home late from the office to find me sniffling and teary-eyed on the sofa, huddled under a blanket despite the warm evening.

"Anna! What happened? What's going on?" She hurries over and perches on the edge of the sofa near my knees, putting a hand on my arm and rubbing it through the blanket. With her other hand, she reaches for the box of tissues and hands me a fresh one; the one I'm crying into is sodden. "Did something happen at work? Back home?"

I shake my head. But now that she mentions it, I miss home. I miss Dad and Gina and my brothers.

I miss a time when I wasn't falling for Lloyd and forced to push him away, again, once and for all.

Elaine keeps rubbing my arm, all sympathy and compassion, ready to listen and help as best she can. I even miss her, and she's right here; I'm mad at myself for all the times I haven't hung out with the others when they've asked me because I was more interested in putting in overtime for work I'd agreed to take on just to prove myself, or because I balked at the idea of spending a small fortune on some cocktails. It's not just Lloyd I've been keeping at bay this summer, but people who could be friends, too.

"It's just—" I sniffle, and a hiccup spills out of me as fresh tears trickle down my cheeks. "There was this boy. And now…there's not."

"Oh, sweetie," Elaine sighs. She kicks off her shoes and tucks her feet beneath her on the sofa. "Do you want to talk about it?"

No. I want to bury it deep, deep down and far away and forget these feelings ever existed. I want to blot the memory of kissing him out of my mind, and act like this was never even a thing in the first place once the summer's over. I don't want to wallow, because then it makes it real, and I'm supposed to be better than this.

But instead, I tell her. I tell her about the sweet, funny guy I met who made me laugh and swapped secrets with me, and about the best kiss of my life. I tell her that I need to focus on the internship and I can't be the person he thinks I am, and how he puts up a front most of the time, too, oddly secretive for someone so open. I tell her about his big heart and easy smile, and that even though I know it's right to call it off, it still hurts.

Elaine gives me a hug and hands me more tissues as I cry, and tells me I'm worth more than a boy who'd mess me about and be so careless with my feelings anyway.

I don't correct her, and she promises not to mention anything to the others about my little breakdown.

"It's just embarrassing," I say.

Elaine squeezes my hand. "Been there. Heartbreak's a tough bitch, Anna, but so are you."

It's the first time I think I've ever heard her swear, and it's enough to make a laugh bubble up out of me.

"Thanks. I think."

"You're welcome. God, that was a horrible way to comfort you, wasn't it, calling you a bitch? I promise you're not. Sorry. It wasn't—"

"It was a great way to comfort me. Thanks, Elaine."

She smiles, looking a little relieved to hear it. "Hey, some of us are doing an escape room on Thursday evening, if you want to come?"

I was planning to stay late at the office on Thursday. I have meetings until six and figured I'd have some stuff to write up afterward, and I'd promised to help Laurie with a spreadsheet that she needs back by Monday, and…

And I smile at Elaine. "That sounds great. I'd love to."

I told Lloyd I can't afford distractions, and I meant it. But maybe I don't have to sacrifice having a life completely.

Just one that involves covert dates, and stolen kisses, and him.

NEW EMAIL DRAFT

Dear Lloyd,

When we met, you asked me to tell you something true. I told you I didn't believe in love.

I meant it then, but I think it's become a lie, now.

Here's something true: you've made me believe in love. It's a cruel joke, considering I can't accept it. A horrible twist of fate. I must have scorned someone in another life, I think.

This isn't what the movies promised. Summer romances are supposed to be a montage of fun dates and carefree afternoons and whispering secrets in the dark. We did that last part, but instead of carefree afternoons we've tiptoed around each other, and instead of fun dates you've just sent me feedback I didn't ask for on my research reports.

I wasn't wrong, when I told you I think love is overrated. It is. Nobody tells you it's supposed to hurt this much. And it doesn't automatically make everything fall into place, either. Relationships are something you have to put work into, like I said that first night. I can't give you that kind of effort and attention this summer, and I don't think you'd know how to.

I wish things were different. That you weren't you, maybe.

But then, I don't think I'd love you if you weren't you.

So instead all I'll say is: I'm sorry that I'm me, and that this is how it has to be.

Sincerely yours,

Anna Sherwood