send my phone carrier a strongly worded letter about not having any eternity settings.”
I laughed, and just like that, the heavy was gone. I still felt it in my chest, but it wasn’t hanging over our conversation anymore. “You do that,” I encouraged. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Stems.”
“Okay,” she whispered, her voice laced with a bit of loneliness and longing. Or maybe that was me.
“Lo-uh, sweet dreams,” I choked, horrified over my slip.
“Uh, okay,” she muttered. “Sweet dreams when you get there.”
Vicky hung up and I walked over to my desk and dropped like I no longer had any skeletal structure to hold me up. My head dropped back as I closed my eyes in utter defeat.
I almost told Vicky I loved her not minutes after I reminded myself that I couldn’t make those kinds of declarations to her just yet. But, fuck, it had felt so natural to say those words as we were getting off the phone. It felt unnatural not to say them. And as I sat here waiting for my meeting to start, I could admit that I had no clue what I was doing here.
I knew I wanted Vicky. I knew I didn’t want to be with anyone else. I knew I didn’t want her to be with anyone else. I knew there was a small piece of me that Vicky’s owned since we were kids. I knew she mattered in a way that no one else ever has. But I also knew she was not going to uproot her entire life for me, and I knew I wasn’t ready to uproot my life for her. At least, not yet.
And, even if Vicky could work from anywhere, her family and friends were in California. If she ever left California to be with me, she would literally not know another soul in New York other than me. A woman as strong and as independent as Vicky would have to put everything she had on the line for me. I would be the only thing she had in New York and I imagine that to be an intimidating, if not, scary thing. If it didn’t work out between us, she’d be left alone here.
If I left New York for her, I’d still have Damien in San Francisco, and my parents still in Smithtown. If it didn’t work out, I had enough money to start over anywhere I wanted. Or, hell, not at all. I wasn’t even 30-years-old yet and I had more money than I was ever going to need. I had a shitload of safety nets ready to catch me. Vicky had only a couple; Fiona and her parents.
The phone on my desk buzzed and, like Vicky advised, I pushed all Victoria McGrath thoughts to the back of my head and got my mind in the game. There were still millions to be made even if my bank account no longer compared to that of being with Stems.
Chapter 19
Well, this is some bullshit.
Victoria~
“I never thought I’d ever utter these words in my life,” Fiona muttered, “but…damn.”
I side-eyed her and waved at Hector to bring us over more shots. “What?”
“Mercury’s top-shelf tequila isn’t as fun as it used to be,” she replied. “At least, not now that you’re pining over Will.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to deny her accusation of pining, but I couldn’t. She was right. I’ve been pining over Will for days now and it fucking sucked.
Everything fucking sucked.
Mercury was our go-to-one-stop-shop whenever we needed to have a drink and, good or bad depending on who you asked, Hector already knew what we drank and how we drank it. He also knew when to cut us off. He was a great bartender like that. However, with Fiona living up north with Damien now, our Mercury visits were few and far between. Oh, I still popped in, but mostly alone and only if I was having a shitty day.
I turned my slightly buzzed head towards Fiona. “You don’t think it’s stupid to be hung up on a guy who I’ve only spent a couple of nights with?”
Hector placed our shots in front of us, and we downed them like the professionals we were before she answered, “But he’s not just some guy you’ve only spent a couple of nights with, Vee. He’s Will freakin’ Creston.”
I was gnawing the hell out of my bottom lip, confused as hell. “Meaning?”
Fiona reached over and placed a hand on my arm. She started rubbing it up