over lunch. The sight of the food just made my stomach turn even more.
Being here alone with him underscored the awkwardness and discomfort of the situation between us. It had been a few weeks since the first time we’d tumbled into bed together, and the time had given me the chance to get a fresh perspective on it. And that fresh perspective had me feeling incredibly foolish for thinking things could have worked out between us.
Now that I was at a bit of a distance from him, I wasn’t so wrapped up in our chemistry or my attraction to him. I wasn’t so distracted and dreamy-eyed. It made me realize how irrational it was of me to ever think that we could have been anything more than a fling away from home.
“Help yourself,” he said, gesturing at the platters of food in front of me.
I shook my head and held up my hand. “No, thank you. Why don’t you just tell me what you need to talk about so I can get back to work.”
“Alright,” he said, tossing a half-eaten fry down onto his plate next to a pool of ketchup. “Why did you leave the hotel the way you did?”
It was blunt and starkly to the point, but I had walked right into it.
“I wanted to give you space,” I said.
“What do you mean space?” he asked.
“Everything going on with the bar and your brothers was just getting messier and more complicated. You needed to be able to focus on that and get it sorted. I decided to give you space to let you get everything figured out without the stress of the company… or of me,” I said.
Tom swallowed, an indecipherable mix of emotion crossing his eyes. “You weren’t stressing me out, Amanda. Well, not at that point, anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Tom reached across the table to grab onto my hands. I wanted to pull them away, but his touch warmed a place in me that had gone cold.
“You weren’t stressing me out at all while we were in Astoria together. Not at any point in those two months did you cause me any stress or difficulty. But over these last couple of weeks, I’ve been worried sick about you,” he said.
“Why were you worried about me?” I asked.
“Because you won’t talk to me. I’ve called you. I’ve emailed you. I’ve done everything I could think of to try to get you to talk to me, and you just won’t.”
I shook my head slightly. “I just didn’t think there was anything to talk about.”
“How could you possibly think that?” he asked.
“There’s nothing going on between us,” I said, sliding my hands out of his reluctantly. “You shouldn’t worry. If you needed to talk about something having to do with work, I would have been readily available. I am your employee and that’s all. You made that very clear. We just can put it behind us and not dwell on it.”
The waitress came by with very full plates and set them down in front of us. I noticed he had already ordered me my favorite thing on the menu. The gesture was sweet and caring, and the tingle of tears made me grab the glass of ice water sitting in front of me and drown it away.
“Amanda,” he started when the waitress walked away.
“It’s okay,” I said again. “And everything here is okay, too. There’s still plenty of time in the day for you to go back and be there to handle everything you need to be handling. You need to go back to Astoria and take care of things there. I’ve got this. You don’t need to worry. Not about the company. And not about me.”
Tom eyed my food, which I hadn’t touched. “Is there something wrong with your lunch? I thought that was your favorite.”
“It is,” I said. “And I really appreciate you ordering it for me.”
“Then why haven’t you eaten?” he asked.
“I’m just not hungry,” I said. “And I really should be getting back to the office. There’s a ton for me to get done leading up to these meetings this week. And you should get to the airport.”
Tom looked drawn and a little bit confused as he nodded and gestured for the waitress to come over. He asked her to bring a couple of boxes so we could package up the food. I went back to the office with several containers in my hands, knowing Tom was heading for the airport to go