The moment he’d pressed his lips to my hand, my soft gaze meeting his quiet smolder.
Standing together during the ceremony, when I’d become teary-eyed. He’d been studying my face (and not the ceremony) with a small smile playing about his lips.
The little girl knocking me over (which would have been hilarious, if I weren’t the subject of the photo) and the infamous lap dance that followed. The photographer had captured the slight arch of my back as I struggled to stand, my mouth forming a little ‘o’ as I encountered Ian’s bulge. He was smirking and not helping me one whit, the jerk.
Our dance together, bodies crushed against one another, mouths teasingly close as we whispered into each other’s ears.
There was even one of us kissing on the moonlit terrace, passionately embracing, my bare toes curling on the bench.
I quietly groaned. Cassie had seen all of these, maybe Michael, too. What kind of ninja paparazzo had she hired? How many photos had this person taken that night, and were any of them of anyone else? I was surprised there weren’t also images of Ian going down on me in the bathroom. Geez.
Even so, I couldn’t help clicking through the photos again to study the details, especially of Ian’s face. In every single one of them, his eyes, the tender, playful way he looked at me...sigh. I wanted to melt and just soak into the couch.
My boyfriend.
My cheeks hurt, and I had to force myself to stop smiling.
Okay, maybe nice wedding photos weren’t so bad. Not when they were this cute.
I sighed again, suddenly missing Ian, wondering what he was doing. Given the time, he was probably at work.
Oh yeah. Work. Stumpstash.
I clicked back to my inbox to check the other email.
With a long, deep breath, I clicked, then stared.
It took me a few seconds to read and reread the first line. Then I put my laptop down and did my happy dance, pumping my fists from side to side while bobbing my head in the opposite direction.
When Asher looked up and saw me dancing on the couch, he slipped his headphones off and asked, “What’s up?”
I flipped my laptop around and showed him what it said, though from that distance, he probably couldn’t read it. “I got the job!”
“Hey, that’s great, congrats!” He hit a button on his keyboard and put his headphones down. “When do you start?”
“I have a call with the recruiter to discuss, but probably next week!” I scanned the contents of the offer letter and squealed with excitement.
“Nice. So I can start jacking up the rent?” he asked, giving me a wry look. I laughed, but I knew that he was only half kidding. He was charging me well below market rate for the room.
“Nice try, but I’ve got student loans to pay, buddy. When you start seeing me walking around with Gucci bags and Louboutins, maybe then you can consider raising the rent. And only after you fix this shithole, too.” Asher’s family owned the building, but he was too lazy to deal with the repairs that were so desperately needed. It was one of the things that I regularly nagged him about.
I turned my attention back to the laptop and started drafting my acceptance email. Asher’s eyes stayed on me, though. He didn’t go back to his music.
He slowly stood up and came to sit next to me on the couch. “Anna.”
“Hmm?” I kept typing. I didn’t want to hear what was surely coming next. We’d already had the same conversation multiple times before, and I wasn’t sure how many more times we could...especially now that I was with Ian.
Asher was a good guy. He was smart and charming, and he loved having a good time. We’d partied a lot while we were together, going out night after night, weekend after weekend. He was there for me when I needed him, didn’t bat an eye at helping me out with cash or letting me skip out on rent when I needed a little extra time to get him the money. And we knew how to deal with each other. Whenever I got mad about something, he’d argue half-heartedly, then shrug and let me have my way...or if it was bad enough, he’d leave until our tempers cooled, then come back and apologize and move on. He was generally laid back and didn’t really push me for anything.
Until earlier this year, when he’d asked me to marry him. Of course, I’d said no. I’d repeatedly mentioned that I never wanted to get married, but he’d taken my sticking around for three years as a change of heart. It wasn’t, and his pressuring me had backfired. He’d left me high and dry in an expensive-ass restaurant, to fend for myself, to remind me of how dependent I was on him. I needed him, but I didn’t want to, especially if he couldn’t respect what I wanted, couldn’t respect me. It made me realize that I didn’t want to be with him anymore. We were good friends, but we weren’t good for each other.
But I couldn’t just end things. Asher was my best friend in New York, and his friends were the closest thing I had to my own friends. I didn’t have anywhere to go, no one else to turn to. So I’d asked him for space, and for time to get my shit together. Coward that I was, I’d asked him for a break, not to break up, even though I already thought of him as my ex.
He was tired of waiting.
My hands shook slightly as I continued to type. He sat silently for a moment, just watching me, then put his hand on my back and said, “It seems like things are going well for you.”
I kept my eyes on the screen. “Asher, can we not talk about this right now? I’m still figuring shit out.”
“Anna. I don’t...I can’t keep waiting
