“Are you going to tell me what's going on, Frank?”
I insisted that it was nothing, but I could tell that Amber didn't believe me. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t believe me, either.
“I feel like you're keeping something from me, and I wish you would just tell me. I don't like this awkwardness that has started between us.”
“Do you really think it's awkward?”
She agreed that she did, and I tried to get up the nerve to tell her about Caroline. I really did. It was on the tip of my tongue, yet for some reason it just wouldn’t come out.
I tried to play out the scenario of me telling her. I had several that came to me, and all of them ended with her telling me off and walking away. Correction, stomping away.
Why would I ever want to do that?
By the end of the night, Amber was frustrated with me and she invited me back to her place. I had to decline because the nanny could only stay for a couple of hours. This was all something that I could potentially tell her, if I didn't think that it would all go to shit. Maybe I should just try. What was the worst that could happen?
Short answer, it could ruin everything. I could lose her again, even though I’d just gotten her back. That was the worst that could happen.
12
Amber
Something was going on with Frank and it was starting to really bother me. Whatever he thought he was doing was not helping anything. We went from being around each other and sharing everything together, to me having to wonder if he was seeing someone else. There was obviously a secret that he was keeping from me, and I wanted to know what he wasn't telling me. It made sense that the ‘why’ was because it was something bad.
I am not proud of what I did next. I was so worried about what he was lying to me about that I was willing to go to great lengths to find out. I was, in fact, considering changing a lot about my life, moving back to Hampton, so I needed to know the truth. Whatever Frank was hiding from me, I needed to find out what it was. Then, I could make a real decision, because Gemma would not stop calling me, reminding me that I had a whole life waiting for me. I needed to know if staying here, and Frank in general, was worth it.
So, instead of going to bed, which admittedly I should have done, I made my way to his house. I wanted to believe that I wouldn't find anything when I got there. Really, I didn't want to. Because then that would mean that everything I felt for him wasn’t real. How could I ever want that?
When I got to his place, nothing really seemed out of the ordinary. There was no extra car in the driveway, and everything seemed to be pretty normal from where I was sitting. I was parked across the street from his house, and I was really starting to feel like a stalker more than anything else. I didn't like it at all.
I didn't like the way it all made me feel. I shouldn't feel like this. I shouldn't feel like he was being dishonest with me, and I wish that I could ask him straight up what was going on. It would have been so much easier that way. I wouldn't have had to wonder, like I was now.
After sitting there for about half an hour, I just felt like an idiot. There was no great party going on, no mysterious woman coming and going. None of that was part of it. The only thing that I saw was a house with a couple of lights that went off very early. One on the upper floor went off by ten, almost on the dot. Was that what time he went to bed? It hadn't been when we were together.
Leaving, I still had this unsettling feeling that there was something major that I was missing. I felt like a failure because I hadn't figured out what it was. I went back home and called Gemma.
I don't know why exactly I did. I really wasn't worried about what was going on at the office. I should have been. It was the business that I had worked for years for, but in the end, I was only thinking about Frank. I was hoping that business talk would help me get my mind off of him.
“When are you coming back, Amber? You really need to get back. I can’t put off these meetings for much longer. It’s like you dropped off the face of the planet, and we have to get going with the new line…”
I stopped her right there and assured her that I was well aware. She had been sending me lots of emails and giving me the blow by blows. They had gotten more frantic, and I knew that she was rightly in a tizzy. I had left with the idea that I would be gone a couple of days. It was well into week two now.
“I don’t know, Gemma. I am going to be a bit longer. Some things have come up, possible opportunities.”
“There, in Hampton?”
She was incredulous, and since the town was so small and known for open space, it wasn’t the sort of town that would help my high-fashion line. No one there would be interested in my clothes, or their price point. I don’t know what I had been thinking.
“I am still working on it, Gem. You
