We hadn’t spoken more than our standard greeting since the first night when she told me she missed me. It was a strange ritual.
I looked over at my clock for the hundredth time. What would she be doing right now? It was nine p.m. where she was, slightly earlier than I usually called. I should feel guilt for using her as a crutch, and keeping her from her life, but when I shallowly examined my conscience, I couldn’t find it. And didn’t try too hard.
I rolled to my side and picked up my phone, calling her before reason and decency got the better of me.
It rang three times and connected. “Josephine?” I asked as I usually did.
“I’m here.”
“Are you alone?” I asked as I did every time I called.
There was a long pause. An uncomfortable sickness slipped under my skin and curled around my stomach.
“Yes,” she said at last as if it pained her to admit.
I swallowed heavily. One day, she would say no, and that would be that. “Moi aussi,” I said, finalizing our ritual. This was where we normally ended our discourse and lapsed into silence. My mind raced through ways to open conversation. I hadn’t planned what to say.
“Xavier?” she asked.
Inhaling through my nose, surprised, I braced for her telling me this was our last call. I wouldn’t blame her. “Oui?”
“How did your meetings go?”
I shifted my head on my pillow, rolling onto my back, letting out a relieved sigh. It seemed we both felt the need to break our silence tonight. “I guess Dauphine told you? Very good. We closed the deal. Got the investments we needed. Licensed the patents we wanted to. I had to concede a little on the time. I wanted them to be renewed every year, but I agreed to every two.”
“That’s … good. Congratulations.”
I grunted, knowing the satisfaction I used to feel at business success was nowhere to be found. “And you? Did you get a job with another firm?” It was terrible that I didn’t know this yet. What if she was unemployed still? Homeless? Hungry? I was being dramatic. She was so talented and smart.
“No. I didn’t look for another firm to be honest. Someone helped me realize my passion didn’t lie in building the new as much as saving the old. I took a job with a preservation group.”
I licked my lips. “Like my mother.”
She sighed. “Without the means, and only the passion.”
“Without passion, the means have no impact,” I said.
She paused and gave a surprised laugh. “True.”
“I’ll let my mother know. She will be pleased for you.”
“We … we have kept in touch,” she admitted. “Not much,” she hurried on. “Just a few texts here and there. So she knows of my new job.”
“Ah, you keep in touch with my daughter and my mother? I should feel left out,” I jested.
“And yet, here we are. Talking.”
“Oui.” Silence strained. “So … you love it, your new job?” I asked.
“Very much. And I like my new coworkers. No one makes comments that I’m worth having around because I’m easy on the eyes.”
“And why’s that?”
There was a pause. “Apart from the fact it’s sexual harassment?” I could almost see her eyebrow rise from the tone of her voice.
“Of course. Apart from that,” I said. “I’m sure they think that, but they are merely decent.” What man could work alongside her and not be arrested by her natural beauty? The thought of the men who got to spend time with her every day sent that discomforting sludge through my stomach again. Jealousy. There was power in naming the emotion. I was jealous. Jealous of fictional men. So fucking jealous.
“Decent,” she agreed, unaware of my mental frustration. “And most of them are women.”
My muscles eased at the knowledge she wasn’t working surrounded by men who wanted her. But what about her wanting someone? “Are you with anyone else? Have you—” The words just slipping out of me. My smile vanished and I pressed my lips together. Fuck.
The sound of her breath hitching came through the line. “Xavier. Don’t.”
But I needed to know. “Are you?”
“Xavier. Please.”
“Please,” I echoed back at her.
“That’s not fair. This whole thing is unfair. Meredith thinks I’m a nut job, turning down offers to go out in the evenings so I can be on the phone with you. God, if she knew you and I didn’t even talk, she’d have me committed. What are we doing?” Her tone turned introspective. “What am I doing?”
“Wait,” I said quickly, sure she was about to hang up on me. “We are talking. Tonight at least. I … shouldn’t have asked. I have no right.”
“No. No, you don’t.”
Silence stretched. Words congregated and jostled and clogged up my throat, but every one of them were too dangerous to say aloud. They would accomplish nothing but more hurt and more confusion. The pressure built, tension coiled up my back and settled at the base of my skull. Why? Why couldn’t I let go? Why couldn’t I give in? Why couldn’t I open myself up? What was I afraid of?
“I don’t think we should talk anymore.” Josephine’s words cut through my turmoil. “Or not talk anymore. Or whatever the hell it is we are doing. I … I’m going to end the call now.”
“Josephine, wait. Attend. S’il te plaît … give me a moment to get my thoughts into words?”
She blew out a long breath.
Christ. How could I do this over the phone? What was the point? What thoughts would I, could I, give voice to when I didn’t want to face them myself?
I missed her. So what? She wasn’t here, and I was certainly not there. Telling her would only confuse both of us.
I wanted her. But again, the geography. Telling her would only cause pain.
I was jealous. And I had no fucking right to be. Telling her would be the cruelest thing when I had no plans
