Page 24

Downtime

Declan

I had no idea why I was so pissed off.

Abi Mariano was not my problem, so her health was not my concern.

It was stupid that I felt this mad.

But when I’d heard the wheeze of her trying—and failing—to get air in her lungs, it had scared the shit out of me. And even as she stood there, telling me she was fine, she’d looked scared as hell.

Like she wasn’t sure she believed that she was okay.

I mean, she was kind of my employee right now, so surely that was what this was about. My annoyance that someone, while on my watch, would put themselves in jeopardy. That was the only explanation, right?

But it’d felt eerily familiar, dealing with her asthma.

My grandpa used to pull that shit all the time with his COPD.

He hadn’t wanted to be a bother, or he didn’t want to hold up what everyone else was doing, so he’d try to just power through no matter how uncomfortable it made him, which usually landed him in the hospital.

I’d watched him go from being the most active person I’d ever met to a man who struggled to walk across a room without needing to stop for air.

Obviously, Abi was young and active and healthy, so she wasn’t at all like my grandfather.

But it’d felt too familiar and I hadn’t liked it.

When we got back to the apartment, I wasn’t sure how to behave around her. On the one hand, I felt like I needed to reassure her that I wasn’t an asshole, even though I’d basically yelled at her. I knew I should explain myself and apologize.

But on the other hand, I wasn’t ready to talk because I couldn’t stop seeing the fear in her eyes when she hadn’t been able to catch her breath.

Fuck.

“So what time does your flight leave?” she asked, and it was obvious that she was just tossing out small talk for the sake of killing the awkwardness. “Or is it whenever you want? I don’t actually know how private planes work.”

“I don’t have a plane,” I said, dropping my keys onto the counter. “I attend the hangar event, but I’m flying out of the main terminal.”

“Wow, like a commoner?” she asked, slipping out of her running shoes.

“Yes, like a commoner,” I said, fully aware that Abi was mocking me and pretty much everyone around me.

Which was fair.

We had too much.

I was very aware of my privilege—I always had been—but I felt guiltier than usual about it when I was around her.

“I think it’s more fun to have to get there two hours early and hang out with screaming children and outlet hogs than quietly fly in peace, don’t you?” I slid off my shoes and went into the kitchen, in desperate need of coffee.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I haven’t been on a plane since I was a little kid.”

“Seriously?” I couldn’t imagine that. Half of my life was spent traveling, so it was hard to wrap my brain around not hopping on a flight at least once a year.

“Yeah, when I was little we went on a couple family vacations,” she said, leaning on the island. “But after my dad died we didn’t really do that anymore.”

“And you and your friends never went on a wild spring break?” I asked, wondering what her friends were like.

Actually, I was really curious what her daily life looked like.

She told me a little at dinner, but it’d only made me more interested because it hadn’t been what I’d expected.

Initially, I thought she was just a girl who worked at a grocery store and cleaned apartments.

Then, after I looked her up, I assumed she was someone who worked in finance and had a part-time job on the side.

But the fact that she wanted to be a writing professor, on top of all that, made her fascinating to me. I wanted to know what she wrote and what her slumlord jackass–owned apartment looked like.

Did she work extra jobs because she struggled for money, or did she work extra jobs because she had financial goals and things she was saving for?

“No wild spring breaks for me,” she said with a shrug, not giving me any additional information.

We each went to our rooms to shower and change after that. I didn’t hear a nebulizer turn on, so I did what I knew she’d hate, and I texted her.

SHOULDN’T YOU BE DOING A brEATHING TREATMENT WHILE WE’RE HOME?

She instantly replied: I’m fine, Dad

I sighed. I knew it wasn’t my responsibility, and I didn’t want to be a control freak, but it’d only been a couple hours since she’d almost needed to take an ambulance to the hospital (even though she’d never admit it’d been that serious).

I texted: I KNOW YOU’RE FINE, BUT WOULDN’T IT BE A GOOD IDEA WHILE WE HAVE DOWNTIME, JUST TO MAKE SURE YOU’VE COMPLETELY RECOVERED?

I guess I’d expected a smart-ass response, because I was surprised to see her simple text: Thank you.

And a few minutes later— thank you, Jesus— I heard the sound of a nebulizer turn on.

I threw some things into a travel bag after my shower, even though I wouldn’t need them.

I spent a lot of time in Manhattan, so my apartment in SoHo was fully stocked with everything I could possibly need.

I changed into jeans—the brunch was always casual since everyone was preparing to leave—and then I was ready.

But I didn’t feel casual or remotely relaxed, mostly because I was leaving and something about leaving her made me feel unsettled. This was just a game and we barely knew each other, but it felt strange that it was ending when we’d only just begun.

When I walked into the kitchen, she was sitting at the island, writing in her notebook. Now that I knew she was a fiction writer, I was even more intrigued to know what she was writing. What ideas were alive in her mind, vivid enough for her to be inspired to put them down on paper?

And Edward had done a hell of a job, because somehow she looked like her future.

Abi looked like an English professor. She was wearing jeans and a navy blazer, with a white T-shirt underneath and a pair of tortoise-shell glasses (that had slid almost all the way down on her nose as she wrote).

Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a navy clip holding it together.

I was taken aback by how natural she looked that way. If I didn’t know better, I would assume this was the everyday version of Abi Mariano.

“What are you working on, professor?” I asked, and my heart kind of stuttered when she looked up at me and smiled.

Because she was so fucking pretty.

But it didn’t escape my notice that she quickly closed the notebook and a guarded look crossed her face.

“Just random thoughts that will probably equate to nothing,” she said, shrugging and waving a hand to brush it off. “I do this all the time, constantly jotting things down so I don’t lose the information even though I know I’ll probably never use it.”

“Makes sense,” I said, even more curious to know what she’d been working on. “Is this for class this week?”

A crinkle formed in between her eyebrows and I could tell she’d temporarily forgotten that she shared a little bit of her actual life with me last night.

And for some reason, I didn’t like the idea of her regretting it. I liked that she’d felt like sharing, even though I knew it essentially didn’t matter since we’d be going our separate ways soon.

“Not specifically,” she said. “It’s the beginning of the semester, so I’m prepping, trying to figure out which story ideas will go into my capstone project. I’ll have to meet with my advisor soon for approval, so I need to get it all mapped out.”

“I see,” I said, disappointed that I’d never know more than that. There was something about the idea of her brain running wild on paper, creating stories, that I found mildly intoxicating. Made me want to sit at her feet and listen to her talk for hours.

Shit—what the hell is wrong with me?

Obviously it’d been a long weekend and I was losing perspective when thoughts like that popped into my head. It was good that we were wrapping up, and that in a few hours I’d be on my way to New York.

The sooner this weekend of pretend was over, the better for my brain.

“Are you almost ready to go?” I asked. “You look nice, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she said, standing and looking down at herself. “I’ve never really been a blazer sort of person, but I feel like Edward is good at knowing what sort of person I should be.”

“He’s the best,” I agreed. “But I wouldn’t second-guess the fact that you know better than anyone who you are.”

Her eyebrows crinkled together even harder at that, like she didn’t understand my words, which was fair because I didn’t, either. It hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since we’d met, and now I was trying to convince her of her style or outlook on life.

I wasn’t sure what was going on with me.

Maybe I was coming down with something.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let me just put this notebook in the bedroom.”

She walked into the other room, gesturing to my bag as she passed, saying, “Don’t you have a suitcase?”

It was strange to see her go into my bedroom like she belonged there. “No,” I said. “I live in New York, too, so I have everything I need in my apartment.”

“I can’t believe you have a place in New York,” she said—squealed, actually—as she came back in the room, a look of childlike wonder on her face. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

Something about the excitement in her voice made me feel… guilty again . Or just hyperaware of how lucky I was. Because to me it was no big deal. It was just an apartment, and New York was just another busy city.

But to her, it was somewhere she’d always wanted to go but had never been.

Abi hadn’t been able to afford a weeklong stay at a hotel for a simple apartment building issue, yet I had multiple residences.

So, yes—here she is again, reminding me of my privilege.

“Do we have time to get coffee on the way?” she asked, grabbing her purse off the counter. “I know we’re going to a brunch where they’ll likely have some, but I am a person who thoroughly enjoys a Frappuccino for breakfast on the weekends every once in a while.”

“Only every once in a while?” I picked up my keys, not unaware of the way they’d been sitting beside her bag like we were an actual couple who lived there together. “You mean you’re not someone who gets it every weekend?”

“Are you kidding me?” she said, looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “It’s like seven bucks a drink. I am not on a Frapp-every-weekend budget, but thank you for thinking that I might be.”

She laughed and patted me on the shoulder as she walked past me, leaving a waft of something floral but vanilla that I was worried would be my new favorite scent.