Letting out a breath, I walk toward the kitchen and living areas. The entryway light is still on, so I can see fine. I turn the corner and jerk to a stop when I see the back of someone sitting on a kitchen barstool.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” The words come out instinctively. My automatic need to apologize for my presence.
Hugh is working on a laptop with a mostly empty whiskey glass beside him. He glances over his shoulder. “Hey. Did I startle you?”
“No. Yes. A little. I just didn’t think anyone would be up this late.” I recover my composure and walk around the island so I can grab a bottle from the refrigerator. “I needed water.”
Hugh’s eyes make a quick route down and up my body before they stay on my face.
I glance down at myself. Bare feet. Thin pajama pants that need to be hiked up a few inches. A tank top with no bra. I really should have put a robe on over my sleep clothes before I ventured out.
“Sure,” Hugh says, clearly not diverted by my state of undress. “I’m just trying to catch up on work.”
I unscrew the lid to the bottle and take a swallow before I respond. “I thought you had time off today and tomorrow.”
“I do.” He sighs and looks back at his laptop screen. “But if I wait that long before checking email, I’ll be hit with the avalanche on Monday morning. So I try to check in once a day to at least clear out the easy stuff.”
Intrigued, I lean forward against the countertop on the other side of the island from where he’s sitting. “Can’t you have an assistant help you with that?”
“I do. Stacey clears out all the obvious junk and filters out the stuff she knows what to do with. But there’s still a ton I have to deal with myself.” He glances up at me, and something in my expression must convince him I’m genuinely interested. He turns his laptop to show me the screen.
My mouth drops open as he scrolls down and shows me what appears to be an endless number of unread emails. “Oh my God! How long has it been since you checked it?”
“Yesterday around five.” He chuckles dryly. “It’s ludicrous. I feel like I spend half my workdays avoiding the avalanche of emails.”
“And your assistant can’t help you with more of it? Surely you don’t have to personally respond to all of it.”
“That’s what she’s always telling me. I need to delegate more.” He still looks ironically amused. Not self-pitying or upset in any way. “But I’m not any good at that. It always takes more time to try to delegate than it does to do it myself.”
I laugh. “I get that. It’s how I always felt with my ex. He claimed not to know how to do any of the housework, and my attempts to teach him never worked. So it got to be more trouble to try to get him to help out with it than it was to do it myself.”
Hugh shakes his head. “Weaponized incompetence.”
“Yeah. That’s what it was. I didn’t know it at the time, of course. But things become clear once you get a little distance. I never should have put up with it for so long.”
I’m not sure why I feel compelled to tell him so much personal stuff about myself. It happened at the interview too. It’s something about the way he looks at me. Like he’s actually listening. Like he really wants to know what I have to say.
“Anyway,” I go on, when I feel the temptation to continue babbling about my painful history with my ex-husband. “Your email situation isn’t weaponized incompetence. And if you’re not able to take a couple of days off without keeping up with your email, then taking some more help seems reasonable.”
“Of course it’s reasonable.” The corners of his mouth twitch up.
I narrow my eyes. “You’re not going to do it, are you?”
“Probably not.”
My attempt to give him a disappointed headshake isn’t particularly effective since I want to giggle. “How was dinner with Candice?”
“It was good. We went to a little artsy place she loved, and then we wandered around for an hour or two.” He reaches around to idly scratch his back.
He’s dressed for bed in plaid cotton pajama pants and a white undershirt. His shirt slides up slightly as he scratches, displaying about an inch of bare skin around his belly.
Despite my firm lecture to my eyes to look away, they don’t obey.
I like the look of Hugh’s body. A lot. He’s got a naturally large frame, but he’s clearly not a bodybuilder type. His arm muscles aren’t noticeably developed, and he’s got quite a bit of softness around his middle.
I really want to squeeze him there.
Looking back on my marriage, I can see mistakes I made from the very beginning. Failing to see small red flags early on that should have warned me of what was to come. But the two years of our dating and the first couple of years of marriage weren’t all terrible. It only got really bad once Nick woke up one morning and decided he wanted to get back into shape.
He started working out regularly. Then spent longer and longer at the gym before and after work. Then he started lecturing me on what I ate or how much exercise I got. Eventually being fit and having a perfect body became his primary identity.
I know there were flaws and weaknesses in him from the first day I met him, but the fitness obsession really did seem to draw out and inflate every single one of them.
So I like the fact that Hugh doesn’t appear particularly concerned about maintaining a rigorous workout routine.
I like it a lot.
And I like the way his body looks with non-jacked-up muscles and an extra layer of fat than it ever would have as a perfectly buff bodybuilder.
“Everything okay?” he asks, scanning my face curiously.
My cheeks warm as I realize I was leering at him for too long. “Yeah. Fine. Sorry. Just falling asleep on my feet. I better get back to bed.”
He nods and returns his focus to his laptop. “Good idea. Get some sleep.”
“Make sure you do too. Don’t stay up too late buried in email.”
He chuckles softly, which I figure is a clear sign he’s not going to take my advice.
Hugh and Candice leave the following morning for Florence, and I have the apartment to myself for the weekend.
I’m tempted to lie around and take it easy since the refrigerator and pantry are well-stocked, so I don’t even need to leave the house. But I force myself to follow my plan and try to get accustomed to moving around in the city.
So for three days I practice all modes of transportation. I call up the car service at least once a day to take me somewhere so it doesn’t feel so intimidating to use it. I take cabs. I take the metro. I take buses. I walk miles and miles around the apartment so I can get to know the neighborhood. I even take a train to a nearby town in case I need to take Candice on a day trip.
I want to be able to escort her anywhere she wants to go without getting nervous or confused about it, so I try to predict every possible means of travel so I’ll know how to do it.
By Sunday afternoon, I’m exhausted, but I’m also much more comfortable moving around in the city, so the weekend has been a success.
Hugh and Candice return from their trip around dinnertime on Sunday, and they seem to have had a good time. Any hope Candice might have warmed up to me over the past few days is dashed when she disappears into her room and closes the door.