She was ten when I saw him last. That’s how long ago it was: Elementary school kids are now fully-fledged adults.
“Now I just feel old,” I mutter, and he gives a wry chuckle.
“You’re telling me. Used to be, I was the one dropping them at the school gates, now Kyle’s roaring around town on a new Harley, and Eddie’s bairns are clamoring for a ride.”
“When did it happen?” I despair. “You know, I got ma’amed the other day for the first time by some spotty kid in the convenience store. I felt like yelling at him, ‘Ma’am is my mother, I’m still a miss!’”
Fraser laughs again, warm and rich. “Just wait until you’ve got grandnieces and nephews running around, asking what life was like in the ancient times of the late 1990s.”
“Noo,” I laugh. “I swear, that was just a couple of years ago.”
“No time at all,” he agrees.
Our eyes lock, and in a moment, the time melts away. I’m nineteen again, breathless and bold, and ready to take on the world—and him.
I drag my gaze away before I can tumble into a ditch.
“I heard someone say you’d got your doctorate,” Fraser remarks. “Congratulations. That’s a big achievement."
“It would be, if I could actually finish the damn thing,” I sigh. “I’ve been working on my PhD dissertation for a year now but… I can’t seem to finish.”
“What’s the hold-up?” he asks, looking interested. “I can’t say I ever pictured you as a professor.”
I don’t want to think about if, and how, Fraser may have pictured me. “That’s the issue,” I say brightly instead. “I sort of stumbled into academia to avoid the real world, but now, well, I have zero interest in teaching, or spending the rest of my life stuck in a library. So I have no motivation to finish, but also, I’ve invested way too much time to officially give up…”
“Ah,” he nods. “Sunk cost fallacy. That’s when you’ve put in so many resources, you think you have to continue—”
“You don’t need to tell me about sunk costs, mister.” I cut him off with a smirk. “You’re talking to a woman who still watches Heartbreak Hospital.” I name the long-running TV show I’ve been watching since I was a teenager.
“Still?” he asks, disbelieving.
“Still.” I confirm, smiling. I sneak another look at him. Even trampling through the country, he’s still crisp in a perfectly tailored suit. “What happened with your art?” I find myself blurting, my curiosity too much to hold back. “I thought you would be off in a studio somewhere by now, not working an office job. Do you still paint?”
As quickly as he softened when talking about his family, Fraser’s expression shutters. “No. It was fine hobby for a lad, but there was never any future in it. The life of a starving artist is a fool’s game,” he adds briskly. Then his phone buzzes, and he glances at his screen. “I need to take this,” he says, without any further explanation, and then strides away, speeding back towards the set.
I watch him go, feeling an odd ache of disappointment. Not for me, but for the guy I used to know, who was so full of ambition and creativity, determined to carve out a life doing something that he loved. To know that he abandoned that dream, along with me… Well, it just confirms, he’s not the man I thought he was.
He really has changed.
5
FRASER
It’s official: I’m trapped in my own private version of hell. Also known as this damn hotel room. I’ve been ready to leave for ten minutes, and I hate to be late, but here I am, stuck pacing the floral-print carpet, and all because JJ is out there in the hallway, talking to someone.
I can’t hear what she’s saying, just the laughing tone of her voice. So, she is capable of happiness these days, at least.
Just not around me.
I shouldn’t be surprised. She was the last person I was expecting to see again, and when I walked into that bathroom, and caught an eyeful, it felt like someone just punched a hole clear through my chest. Jolene Jameson, all five-foot-seven of her: lush curves and untamed brunette curls, wet and naked and right there in front of me.
And I mean, all of her.
Fuck, as if the woman hasn’t haunted my dreams, and a fair number of my private fantasies for the last ten years. I thought for a moment that I’d hit my head and drifted off into one of my favorite daydreams about the woman.
Now it’s safe to say, I’ve got another decade of lusting after her ahead of me, too.
“He still looks incredible. Tessa, it’s not fair for the man to still have this effect on me!”
I pace some more, frustrated. Overhearing the tail end of her conversation didn’t help, now I just know I’m not alone in my inconvenient attraction. But she said it herself: This isn’t rational. It’s just muscle memory talking, nostalgia getting stirred up after all these years.
But I can’t trust myself around her. Not when she’s showing up to set every day in those adorable sundresses, beaming at literally every other crew member, overflowing with happiness to be working on this film—and shooting daggers at me every chance she gets.
I tried to be polite, but since simple professionalism clearly isn’t going to cut it, I’ve been avoiding her instead. But after five days turning in the other direction when she enters a room, my patience is wearing thin.
My patience, and my self-control.
Her laugh filters through the door again, that warm, infectious giggle that takes me back to springtime in London, walking hand-in-hand by the Thames, cozying up together on a bench in the pub.
Peeling her clothes off, one by one, laid out in front of the fireplace in my icy attic rooms, that giggle turning into a breathy moan...
Dammit.
I pace some more, scowling, feeling like a caged animal trapped here in this chintzy hell. Is this really what’s become of me? A grown man, hiding from his university ex?
She’s the one who moved on without pausing for breath, like we never even mattered. Like she’d never loved me at all. A new boy every week, that’s what it had looked like splashed all over her social media that terrible summer. She was partying her way across the East Coast, while I was up in Scotland, out of my mind with missing her and trying to keep my whole world from falling apart.
And now she has the nerve to glare at me like I’m the villain in this story?
You’re better than this.
Fuck it.
I open the door purposefully and stride out. “Morning,” I give her a brief nod, and walk past them, before she can even reply. There. I hit the elevator button hard and keep staring straight ahead until the doors shut behind me.
I need to get a grip. We’ve got another month of this shoot ahead of us, and I refuse to be held hostage by her smile. However tempting it is.
It’s time to act like a bloody adult.
Over at the location, I weave purposefully through the bustle, heading for my makeshift office and another day spent arguing with Reeve and his producers over line budget items. But despite the daily battle that’s shaping up over my presence here, I like the buzz of activity, how the film production is a complex machine made up of a hundred moving parts. It’s why I took the job, after years working in a more formal, corporate setting. I’m still pushing numbers around, but this way, I’m adjacent to something more creative, even if I’m not the one taking part.