Chapter Twenty Seven: Lacey

I almost didn’t go to work the next day, mostly because I didn’t want to see Ezra. Still, I was too responsible of a person to just not show up and leave everyone hanging, so I dragged myself out of bed. I didn’t ever want to leave, but I showered and got dressed before heading to the club to check in on things.

I felt like shit, and I knew I looked like it. I’d slept horribly last night, tucked deep into the covers of my familiar, at one time cozy bed. But last night had been different. It had been cold, lonely, and on more than one occasion in the night, I’d woken up expecting Ezra’s warm, hard body to be pressed against mine. Each time I expected that I’d only been greeted by a cold, empty spot, then have trouble falling back asleep.

I hated it. I hated him. I hated me.

“Lacey!” Tilly shrieked as I walked through the back door of Club Phoenix around noon. She jumped down from the step she’d been hovering on and raced over to throw her arms around me, fluffy blond hair going straight up my nose.

“Hi, Til,” I said with a laugh. “It’s only been less than a week.”

“I know, I know,” she said, releasing me to step back and take me in. “But things aren’t the same without you here, and I expected to see you last night when you got in.”

“Sorry,” I said, shrugging off my jacket to hang it in the employee’s break room. “I was super tired.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Yes,” I lied, and Tilly tsked at me at once.

“Spare me the bullshit,” she said. “You look like shit. What on earth happened in Hawaii?”

I sighed heavily and crossed my arms over my chest, looking around. The club wouldn’t be open for hours, so few staff were already there. Kind of like Ezra and me, Tilly always seemed to be around for one reason or another, and today especially, I was grateful.

“Is Ezra awake?” I asked, lowering my voice despite the emptiness of the room. Tilly looked around, shrugging.

“Does it look like he’s here? The man is fresh from vacation. He’ll probably be up there sleeping until five tonight.”

My mind went straight to what it always had before, that he had a girl up there. Naked. Sleeping next to him. I imagined his arms around her, some busty stranger with lovely legs and a low IQ. I imagined what he’d do to her as he’d done to me, and the thought made me horrified and turned on simultaneously.

Even if he has a girl up there, it’s not your business, I chided myself silently, pushing down the bubble of hurt and rage that seemed to want to sneak in.

“No, no girl,” said Tilly, her eyes searching my face. “He came back last night and went straight up to bed. He raised one hand at me in a wave and then vanished for the night. But he didn’t leave his room, and no one else went in.”

I wasn’t sure how appropriately surprised I should be by this, and I hated that I cared. Ezra was no longer my romantic concern alone or with a horde of women in his bed.

“First things first,” I said, sitting at the empty bar. “I’ll tell you everything, but first, I need a drink.”

After I was a martini in, I told Tilly everything that had happened between Ezra and me in Hawaii. When I’d finished, she shook her head, staring at me, mouth hanging slightly open in a slight grimace.

“Jesus,” she said, and I nodded my agreement. “I don’t even know what to say or where to start.”

“You and me both,” I mumbled. “And now that we’re home, things feel even worse, like we not only lost everything we had but that we lost our friendship too.”

Tilly shook her head again, then sighed. “I don’t believe that you and Ezra could lose something as precious as your friendship,” she said. “I’ve never met better friends than you two. It would be an abomination, really.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, finishing off my martini. “He made it clear where he stands with it, and I knew about his fear of commitment before sleeping with him. It’s just as much my fault as it is his. I just wish—” I faltered, unsure if I should say it aloud.

“You wish what?” prodded Tilly.

“I think some small part of me wished that once we’d been together, you know, physically, he’d want to be with me for more. And I knew I was stupid for feeling that way and that it would never happen like that, but I think I got my hopes up.”

“It’s normal to feel that way,” she insisted. “You’ve always had feelings for Ezra. Always. It’s only natural that you’d hope he’d someday return those feelings.”

“Right,” I mumbled. “Quite the idiot I am, yeah?”

Tilly smiled gently and shook her head, reaching over to squeeze my hand in that motherly way she always had. “You’re no idiot, Lacey. Ezra is the idiot for not seeing what’s right in front of him.”

“Maybe I dodged a bullet,” I said softly. “Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me that Ezra was never the one for me. Live and learn, yeah?”

“Have you had a serious conversation with him about your feelings for each other?” Tilly asked, and I shook my head.

“We tried multiple times, but it never got us anywhere. I feel like a lot of stuff went unsaid, like neither of us had the balls to fess up to it … whatever it was, anyway.”

Tilly nodded, seeming to mull this over in her mind. “Do you think things will go back to normal between you?”

“No,” I said honestly, and admitting that out loud made my heart seize up in my chest, making it difficult to catch my breath. It was a reality I’d been so afraid to face since the very moment I’d lost control and been with Ezra. What had happened between us was now over, and I knew that things would never be the same deep in my heart.

“I’m really sorry, sis,” Tilly said, coming out from behind the bar counter to wrap her arms around me in a hug. “It breaks my heart to see you so sad. I never would have imagined that this could happen. I always thought you and Ezra could beat anything, as long as you were together.”

“So did I,” I admitted. “But it turns out that might not be the case.”

Before Tilly could respond to this, footsteps on the staircase filled the empty room, and we both looked over just in time to see Ezra coming down the steps, running a hand through his disheveled hair. He spotted us at once but said nothing; he looked like hell, as though he hadn’t slept much at all either.

“Good morning, boss,” Tilly chirped, saving me the embarrassment of coming up with something to say myself. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, Til,” Ezra muttered, his eyes on me. He stopped at the bottom of the staircase as if unsure where to go, or even what to do or say. I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same way. “Morning, Lacey,” he added quietly. “Thanks for coming in.”

“Is there a reason I wouldn’t?” I asked, knowing that my words sounded bitchy, but I was slightly affronted anyway. This was, after all, my job.

“No reason,” he said quickly. “I just wasn’t sure if you wanted a rest day before returning to the daily grind of running this damn club.”

“I’m fine, Ezra.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s good. I am, too. Fine, I mean.”

Tilly was looking back and forth between us now, like a deer caught in the headlights. And for a long moment that seemed to go on for an eternity, nobody spoke. Ezra and I stared at each other, Tilly looked between us, and the tension was so thick that even a knife wouldn’t have cut it.

“Well,” Tilly said finally, clapping her hands together awkwardly. “This has been sufficiently weird. I think I’m going to go, like, work or something.”

“Sounds good,” said Ezra, his eyes still on me. I shot a glance at Tilly, silently begging her with my eyes to stay around and mediate the evident awkwardness between Ezra and me, but she was having none of it. Not that I could blame her, I guess.

As Tilly conveniently vanished into the back of the club, leaving Ezra and me alone once again, I made it a point not to look at him as I took my empty martini glass behind the bar counter to wash it. I wished Ezra would stop staring at me and find something else to do. After a moment of silence, he stepped off the staircase and crossed over to the bar counter, going to the mini-fridge behind the bar for bottled water.

“How does it feel to be home?” he asked, his eyes on me, but I found it challenging to look at him.

“Not as nice as Hawaii,” I admitted, focusing on the pain-chipped fingernails on my hand instead of him. The conversation was innocent, but the tension in the air was palpable. I hated it.

“Agreed,” said Ezra. “I’m missing Hawaii already.” He popped the top on his water and took a long drink, eyes still on me, but I had nothing more to say. As I turned away to head towards my office, Ezra spoke, stopping me in my tracks. “Lacey,” he said and paused to wait for me to turn around. When I did, he proceeded. “Are we all good here?”

“What do you mean, Ezra?”

“You know what I mean. Are we good? Are things going to go back to normal?”

I hesitated before answering, unsure of how to respond. Then, I nodded. “Yeah, Ezra, of course. Back to normal. Friends. Business partners. Nothing more and nothing less.”

He nodded, looking mildly unconvinced, and opened his mouth as if to speak again. But he didn’t. Instead, he closed it, cupping the back of his neck to rub it. “Okay. Great. Sounds good.”