Chapter 153

Aria’s POV

I didn’t know what possessed me to say yes. Catching up with an old friend was great, but 11pm was pretty late for a phone call.

Maybe I just wanted a distraction. With everything going on with Liam and Joanna and now Markus, I felt overwhelmed and trapped. All night, I’d been waiting for Liam to come home, but he wasn’t here, and it didn’t seem like he was going to arrive any time soon.

Samuel was safe. He had taken my previous rejection well. I’d told him I was in a complicated situation.

Isabella was likely already asleep. Unless I wanted to sit here in silence, I had no one else I could talk to.

So I found myself texting back, Okay.

Samuel called almost immediately, and I answered.

“Hello?”

“I hope it’s not too late,” he said.

“It is late, but I couldn’t sleep,” I admitted.

“Me, either,” he said. “Sometimes I swear my house is too quiet.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, glancing at the empty half of the couch where I had thought Liam would have been sitting by now.

“I’m sorry your luck hasn’t been much better than mine,” he said. “I’d hoped when and if we ever reconnected that we’d have happy stories to share with each other.”

“My story isn’t totally unhappy,” I said. After all, I had Joe and William. Things were complicated with Liam, but he was still in my life. We were both still working hard to make things work between us… I thought.

What could he possibly be doing at the office this late?

“Neither is mine,” Samuel said. “I have a good career. I’ve already traveled a lot of the world. I just wished I’d been a little luckier in love.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, unsure exactly why I said it. Maybe because, back in college, if I had felt anything for him, things might have been different.

“I didn’t say it to make you feel guilty. Honestly, I miss our friendship more than anything else. Things were so much simpler back then. Do you remember when we used to try to order the strangest combinations of toppings on our pizza?”

I laughed at the memory. We’d take turns ordering from the local pizza place, who, after a while, gotten in our game. Every week, we’d take turns trying to outdo the other in terms of grossness and strangeness. Eventually even the pizza place contributed.

I’d call in and the cashier who took my order would say, “Aria? You’ll never believe what we have in stock this week.”

“I miss when we used to binge bad tv,” I said. For hours, we would sit on the couch, eating popcorn, and making fun of bad acting and worse writing. I couldn’t imagine taking the time to do something like that now. I had far too many other responsibilities on my plate.

“I still watch some of those shows sometimes,” he said.

“You don’t.”

He laughed. “It brightens my mood.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible. Some of those shows were terrible.”

“Well, not all of them make my modern cut,” he admitted. “Just the ones that had the best memories.”

We sat in the quiet for a moment, remembering the past.

“I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to reach out,” I said, when that moment passed.

“I’m sorry, too,” Samuel said. “But we don’t have to let it happen again. Now that we are friends again, we can make it work this time. Listen, dinner was too much too soon. I get that. So why don’t you let me take you and your kids out for lunch some weekend? Something less formal.”

It was nice catching up with Samuel. So nice, that I found myself easily agreeing. “Okay. That would be nice.”

“Great. I should probably get some sleep now. I have to work in the morning.”

“Me, too.”

“It was nice talking to you, Aria.”

“And you.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Samuel.”

He hung up first. It took me a moment longer, to bring down my phone and watch his name flashing on the screen above the words, Call disconnected.

I didn’t really want to be alone again, with my thoughts.

Fortunately, at that same moment, I heard the key turning in the lock of the front door. Liam was finally home.

I waited for him to enter the house before I stood to meet him in the foyer.

“Aria,” he said, surprised to see me. “You should be asleep.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Immediately, he softened. “Ah. In that case I’m glad you stayed up.” Shaking his head, he walked around me and into the living room. “It’s been hell at the office. I’d finally wrapped everything up around 7, and tried to make it back home. Yet before I could make it out the door, a new bit of gossip hit my desk.”

“What kind of gossip?” I asked. I had many of my own issues that I wanted to discuss with him, but problems at the office were important too. For now, mine could wait.

“There’s been more accusations through at the club, and this time me as well,” Liam said. He flopped down onto the couch. “A few employees shared with me that Mr. Gunner was asking probing questions about my possible mistreatment of them.”

“Oh, no…” I said. God, with everything else that had been happening, I’d almost totally forgotten about my run-in with Mr. Gunner.

“Oh, no?” Liam asked, looking up at me. “Aria, do you know something?”

“I do and I don’t,” I told him, and then quickly explained what happened with Mr. Gunner earlier in the day, how he came to interview me, only to discover my boiler room work space.

“You are still down there?” Liam asked. “I told Joanna to find another place for you.”

As I hadn’t heard a thing about it from Joanna, she obviously hadn’t done so. I shook my head.

He cursed. “I’ll find another spot for you tomorrow, Aria. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t spend that much time in the office anyway. You know that.”

“You never should have lost your spot to begin with.” Liam dug his fingers through his hair. As he leaned forward, I could see how tense his shoulders were. He was stressed, maybe more than he’d ever been before.

Everything was pushing down on him, and we both knew it would all stop if he acquiesced to his father’s wishes. I hoped he wouldn’t give in, even tired as he was.

As he straightened and looked at me, I saw the spark of fire in his eyes. It was dimmed, buried under exhausting, nearly smothered, but still flickering there. That alone gave me hope.

But it was also such a fragile little spark that it didn’t feel right to burden him with my own troubled feelings.

“I’m sorry, Aria. You wanted to talk about something?”

The check was still in my pocket. All I had to do was pull it out, show it to him, and much of my day’s evening’s events would be made clear to him.

Yet, with those bags under his eyes and the tense way he held himself, I was afraid one more bit of anxious weight might be the bit that broke him entirely.

For now, I could keep this to myself.

“Let’s not worry about it,” I said.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”