Page 66 of That Next Moment

Opening Pandora’s Box with Ophelia was easier than I thought it would be, and hell, did it release a lot of tension. Tension that I didn’t know I was holding in by trying to be who I was in Seattle. Now that she knew every detail, it didn’t matter, and the best part—she didn’t hate me.

She didn’t hate me.

We stayed at the studio until well after the sun had set. It was late, and we had eaten nothing but junk food and drank more coffee than I care to admit, but she had more work cut out for her now. She quickly sent her completed designs to JoAnn, and then I watched as she sketched a few new ones, the ideas flowing from her mind like a waterfall.

While she sketched, we talked about anything we could think of. She told me all about New York and her life there, finally buying her apartment in the heart of Manhattan.

“Do you remember when you told me we should live in Brooklyn?” she muttered.

I smiled at the memory. Us trying to figure out our life together as she became the person she is today. I chuckled but didn’t respond. Would I have ended up where I am now if I had moved with her to New York? Would I have found a place like Jackson and Rye to work? Would we still be together? I bit my lip and furrowed my brow, my eyes on her as she leaned down closer to the paper.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Ophelia muttered, not even lifting her head to look at me. “I know that look, that concentrated overthinking look you always get. You get it with numbers too.”

“What look?”

She lifted her head and pointed at me, her pencil stuck between her fingers. “That one. Stop overthinking.”

“I’m not overthinking.”

“I bet I know exactly what is going through your head.” Ophelia twirled the pencil in her fingers and began to sketch again. “I think about that too, but it’s not what would have happened.”

“What would have happened?” I asked, keeping my voice lower, my eyes centered on her.

She frowned and shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”

I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head, letting out a long sigh. “I guess not.”

Ophelia dropped me off at Milo’s apartment after her sketches were done. She smiled at me as I said goodbye and opened the car door, half of my body already out of the car. I was tempted to lean over and give her another kiss but decided against it. The other two were welcome. I wasn’t sure what this one would bring. So instead, I promised coffee in the morning.

Milo and Elliot were both in the apartment when I walked in, two beers on the coffee table in front of them, a Marvel movie on the screen.

“Endgameagain?” I chuckled, locking the door behind me and opening the fridge to get a can of beer for myself.

“Elliot’s only seen it once, so it was the obvious choice,” Milo said, not taking his eyes from the screen. The Hulk was about to put on the makeshift infinity gauntlet, and Milo was going to be glued to that screen until the end.

“Yeah, but I don’t need to see it again,” Elliot groaned as he stood from the couch, grabbing his beer to meet me in the kitchen. “You’re the one I needed to talk to, anyway.”

I took a pull from my can and pinched my brow. “Me?”

“Yup.” He sighed as he reached down and brought up a large binder. He slammed it on the counter and placed his hand on top. “These are my books, and they are kinda a mess.”

“Finances?” I grinned. Numbers. My second favorite thing.

Elliot shook his head. “I don’t do numbers, and when I took over this company for my dad last year, I didn’t realize how much of a mess he left the finances in. His mind started to go downhill, and he was determined to still work, but”—he flung open the binder—“he began to lose track of the vendors and contractors we dealt with, and everything became a mess. I didn’t know it was this bad.”

I grabbed ahold of one of the rings and pulled the binder toward me. Instantly, I saw contracts and purchasing forms everywhere, no rhyme or reason for the mess in front of me.

“I take it you want me to take a look?” I asked, looking at some of the papers in the binder. “I’m going to need more than this to go off of. I’ll need account histories and–”

“I know,” he interrupted, taking a seat at one of the bar stools. “I’m in the office tomorrow, and I was wondering if you could swing by?”

“Don’t you have an accountant?”

He held out his hand, palm up, toward the binder, as if showing the pure fact that the accountant was no longer taking responsibilities. “The guy is like eighty, and he refuses to retire, so I”—he drug out his words—“may have fired him this morning with the hopes that you would help out.”

“You fired an eighty-year-old?”

“I may have exaggerated his age.”