Page 3 of Cade

April

April stood, placing her hands on her back and stretching. She’d had her head down at her desk for entirely too long and now she was paying for it. Sore all over, she groaned and added a few twists to her stretching before looking at the clock.

Five hours. It had been five hours since she’d last looked up and taken a breath. April shook her head at herself and bent down to close her laptop. She needed to be in the conference room in less than ten minutes and was wholly unprepared.

It was a wonderful thing that her meeting was with Kayla, a client but also a friend, and she’d spend half their time catching up before they actually got to work. It wouldn’t take long for them to make this new contract, anyway.

Kayla was bringing Evan out of the silent portion of their silent partnership officially. It was a simple contract change, one that Kayla didn’t need to come in for. April could do it in her sleep. Fact was she could do most of it in her sleep anymore.

She hated her job. Not the clients, except for a few, but she was relegated to doing contracts despite all her years of law school. This wasn’t what she intended to do forever and yet it was the only job in law that she’d had. Right after she passed the bar, she was hired here and had worked her way up from lackey to her own clients, but she was bored.

“Keep up the good work,” her boss said last night when she left well past dinnertime. “You could be looking at partner before too long.”

She shuddered. There was no way she could do contracts for the rest of her life. She’d go insane. Unfortunately, she was too busy to look for a new position and if word got out that she was, she could lose the job she had, which she couldn’t afford to do.

No sooner than she sat her laptop down did Kayla walk into the small conference room.

“I brought you something,” she sang out, waving a bag of takeout.

Her smile was genuine even as she tried to keep her mouth from watering at the food. Of course, she hadn’t eaten since she wasn’t watching the time. “Is that for me?” April joked, taking the bag from her friend.

“Tell me you’ve eaten already today?” Kayla said with concern as she took a seat next to April.

“Lost track of time,” April said sheepishly as she dug into the bag. “You didn’t?”

April pulled out her sandwich from her favorite café, that wasn’t far from her apartment. There was something special about the food there and all of it was amazing and hit the spot every time.

“I figured you hadn’t eaten. You’re going to waste away, girl.” Her friendly tone held an underlying note of sadness and concern.

“I know. I just forget,” April told her.

“Set timers. Do something.” It wasn’t quite a plea, but April knew it was. “I just worry about you.”

“I’m fine. Taking a long look at things lately and might be making some changes soon,” April confessed.

Kayla arched an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“I’m not ready to talk about it yet and it’s still just a, maybe.”

“Don’t leave me without telling me,” Kayla teased.

“Afraid you’re stuck with me no matter what,” April joked back.

The mood sufficiently lightened. They both ate their sandwiches and spoke about the restaurant. It was about to reopen, and April was thrilled for her friend. The restaurant was vandalized and had been closed for a bit. It had been very hard on Kayla to lose the momentum that the restaurant had been enjoying all at once.

It was an interesting concept, but April had never been to the restaurant on a date. She had eaten there but always upstairs in Kayla’s office. The novel idea had been turning heads for a while now since Evan, Kayla’s boyfriend, had convinced his friends to give it a try. It had leant an air of trust to the restaurant and business had picked up.

Just after the vandalism, April had met all of Evan’s friends, only to discover that she already knew one of them, Cade. They’d dated once and Cade’s parents had quickly told him they didn’t approve of her and Cade had dropped her quickly.

It was a shame because when his family wasn’t involved; they got along great. They had chatted about deep, dark things in their life and she had told Cade things that she’d told no one before or since. Cade had seemed open with her as well, but then his father had told him she wasn’t a good fit and he’d dropped her so quick.

And he’d dropped her hard. This was the next time she’d seen him, and that was a few years ago. He sent her a text and that had been the last words from him. There’d been no further communication because he’d blocked her. She went to his apartment building once but saw him with another woman, so she’d walked away and assumed that it had all been bullshit for him.

After almost six months of dating, they’d never slept together, a regret. Then, if she had slept with him, she was almost positive that she wouldn’t have wanted to stop.

“You good?” Kayla asked.

April shook her head, ridding her mind of the unwanted thoughts. “Sorry. Was zoned out.”