The long, arduous drive back to our building was nothing short of torturous.

Justin talked a lot about the history of the musicians that came up on his iPod and I pretended to be fascinated, but the tension was undeniable and obvious at times when even he had to have a break from talking.

It was apparent that remaining even friends with each other might have been a stretch, at least then, because the way we were behaving with each other during the course of that drive home was so contrived and overly civil that it just added to the discomfort.

He was acting like he wasn’t bothered and so was I, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth of it.

I had to refrain from leaping out of the car when we made it back to the parking lot below our building, I was so anxious to have space from him.

Barney walked beside me as we took the elevator up and my floor was first.

When the doors opened, I knew I had to say something about it. And from the way he was looking at me, he knew I was going to also.

“Thanks for taking me out there, it was nice…you know…up until the right hook,” I said trying to make light and he laughed a little and shrugged. “I’m sorry…about everything,” I offered more solemnly.

“Yeah I am too, Soph,” he said politely, “don’t be a stranger though, okay? There’s no reason we can’t still hang out.”

“Yeah definitely, no one else will watch Saved by the Bell marathons with me, you’re bound to that job,” I told him and he laughed again.

“Deal.”

“I’ll see you around,” I said and he lifted his hand and waved as the elevator doors shut and it honestly felt like I’d never see him again. A thought that didn’t sit well with me, but I quickly decided would be better if it were to end up that way.   

 The days that passed after that weekend were long and exhausting.Every time I had to recount what had happened to either Estelle, David or Jules, it took it out of me emotionally and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I sustained a crying session for more than three hours.

Luckily I was in my apartment with Jules when it happened, who was there to move the pizza box away to prevent our pepperoni pie from getting soggy with my tears.

I could tell she didn’t really understand exactly why Justin and I decided to end it, but she didn’t say anything. At least not in words.

“Well there ya go,” she said pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, “now you can call that Andrew guy-“

“Urgh, why does everyone keep call him Andrew, its Adrian, how hard is it to remember the name Adrian,” my words were sharp and more directed at Justin than Jules, but she didn’t seem to notice my gripe.

“Well sorry. Adrian. Whatever, but now you can call him and be with him and YAY!”

“He won’t want to have anything to do with me after all this fuss and bother,” I said sure of it.

“Didn’t he tell you he’d basically wait for you in the filing room?”

“Well yeah, but I can’t expect that from him and besides, he’s freaking gorgeous, I’m sure he’s probably married to someone else by now.”

“After one weekend?”

“You know what I mean,” I sighed.

“You haven’t seen him since you’ve been back?”

“Yeah I see him every day, we just don’t talk…you know…like Justin and I now…we don’t talk,” I said more tears spilling form my eyes and Jules laughed and rubbed my back.

“Awwwwww, poor Sophie,” she said at the point now where my tears were just humorous.“Give him time, he’ll talk to you again you’ll see.”

I didn’t respond, I just shoved another slice of pizza into my mouth and sunk back further against my couch looking up at the ceiling.

“You could have at least stayed with Justin long enough to be introduced to his friends, though,” she said and I couldn’t help but laugh finally and shake my head.

“I knew you’d say that.”

“Well! I’m just saying.”

“Oh well, it doesn’t matter now,” I sighed, taking another bite from the flexible slice as it bowed towards me, “He hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you.”

I didn’t know for sure. I hadn’t heard from him and it was now Wednesday, which wasn’t unusual if he was going away somewhere, but I didn’t know if he was away or if he was right upstairs…hating me. 

The next day at work it was around 10:30am when I decided to finally head into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee.

Sure enough, Adrian was in there washing out his coffee mug and he looked over his shoulder to see who had come in and as soon as he saw me, he smiled.

“Hey Sophie.”

“Hey,” I greeted sidling up beside him at the bench to wait for my turn to rinse out my coffee mug.

“How’s things,” he asked and I obviously wasn’t going to tell him how things were, I felt a little stab at the thought of how I really was.

“I’m okay, you know…just trying to get through this week.”

“Yeah tell me about it, I have another presentation I have to do for Sales by the end of this week on top of the other three I’ve already had to do…I can’t wait for Saturday.”

“I bet,” I said unable to believe how awkward I felt around him now.

“So…how’s things with Justin?” he asked quietly, but stared directly at me and though I was caught off guard by his question, I felt compelled to tell the truth.

“Oh…we’re not really seeing each other anymore,” I said, unable to really look at him.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, and I looked up at him surprised, a satisfied little grin on his face that should have bothered me but didn’t.

“How-“

“Estelle.”

“Oh,” was all I could find to say and I awkwardly went about washing my coffee mug out while he poured himself a fresh cup.

“I better get back to my desk,” he said throwing his stirrer into the bin next to my legs. “Why don’t we have lunch this week,” he suggested trying to mask any agenda, but I saw right through it.

“I don’t think I’m really ready for that, Adrian,” I said trying to cut to the chase.

“Okay…how about next week then?”I looked up at him and he smiled and sipped his coffee cheekily starting towards the door.“Next week it is then. By the way, I know something you don’t know,” he said cheekily and I was instantly intrigued.

“What?”

“Hmmm, you’ll see,” he said disappearing before I could protest, but I couldn’t help but smile to myself.

As I headed back to my desk, I could hear my supervisor, Mary calling out to me.

“Soph, do you have a minute? Bring your coffee with you.”

She was in the Managing directors office which instantly made my stomach sink and I immediately tried to recall all the files I had recently touched and what I could have done to mess them up and I must have looked worried because David watched me walked by his desk and tightened his bottom lip discreetly.

Mary and Garry were sitting on one side of the table and when they saw me, Garry motioned to the chair opposite to them.

“Have a seat Soph, shut the door behind you.”

I was now panicked and reached behind me shut the door while trying not to spill my coffee from my shaking hands.

“Have I done something wrong?” I couldn’t help but ask as I walked over to the seat, and both Mary and Garry maintained their poker faces.

“Sit down,” Garry said again and I did, placing my coffee on his desk because I simply couldn’t hold it anymore.

“How’s things?” Garry asked casually and I raised my eyebrows cautiously.

“Fine,” I responded meekly, knowing full well they didn’t want to talk to me about how I was going.

“Good, good. Well, let’s not beat around the bush then, the reason we wanted to talk to you Sophie, is because as you may or may not know, Mary is actually resigning from her position as the general supervisor as of a month from now,” Garry began and Mary smiled.

I realized I had been so caught up in the whole Justin/Adrian thing that I hadn’t even been paying attention to what was going on in the office anymore.

“No! I didn’t know that!”I was genuinely shocked. I liked Mary, she was a good supervisor and everyone liked her for her fair flexible approach.

“Yeah I’m moving to Colorado actually, with my husband,” she explained briefly and I nodded in understanding.

“And the reason we wanted to meet with you was,” Gary continued, “Mary and I were discussing her replacement, and given your experience and tenure with the company, we both felt you would be an excellent candidate for the role…if of course you’re interested.”

“Me?” I asked pointing to myself completely caught unawares.

They both smiled and nodded.

“Yes well we could have hired externally, but Soph, you know all the systems, you know all the procedures, you’re already the go-to-person in Mary’s absence and to be quite frank we didn’t see any value in going through the external hiring process and paying thousands of dollars to agencies to find a replacement, when there was someone more than qualified right under our noses,” Garry explained, and a wide smile spread all the way across my face.

“If you’re interested in the role, we’ll provide you with training, we’ll pay for your studies and you’ll be involved in everything from client relations to marketing, to sales…it’s really an exciting opportunity, will you think about it?”

Think about it? Was he kidding?

“I…I don’t think I need to think about it, I am very flattered and grateful that this position is being offered to me and I’d be honored to accept it…pending contract negotiations,” I added and both Garry and Mary laughed.

“Oh she’s going to be very good in this role,” Garry said to Mary who nodded and smiled.

“I know she will,” she said giving me a warm wink and suddenly my week had gone from zero to hero.

When I left the office, I had an irrepressible smile on my face and Adrian’s head popped up from behind his cubical and he smiled widely and gave me a quick thumbs up before disappearing back down behind the partition and I realized that he must have known all along.

Negotiations would be ongoing until I signed a contract and until then, Garry and Mary wanted me to keep it a secret.

I wondered if that was the case, how Adrian would have known, but I knew I’d find out eventually.

I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to at least be able to tell someone about it, but I was sworn to secrecy until the official office announcement.

In all my joy, Justin still managed to infiltrate my thoughts, thinking that ordinarily I would have raced up to his apartment once I got home to tell him something like this.

I guessed he wouldn’t want to hear from me still so I ruled it out and made the connection then about how few friends I actually had because of that job and suddenly felt a promotion was certainly justified.

Almost immediately as I sat back down at my desk, an email from Adrian popped into my inbox.

Congrats, it read simply.

How did you know? I responded and awaited his reply.

Mary told me she was leaving and when she started complaining about the hiring/replacement process, I suggested that surely there was someone internally who they could promote…like…say…oh I don’t know. SOPHIE!

You’re practically doing her job anyway…

Anyway…guess they bought it. 

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. That this was essentially his doing even after everything I did to him.

A smile formed on my shocked face and I shook my head in disbelief.

I didn’t know what to say.

Thank you, I swrote simply and it didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of my gratitude, but I hoped there would come a day when I could more accurately express to him how I felt.

For what? I didn’t do anything, I merely planted a seed.

I’m taking you out for a drink to celebrate. Please don’t say no.

I laughed. How could I possibly say no?

A moment later, before I had a chance to respond, he walked by my desk making a drinking action with his hand.

“Yes? Yes?”

“Yes,” I accepted, and he smiled as he kept walking on by.

“Good.”  

That night we walked over to Murph’s for beers and nachos.

It was a total of about half an hour spent with Adrian that made me wonder how I could deny that he and I fit together better than anything else I ever had in my life.

I felt like I was on an equal playing field with him and we talked, laughed and flirted all night, enjoying ourselves so much we didn’t notice the hours go by.

It was so easy to be with Adrian and despite how nice he was, I was also treated to a little bit of his fire that came out following an unwelcome, drunken advance by one of the other patrons at the bar.

I didn’t worry for a moment, seeing that Adrian was just perfect in every way.In fact it was a little sickening. Or maybe it was just that I’d had too many white wines.

“It’s getting late, I think I need to sleep off these,” I said waving an empty wine glass between my fingers.

“Yeah, I forgot we have work tomorrow, but at least it’s Friday” he grinned polishing off the rest of his beer and we gathered up our belongings and stepped outside.

“I’m going to need your cab skills,” I told him knowing I was too drunk, too tired and too happy to manage to hail a cab on my own and he smiled.

Sure enough a simple wave of his hand had two cabs pulling up to the curb in front of the bar and I shook my head in disbelief as he smiled, pleased with himself.

“Un- freakin’- believable,” I sighed as he pulled the door open for me and I stepped off the curb and turned to face him.

“Thanks for the recommendation, thanks for the drinks…and thanks for…just being so sweet to me.”

“Well I like you, Sophie,” he said simply and I smiled.

“Yeah, I know. I don’t know why exactly, but…I know you do…and I like you too. So much.”

“Kinda wish I didn’t get you drunk, now you’re getting all sentimental on me,” he said touching my face and I closed my eyes.

“Did you mean what you said in the filing room?” I asked, sobering up fast and looking up to his blue eyes, “You know, about calling you and picking up where we left off?”

He dropped his hand down and sunk them into his coat pockets.

“Yeah, I did,” he said and smiled, “but not tonight, you’ve had a lot to drink and I think you need some time to process everything that happened between you and-”

“What happened between Justin and I was you, Adrian, I kept expecting him to act like, and be like you,” I told him, and the way Adrian was looking at me made me smile because it was like he couldn’t quite believe it. “I know now that I want to be with you”

A slow smile spread a cross his face and he looked away and sighed.

“Well…if you still feel the same way when you wake up tomorrow-”

”I’m not that drunk”

“…you know where I’ll be,” he finished despite my protests and I laughed and nodded.

“I’ll be in touch then,” I assured him and we kissed briefly before he finally took my hand and helped me into the cab, closing the door and waving good bye before rushing to get into his own.