The Boss Project by Vi Keeland

“You’re not staying here until the bed gets delivered, right?” he asked.

“No. I still need to finish packing all my stuff at my sister’s anyway.”

He nodded and shook the keys in his hand. “You want me to drop you off at your sister’s?”

“Oh…yeah, sure. That would be great.” It wasn’t like I expected him to spend the entire weekend with me, yet the ending to our time together felt sort of abrupt. I hadn’t even taken my overnight bag when we’d gone out to the stores. “My bag is at your apartment, but I don’t need anything from it. I can just grab it before I leave the office Monday.”

He nodded.

The drive to my sister’s apartment was short, and I was glad since the silence was getting pretty loud in the car. I tried not to take it personally. Clearly seeing Amelia’s daughter had upset him. Unless I was doing the math wrong, which I didn’t think I had, she’d had a baby with another man while they were together. I could’ve sworn Merrick had said Amelia passed a little less than three years ago, and it seemed like they’d been together up until the end. But maybe I’d gotten that wrong. Now was not the time to ask.

When we arrived at my sister’s building, Merrick pulled to the curb. He left the car running and came around to open my door.

I forced a smile. “Thank you for coming shopping with me.”

“No problem.”

“I guess I’ll see you Monday?”

He nodded, then leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Take care.”

Merrick waited until I got into the building to get back in the car. I wanted to think whatever had happened would blow over, yet I couldn’t help the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched his car pull away. Call it women’s intuition or whatever, but something told me my heart was about to be broken…again.



• • •



“Hey. What are you up to?” My sister tossed her keys on the kitchen counter and walked into the living room, where I’d been sitting for a long time. It must’ve been after eight already since she was closing the store tonight.

“Not much. Just watching TV.”

Greer looked at the television and back to me. “Ummm… It’s not on.”

I blinked a few times. “Oh… I meant I was about to watch television.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Okay, well, mind if I join you?”

I shook my head. “Of course not.”

“I’m just going to go get changed. I ordered some alcohol-free wine. I’m going to put it in a wine glass and pretend it’s real.”

“Alcohol-free wine? So grape juice?”

“Basically. It’s a cabernet.”

She came back a few minutes later wearing sweats and an Emory sweatshirt I’d bought her at least seven or eight years ago. She held two glasses and passed me the one in her right hand.

“Yours is real. You looked deep in thought, so I thought you might need it.”

“Thanks.” I sighed. “I do.”

She sat down at the other end of the couch and tucked her legs underneath her. “So what’s going on that you’re staring at the TV and don’t even know it’s not on?”

I smiled. My sister knew me so well. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just overthinking things.”

She sipped her faux wine and wrinkled her nose.

“Not good?” I asked.

“You know when you leave an open bottle of wine around for a few months, and then you want to have a glass of wine and that’s the only shit you have left?”

I chuckled. “Sadly, I do.”

“It tastes like that.”

“It’s going to be a long nine months,” I said.

“You ain’t kidding.” She sipped anyway. “But talk to me. What are you overthinking?”

I sighed. “Well, today Merrick and I went shopping for my new apartment. When we were in line at HomeGoods, there was a little girl in the cart ahead of us. Merrick kept staring at her. It seemed like he recognized her or something, and then he abruptly said he was going to wait in the car.”

“Okay…”

“The little girl was with her dad, and he looked a little freaked out too, so after Merrick left, I asked him if they knew each other. Turns out, the little girl is his ex’s daughter. Merrick told me Amelia had cheated on him, and he found out when she had her accident. But the little girl wasn’t even three, and I could’ve sworn Merrick said Amelia died around three years ago.”

“Hmmmm... Could you have gotten the timeline wrong?”

“Maybe. But what’s bugging me is how Merrick acted afterward.”

“How did he act?”

“He barely spoke and then just dropped me off here. I didn’t even have my bag with me.”

“So seeing the little girl upset him?”

“That’s what it seems like. Maybe I’m overreacting, but it felt like the thirty-second exchange they had rewound the clock on our relationship.”

“I do think you’re reading into it. It was probably just an emotional reminder of a hard time. Things like that can pack a punch if they’re thrown at you when you least expect it.”

“Yeah, I guess…”