Haze, Andrea Wolfe [english novels for beginners txt] 📗

Chapter 2

I worked the best I could the rest of the day, my mind constantly drifting from subject to subject and then immediately reverting back to Jack and our strange introduction. He had quickly become my mind's prime fixation. Nice, clumsy fellow one second, devious schemer the next. I couldn't figure him out.

When Sam went to lunch, I sat frozen to my chair, staring at my computer screen. Something told me that I needed to learn more about Jack, but something also told me to let it go. I took a few deep breaths and settled on letting it go. Once I was less confused, I'd resume my investigation; an investigation that I convinced myself was only based on curiosity.

I could be so gullible sometimes...

As weird as the whole encounter was—coffee spilling, aggressive questioning, supposed lying about the purpose of the meeting—a glimmer of bizarre optimism remained. Was I just that desperate that the mere thought of a hot guy was enough to fire me up right now, to engulf me in flames?

I wasn't new to the dating game at all. I dated in high school, and I had two primary boyfriends in college. Well, and a brief depressed party girl phase where I was a little more “open” than I probably should have been. It was really amazing what drunken frat boys could get super drunk sorority girls to do with each other just by asking.

Thankfully, that had ended almost as quick as it had started, and the damage control had been adequate.

I still had moments where I thought about him—him being my last ex, Timothy—but they were starting to fade away entirely. The decision to break up had been somewhat unexpected, the product of my desire to pursue this job in NYC.

I met him between my sophomore and junior years of college, and everything had been great. He was an engineering major—a lucrative field, I must say; I was very jealous of the sheer number of job offers he received upon graduating—but his ties to his family were weirdly strong.

So, when he got a job offer in a small town near his hometown, he insisted that he take it and that I move there with him. Honestly, my future had looked pretty bleak at that time, so I initially said a resoundingly weak yes. But then uncertainty burrowed deeply in my mind like the pest that it was. I felt painfully restrained and restricted by the idea of perpetual small-town life. And something told me Timothy wasn't going to budge for anything.

When I found out about the job offer at MCI Music Group, I hid it initially. I didn't tell Timothy, even when I flew out for the interview. I knew it would crush him, but suddenly it had become him versus me, even though we were in a relationship together. So I lied—I hated lying, but in that moment, what other option did I have?—and said I was visiting my grandmother to cause fewer problems up front.

He freaked out when I told him I was going to take the job; thankfully he didn't break anything. Timothy totally had the option of moving with me since he’d gotten numerous job offers in both NYC and New Jersey, but he would make zero compromises in the close to home category. And when he gave me an ultimatum—come with me, or we're over—I knew what I had to do for myself and my future.

As much as he wanted to drag me through the mud, I knew I wasn't actually being selfish. My parents applauded my decision, their happiness a combination of their approval of my ambition as well as their mild dislike for Timothy.

Even though I was never comfortable doing anything to hurt him, my mind was made up. He knew where he wanted to be, and I couldn't change that. Timothy went his way, and I had gone mine almost two months ago. To make matters even worse, Timothy and I shared a number of mutual friends—and they had taken his side.

So yeah, I was definitely interested in starting over again in a new place. Part of me didn't like that I was dismissing Timothy so easily, but then again, our negotiations had come to an abrupt stop—his choice, or we were over. It was downright selfish on his end, and it hurt. I let it go, deciding there was no need to get hung up on the total inflexibility of someone else, especially when it was entirely at the expense of my well being.

I also didn't want to let go of those friends, but for now, I'd just have to leave it alone. Timothy was probably feeding them a steady diet of lies and deceit, and I was too far away to do anything serious about it.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Sam remained stressed out about the offer, so I tried to comfort him by drawing attention to the fact that Jack had actually claimed to be interested in MCI. He legitimately had said he was interested—it wasn't just wishful thinking or a dumb platitude. Those promising words were the only positive weapon I had.

However, we still didn't hear anything from Jack for the next two days, which left us with the weekend. Sam was bent out of shape, but what the hell could we do anyway? It was Jack's decision, and that was that. Sam would just have to survive a couple more days, I was sure of that.

Oh, weekend...

***

My Craigslist searches had led me to the lovely neighborhood of Astoria. I found a spare room in a two-bedroom apartment with a guy named Jesse, a finance major at NYU whose long-term goal was investment banking. He was interning with a major banking firm and gone a lot of the time for work-related stuff. As a result, I usually had the apartment to myself, an added perk. Jesse had a girlfriend too, Laura, but she lived in New Jersey