My phone rang, my pocket muffling Nathan’s distinctive ringtone. I exhaled sharply. Given the choice, I much preferred to talk to him rather than Jake, but that would have to wait. For now, I needed to get this over with and get Jake out of my theatre. That, and it had annoyed me that Jake kept fucking around with his phone, so I’d be a hypocrite to answer my own.
He eyed me. “You going to answer that?”
“No.”
We stared at each other in silence as the phone continued to ring unanswered. When it finally clicked off, we still didn’t speak. Then the voicemail tone beeped and only then did I pull the phone out of my pocket, quickly hitting the yes, I fucking hear you button to keep it from beeping incessantly.
I’ll call you back in a few minutes, Nathan. Just wait until you hear about this.
“Anyway,” Jake said. “No, it doesn’t change what I did. And I’ve apologize for that a million times.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the door came open just then. Max glanced at the two of us nervously, then looked at me.
“Hey, boss,” he said. “Sorry to bug you, but Dylan said I needed to talk to you about this.”
“Sure, what’s up?” I said, trying not to let my annoyance show.
Max nodded toward the stairs behind him. “In the box office. Couple of customers have a gift card I’ve never seen, and no one knows how to run it.”
For God’s sake, does everyone need to talk to me today? “Okay,” I said. “I’ll come take a look at it.” I gestured for Jake to follow me. Downstairs, I left him in the lobby while I handled the situation in the box office. It took a bit longer than I expected, and I secretly hoped he’d get tired of waiting and leave, but when I returned fifteen minutes later, he was still there.
He looked up from sending a text message. “Squared away?”
“Yes,” I said. “Now let’s go finish this.” As I led him back up to the projector room, my phone rang again. Once again, it was Nathan’s ringtone. I chewed the inside of my cheek and considered answering it. He wasn’t one to call repeatedly unless he really needed to reach me, but I had to settle this situation first. I hoped Nathan would understand.
In the projector room once again, I faced Zach. “So, where were we?”
He put up his hands. “Look, you’ve got a lot going on, maybe we should deal with this another day.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” I said. “It’s now or never. I don’t have time for it now, but I’m not going to make time for it any other day.”
He shrugged. “Well, I’ve said everything I came to say. I just wanted you to know what he’s like.”
I smirked. “Yes, and you’re clearly the moral authority when it comes to relationships.”
“Zach, come on, I’ve apologized and-”
My phone beeped with a text message. I tried not to release the string of profanity that was on the tip of my tongue. Fuck, would everyone just give me five goddamned seconds today? Please?
“I should let you go,” Jake said. His tone no longer carried that pitiful woe-is-me bid for sympathy. Instead, some of his usual unrepentant smugness crept in. When I looked at him, his narrowed eyes echoed that irritating smugness.
I eyed him. My desire to dig a little deeper, to find out what exactly I was missing in this conversation, was overwhelmed by my desire to get him out of here so I could call Nathan back.
“Okay,” I said, still regarding him suspiciously. I gestured toward the door. “I guess that’s it, then.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it. That’s all I came to talk about.”
I hesitated, then nodded, and we walked out of the room in silence. All the way down the stairs, I was certain I was missing something. His demeanor had always been tricky to read, but today, he was just…weird.
But I forgot all about it when we stepped out into the sparsely populated lobby and my heart jumped into my throat.
Nathan’s eyes flicked back and forth between Jake and me, his posture and expression both stiffening.
“I’ll see you next time, Zach,” Jake said, loud enough that I was sure Nathan heard him. He clapped my shoulder, keeping his hand there just long enough to cross the line between platonic and not. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
My jaw dropped, but before I could gather my wits and ask him what the fuck he was talking about, he released my shoulder and brushed past Nathan. The temperature in the room plummeted the instant they exchanged a look. Nathan’s expression was as bitter and angry as Jake’s was smug.
Then Jake was gone. Nathan looked at me, and the room stayed cold.
He glanced over his shoulder at the door through which our ex-boyfriend had disappeared, then looked at me, his brow knitted with confusion and his eyes burning with an unspoken accusation.
Through his teeth, he asked, “Do I even want to know what that was all about?”
Chapter Twenty-five
Avoiding Nathan’s accusing glare, I let out an exasperated sigh. A thousand ways to strangle Jake crossed my mind, but there would be time to think about that later. For now, I had some damage control to perform.
“Come on, let’s go in the office,” I said.
He planted his feet and nodded toward the projector-room door. “Prefer not to return to the scene of the crime?”
Anger rose like bile in my throat, and I wasn’t sure who it was directed toward. Probably both of them now. I swallowed it, trying to stay calm. “Or, we can talk in there.” I opened the door, and made an after you gesture.
Neither of us spoke on the way up the stairs. The projector room was still deserted, as I expected, but seemed strangely emptier with the two of us in it now. There was an arm’s length and miles of distance between us as we faced off, and the silence was an unbearable preamble to whatever this was going to be.
He folded his arms across his chest and gestured at the door through which we’d just walked. “So what was that-”
“Nathan, for God’s sake, you know what he’s like,” I said.
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “That’s why I’m wondering why he was here with you. Specifically, here with you.” He gestured around the room.
I gritted my teeth. He had a right to be concerned. Once bitten, twice shy, after all. Except the one that bit you took off out of the lobby and left me to sort this out. “Do you trust me?”
He shifted his weight. “Should I?”
I rolled my eyes and barely kept myself from groaning with frustration. “Look, Nathan, he’s fucking with us. Trying to play us against each other. What he said on his way out? It didn’t mean a damned thing.”
“Then what was he doing here? What were you two doing in here?”
“Honestly?” I ran a hand through my hair. “The same fucking thing you and I are doing right now-arguing. About us, about you two, about him and me.” Sighing, I shook my head. “The only reason I brought him in here was to keep it out of sight of my customers and my employees. I wanted to do it privately because I didn’t need them to hear it, not because I was hiding anything from you. I mean, I-” I stopped.
“What?”
I glanced at the clock above the projectors. It was only a quarter past four. Nathan wasn’t supposed to meet me until six. Furrowing my brow, I eyed him. “What are you doing here so early?”
He pursed his lips and shoved a hand in his jacket pocket. He pulled out his cell phone and slid it open. “I came early,” he said, quickly pushing a few keys”, because of this.” He handed me the phone.
On the screen was a text message: Don’t believe me? Suit yourself. J.
I scrolled down, anger churning in my gut as a photo appeared on the screen. It was grainy, barely focused, but unmistakable: The Epidauran’s marquee. Though the lettering was difficult to make out, it was obviously the current feature films. The films I had just put up that morning.