“Oh, really? Where you headed?” he asks.
I make a conscious effort not to groan out loud or roll my eyes even though he can’t see my face.
“I’m meeting someone for lunch,” I half lie since I am meeting someone, and this is technically my lunch break. He doesn’t need to know that I’m only working a half day.
When the doors open, I bolt through the lobby and out the doors. I’ve never been more thankful to be wearing flats.
I make it to Lewis’s building in record time. I look at my gold watch and see that it’s 11:45. Perfect. I make my way inside the busy lobby where everyone is bustling out of the building ready for lunch. I skip over to the bathroom on the left side of the lobby and switch my flats for my heels. Once my flats are tucked away in my purse, I eye myself in the mirror. I fix the fly aways in my hair and clean up some smudged eye liner from under my eye before walking out. As I walk toward the elevators, I hear a man to my right shout “Mark” loudly. I turn my head in that direction and catch a blond man looking at me. When our eyes meet, I stumble back a step from the impact.
We stare at each other for what feels like an eternity, but it’s really only half a second. Mark’s blue eyes are looking at me in wide panic, and I can feel my heart pounding wildly against my chest. He turns around to greet an older man as I feel an unhealthy supply of blood rushing to my head and hear a loud ringing in my ear. I haven’t been able to peel my eyes off of him, so I catch him when he looks back at me. The surprise in his eyes has been replaced by sadness, and for some stupid reason, it tugs at my heart.
I let out a weak breath and wish I wasn’t so stubborn. I wish I could turn back the last twenty minutes, go back to the elevator with Martin, and let him have his stupid conversation with me. I wish I didn’t have this strong urge to uncover my past because with this urge comes devastation and sorrow that I’m not sure I’m strong enough to relive. Even though I have the memories from my nightmares, I’m not sure I want to experience them in the light. They’re more real in the light. I should have kept them buried in the darkness, but it’s too late for that. Mark’s sky-blue eyes bring back a flood of nightmares that I wish were just that.
I catch my breath and quickly step into the waiting elevator. I furiously press down the Close Door button and shift from one foot to the other as I silently pray that Mark is leaving the building. When I step out of the elevator on the twentieth floor, I am greeted by a carbon-copy Barbie named Tanner. I had a slight altercation with her kid sister, Skipper, the last time I was here. I take a deep breath and inform Barbie that I’m here to see Veronica Stein. She plasters her fake smile, showing me her expensive veneers, and asks me to take a seat. I know I should sit, but I feel like a gassed up bottle of pop that’s just been shaken. Instead, I pace the waiting area while nervously smoothing out my long wavy hair.
“Blake,” Veronica says, smiling when she spots me. “Come to my office, please.”
Veronica is in her late forties and has short brown hair that tucks into her chin. She has skin so fair that it’s almost translucent and sharp brown eyes. She’s always impeccably dressed in what I can only assume are custom-tailored skirt suits.
Once we step into her spacious office, I take a seat in one of the leather chairs across from her desk. Veronica starts to shuffle papers on her desk until she finds a large manila envelope that has my name on it. She puts on her designer reading glasses and unclasps the envelope. She takes out some papers and skims through them with a raised eyebrow.
“Well, happy belated birthday. I have some papers from your aunt’s will that we need to go over. It seems that Shelley wanted to give you half of her things on your eighteenth birthday and the rest on your twenty-fifth. A lot of people are doing that now,” Veronica explains.
I sigh. “Veronica, I don’t mean to be rude, but can we just go over the papers? I just want to get this over with.”
She laughs. “Oh, Blake, I wish you’d come intern for us. You’re my kind of girl.” Her brown eyes search my face before continuing. “Your aunt left you a key to a safety deposit box as well as two more properties. These are plots of land. She also left you more money; I assume to cover the taxes for the land for a while. You just have to sign off on everything, and you can be on your way.”