She stared past her socks, out into the darkness. The window was getting foggy and frosted and there really wasn’t much to see except a blanket of white anyway. The rain had frozen to the glass earlier, smudging and smearing and blocking out most of the world anyway.
Trey was never late. That was his thing. She knew it. She’d purposely shown up late for their past two meetings just to pick his ass.
Ambi picked her phone off the desk, toyed with it in her hand for a bit, turning it over and over, and finally dialed the number Trey texted her from. The call went straight to voice mail, which usually meant that someone’s phone was off or dead. She tried texting anyway, even though she felt ridiculous doing it.
Are you still coming?
The message stayed marked unread, so five minutes later, she sent another.
As fun as it would be to watch you eat crow and humble pie for half an hour, I’m done. It’s late. You’re late. Don’t bother coming. You probably won’t get here anyway.
She waited ten minutes, even though she wanted to slip up the back stairs to her apartment, slip into some really fuzzy pajamas, make herself a cup of tea and camp out in front of the TV to binge watch something totally uninteresting while she purposely didn’t think any thoughts involving Trey.
Ambi picked up her phone again, just to check to see if the blizzard had been downgraded, which wasn’t likely given that the wind was still screaming out there. She just happened to check and see if her texts had been marked as read. They hadn’t, but maybe Trey turned that feature off.
Why was she even still down there waiting, three hours past her closing time? She didn’t want to think about Trey, yet that’s all she was doing. When she realized how pathetic that was, that even though she’d finished her accounting and the extra hours had been about work, they’d also been about something they should never have been, she bit down hard on her bottom lip. She chewed it until it hurt. It was better to concentrate on the bite of pain than to think about Trey’s lips on hers.
Had she been hoping for an apology or something else?
Before she could begin an inner monologue with herself, which was sure to be filled with conflict and a heck of a lot of berating herself for just about everything that had happened in the past week, something hard banged against the front window.
Ambi let out a gasp and shot to her feet. The banging came again, sharper, more brutal, this time from the front door. She didn’t have a doorbell and the pounding continued long past what was normal. The hair on the backs of her arms stood on end. Thank god she’d locked the door. Who the heck was out there?
She debated about charging up the stairs to her apartment, since it separated her and whoever was out there by two doors with locks, one of them thick, industrial, and steel, but then she shook her head.
Trey wouldn’t have been dumb enough to try and get there in the crazy weather, would he?
“Ambi?” As if in answer, her name floated through the door. It was muffled and garbled, but it was definitely Trey’s voice.
“You asshat! What the hell?” She figured it would serve Trey right to stand out there and freeze. On second thought, she didn’t want to be responsible for him really freezing. Trey was so unpredictable that if he knew she was there, which obviously he did given that the lights were on and he could probably make out her shadowy shape inside, he’d likely be too stubborn to leave.
Ambi stalked to the door, flipped the lock and pushed it open. It took all her strength given that mother nature seemed to be pushing with equal force from the other side.
Trey was there. He practically fell through the open door. He looked like some version of a winter monster, caked in snow, breathing hard, his breath frosted and frozen all over his face, his coat cloaked in ice and snow. His eyebrows and eyelashes were frosted over and beaded up with ice. Even his hair was coated and stiff with white.
“What the hell?” Ambi stumbled back. “Why were you stupid enough to try and make it in this? Don’t you know that they’re not advising travel?”
“Y-yeah,” Trey gasped. A violent shiver wracked him so hard that particles of ice and snow actually fell off his coat and dropped onto the floor to melt in little round puddles like he was a shaggy dog shaking himself.
Ambi rolled her eyes to hide the fact that she was more than a little concerned. She stepped past Trey and locked the door. A drift of snow had blown in and was melting on her tiled floor. She whirled and took in Trey. He stared back, his massive shoulders heaving with every breath. His wool coat was sodden, and his black slacks looked soaked through. His square-toed dress shoes were terribly inadequate for the drifts out there and snow still clung up to his knees. His face was cherry red, right along with his ears and when he rubbed his hands together, his fingers were the same angry hue.