Tyed

chapter fifty five

It's a large building in the business district of Melbourne; a side street Tyler never bothers to visit, a few roads across from Pandora and between streets with important places Tyler cares about, like the shopping centres and the clubs and... probably other places Tyler cares about too. Tyler feels like he's been here before, and he can't name why: it's a building mostly used for office work, consultancies and lawyers and probably accountants and shit.

He's standing outside looking up at the windows, wondering what Kali might be up to in there, when he feels a gaze boring into him. It's out of the corner of his eye that he sees it, and through the windows he does catch a pair of eyes that quickly look away. It's hard to squint through tinted windows, but could it be-

It's not Kali, that's the first thing he notices; this woman is pale and she's wearing a pencil skirt that it looks like she actually fits. Tyler almost doesn't care, assuming it's some random woman he doesn't give a shit about, until he properly sees her.

"The fuck is Scarlett doing here?" Tyler mutters.

Nancy stares at him. "Excuse me? What's going on?"

Tyler points, not so subtly, and Scarlett holds up a hand to block her face, as though he can un-see her now. "Colby's ex-wife. What the fuck is she doing here?"

"Oh, shit," Nancy whispers. "The one who says she still loves him? Who had a go at you?"

Tyler had told her most of that interaction at some point. Just not the bit where he realised he loved Colby in that exact moment; he pretended that moment came later, something he was good at doing, stewing in denial for a while before admission came. "The only one," he says. "Why the fuck...?"

"I hope it's unrelated," Nancy mutters. "I assume it's unrelated."

"It better be," Tyler says, unable to stop himself from moving forward. Nancy may have tried to stop him, but her boots on the path behind him ultimately keep pace, to follow and back up, not to prevent.

Scarlett's arguing quietly with a man in a business suit that's a tad too large for him, and she pretends not to see Tyler at first, despite it being her gaze that caught his attention in the first place. The business man looks at Tyler like he's crying for help. He's got sandy hair and no features of note, and he opens his mouth to speak, before Scarlett hisses something at him that shuts him up.

Tyler is predictably a wrecking ball in this conversation. "What are you doing here, Scarlett?"

The man points weakly at Tyler, looking more disgruntled than anything, and says to Scarlett, "is this who you were looking for?"

She ignores him. Her eyebrows are drawn together in- less anger, and more frustration. Her make-up looks like it was perfect this morning, but now mascara is slowly travelling around her face and her lipstick is smudged slightly.

"Now is not a good time," she tells Tyler tightly. "I am sure my reason for being here is irrelevant to you."

She's looking for someone, someone who could be Tyler. So not Kali, probably. Tyler strongly doubts she could've stalked him enough to track Kali down the same day he'd tracked her down after years. "I'm sure it is," he says. "Fine. Whatever."

"I don't suppose you could make my life easier," Scarlett mutters, "and give me some good news?"

"What, that you can have your ex back? No. Fuck off."