The Lying Game

23.

W I L L I A M

"Eyes up Mr. Harrington." I look up from my phone and stop myself before colliding into Sarah.

"Shit, sorry Sarah."

She laughs. "It's alright."

"These meetings are really draining my energy." I scratch the back of my head. There's an awkward silence between us and neither of us know what to say. Things have been really awkward between Sarah and I. It's been a long time since we've talked or been with each other.

"Hey I feel like we haven't seen much of each other lately. What if we did something fun soon?" For some reason, I wasn't too eager to respond to that. I look around and my eyes land on the elevator door opening and Emani appearing. My eyes light up at the sight of her. I see her walking and her head looking around the office, probably for me.

"Hey Emani, wait up." I yell across the room causing heads to turn, but I don't care. She stops after hearing my voice and her eyes find me.

"I'll get back to you on that Sarah," I say without giving her eye contact. I walk toward Emani and we meet up with each other.

"Hey" Emani smiles.

"Hi." I grin and relax a little bit.

We haven't talked about that night. It's been over a week since it's happened. Emani hasn't brought it up so I haven't either. I'm waiting for her to hopefully open up to me about what's going on. So I'm giving her the space that she needs, I don't want to push anything. That night after an hour of sitting on the floor, she fell asleep so I carried her to her bed and tucked her in.

I felt completely helpless because I didn't know what was wrong and didn't know how to make things better. There's nothing I wanted more than to keep her from crying. I really didn't like seeing her upset for some reason. The only thing I could do was hold her. Sometimes I could still feel her in my embrace or remember how good she smelled. That coconut scent will be the death of me. The image of her breasts slightly poking out of her shirt come to mind. I shake the image from my head because I'm loyal to Sarah and it's not gentlemen like.

"I brought you lunch." Emani's voice breaks me out of my thoughts.

She hands me a bag and there's a Primos hoagie in it. "Wow thank you that's really thoughtful of you." I meant every word I said.

Emani shrugs. "It's no big deal." We stand there for a few more moments.

"Oh!" I remember. "I have something for you too. Stay here." I rush to my office to grab it. Luckily I didn't run into anyone that wanted to talk to me. I come back and Emani is still in the same spot looking around.

"Here." I hand her the gift-wrapped items.

She looks at me slightly surprised and confused. "Did you wrap these yourself?"

I frown. "No gift wrapping is a bitch. I had the receptionist do it for me."

"Oh, that's nice of Melanie," Emani says while unwrapping it. It caught me off guard that she knew her name but it is something Emani would know. Emani's eyes widen and she looks between me and her new iPhone.

"William you didn't have to get me a new phone."

It's my turn to shrug. "I know, but I wanted to." I nod my head. "Open the other thing." Emani hands me her phone and unwraps the other gift. I know she's going to like this one. It's The Completed Collected Book of Poems by Maya Angelou

Emani's jaw drops. I feel a wave of satisfaction from making Emani's eyes light up and smile. "Oh my god William!" She screams and attacks me with a hug and I laugh.