Day 88: Tales Of Thanks And An Embarrassed Lover
Day 88: Tales Of Thanks And An Embarrassed Lover
Day 88 Of How To Move On From A Man — 1LD
If you’re new here to 1 Lovelock Drive, welcome! Let me fill you in on what you’ve missed.
I’m Andie and my ex, Douglas, dumped me. This is my break-up, so to speak. Douglas is a power player in Melbourne, worth more than I could ever comprehend.
I have no idea why we broke up.
I work and live at 1 Lovelock Drive. There, my best friend James and I are building Highway, our unisex clothing line. Our two other best friends, GG and Sophia, are investors.
GG is dating Douglas’ brother. Awkward.
My friends have been acting strange since the breakup. Since things have changed, I’ve found papers in James’ briefcase outlining plans for an expensive office space for our business.
When you work for yourself, you rarely need to get up at five in the morning.
You take the sleep in and work late if that’s what your business demands from you.
At least, that’s what James and I figured out pretty early on. It’s easier to stay awake when you’re already awake rather than force yourself into being an early morning person.
But when you’re trying to sneak out of a man’s place without him noticing, you become an early-morning person pretty damn quickly.
After discovering the billboard yesterday, Alex let me stay at his place. I didn’t want to go home and come face to face with any of my friends.
Especially not James.
I don’t know why I’m placing the captain’s bars on James, making him the ring leader in this crusade.
The mission? I have no idea.
Yet, considering there was a billboard promoting my business without me on it, I would say the mission was to cut me out.
I couldn’t even think straight to drive back home, even if I wanted to. Alex took us back from Chapel Street and didn’t leave my side until I became consolable again. At one point, I heard him phone his office and reschedule his day.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. And true to his word, he didn’t.
Yet, despite his generosity, I didn’t want him to stay. I loathed letting him see me like this, distraught, undignified, upset.
Jumping between raging anger and heartbreaking devastation, it felt like a break-up all over again. What I thought I was getting through seemed to start all over again.
I didn’t need to go through all this with an audience.
It was humiliating enough that my friends and business partners had successfully managed to one-up me out of the business I started at my dining room table.
Though leaving before the sun came up, before thanking Alex and saying goodbye, would make me look ungrateful, I couldn’t think about him.
Nor could I contemplate the right thing to do. My mind was blurred by the thousand thoughts of what to do next.
And how I would keep myself from running away when Melbourne and everyone I knew here was telling me I was no longer welcome.
Starting my car in the morning darkness I fled Richmond and went straight home. James wasn’t there. Nothing new, really.
I got into bed and held my phone in my hand. I opened up a new message to Alex and simply typed,
“Thank you.”
I hoped it would be enough. One day I would repay him. One day I could show him a better me.
Not today, though.
You’re reading The Andie Chronicles, the 2023 romance-fiction series from the 1 Lovelock Drive (1LD) universe.
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