Her Billionaire Toy Boy

Chapter 11

Sam was not much good at dramatic scenes and did not want to prolong it. He had been friends with Damien for too long. Part of him hoped that Damien would grow up and that they could reignite their friendship at some point. Most of him was less sure that this was possible, and Sam mourned their friendship, even as he walked away from it.

Sam got into his car and drove away. Damien and Lisa would find another ride. He stopped by his winery and put on a forced, calm, happy face, to ensure that everyone thought that things were going fine and that he was still an involved, very happy young boss. He left and made the long drive back to Manhattan, mostly in silence, although he did try to practice and imagine out conversations with Mira in which he had the bandwidth and time to explain where he had gone wrong. For he knew he was in the wrong, of course. He just hoped that she would give him the chance to admit it.

It was only midday. He wanted to go and find Mira, to go to her home, to sweep her up in some sort of impossible, obnoxious romantic gesture, to buy one hundred roses and carry at least one in his teeth to her doorstep and kneel there with a boombox over his head until she listened to his begging and consented to hear him out. It wouldn’t hurt if it began to rain while he was standing out there, he thought as he lifted his head to the sky to critically examine the specific shade of gray which the clouds were vaunting. But then he shook his head. He wasn’t going to heal this situation with more histrionics. He needed to sit with Mira in a quiet space and earnestly make his case, and he first needed to prove that he was worthy of another twelve minutes of her time.

As she had indicated that this would never happen, it seemed he had quite a few major hurdles to jump.

Sam got to his apartment, threw everything from the trunk of his car onto his bed, and paced for some minutes before he decided to try placing the first of what would be very many phone calls. He balanced his phone between his ear and his shoulder and leaned against the window, looking down on the legions of people walking outside.

“Mira,” he said, once his call had gone through to voicemail. “I have to talk to you. If you’ll let me. I don’t want to force my presence on you for another minute if it’s going to be distasteful—but if you’d let me buy you a coffee, or something; there’s just—a lot—that didn’t get covered, in those dreadful minutes earlier, a lot that you don’t know—that I didn’t know—until now. Just coffee. Just give me a chance to apologize, at least. Just—

And then the beep sounded and he was cut off. Sam sighed and threw his phone on his bed, himself just after it.

He sighed and looked at his ceiling.

What was his endgame here?

He’d grown to really like Mira, but he needed to make sure that—if he was pursuing her like this, if he was going to chase her as long as she let him—he needed to make sure that his intentions backed up his actions. He didn’t want to be one of those people for whom the chase, the adrenaline, was the sole reason they kept running.

Sam closed his eyes and thought back to those sweet stolen hours on the porch with Mira. The way the sun lit up her hair, the surprised sparkle in her eye after she’d realized that he’d told a terrible joke, the fact that—he sighed. When he was with her, he felt like a more polished, more interesting, more substantial version of himself.

He rolled over. That was significant, he thought. Yet—he also didn’t want to be running after this relationship merely because it made him feel good.

But he also knew that he could not leave things the way they had been left. He sat up and realized that what he had said on the phone was true. Whether he could persuade her to give him another chance romantically was quite one thing. The fact that he needed to apologize was another. He could not bear to think that she would be going about the same world in which he lived thinking that he had been such a horrid person as he sort of had been. True—he hadn’t done great things—but he’d been trying to change, he hadn’t thought they were great things. Which, as excuses or explanations go, was not a great look. But it was what he had.

He looked at his phone. It was Sunday afternoon. She had neither responded to his voicemail nor, it seemed, even read the single text he had sent her, just inquiring whether she had made it home safe. Of course, he thought, it was entirely possible that she had chosen that afternoon to indulge in the common practice of dis-enabling read receipts for the first time, but somehow, he doubted it.

He had to come up with a plan. And then he started. What had he said in the text? He looked at it. Please just let me know that you got home safe. Just a yes or a no. Please.

As mad as she justifiably was at him, Sam did not think that Mira would leave him hanging in regards to her personal safety. He felt like he had to go over to her place, just to make sure she was safe. But he realized that this would be a huge invasion of her personal privacy. Mira had made it entirely clear that she did not wish to see him again. It was not his place to force his presence upon her, even just for her own safety.

He sat back down, miserable. He tried to think—had she mentioned friends or family or a roommate to whom he could reach out? Just knowing that she had gotten home safely—

But then he realized: Mira was a grown woman. She could take care of herself, and it was not up to him to check up on her. Unless they were in some kind of a relationship—which they currently were not—his obsessing over her specific location was bordering on somewhat stalkerish.

Sam contented himself, to some extent, by staring at his phone for the rest of the night, watching the gray text under the message he had sent to Mira, willing it to update from “sent” to “read” just so that he would know she was alive.