Capturing You

Chapter 26: The Girl I Wanted to See

A/N: Sorry for the long wait between chapters lately! I've been watching March Madness and came down with a cold earlier this week. Once Kansas wins (wink) and I feel much better, the chapters will be coming more frequently. Thanks for being so patient and reading! Enjoy~

"You what?!"

I reached over in an attempt to hush both Spencer and Trish as they hovered over my desktop. "Keep it down! I don't know who all he wants to know that we're dating," I said.

The pair circled around my desk to look over my shoulder, our three faces illuminated by the pictures Joe and I had taken during our nearly weeklong escapade in Louisiana. Messy selfies of us and photos we'd taken of each other were bookended by photos I'd taken at the swamp and at the airport when my flight took longer than I anticipated. I showed them a selfie of the two of us out on the balcony of our hotel room before closing the window, and looking at each of them with a grimace-smile. "So... what do you guys think?"

They cooed, immediately bringing me into as best of a group hug as they could while I sat on my desk. We nearly fell over.

"Avery, this is amazing news," Spencer said.

"We're so proud of you," Trish added. And here I thought she was gonna hate that I ended up dating an athlete before she did.

"You've gotta tell us everything," Spencer insisted.

I laughed, finding work to be the most inappropriate place to have such a conversation. Though the only thing I wanted to do right now was gush over Joe, I was trying to ease myself back into the mentality of work; lingering on what happened between us would be too much of a distraction. "Elena is gonna kill us if she sees us goofing off after the two-week vacation we just had. Let's grab something to eat after work," I said.

They rolled their eyes, likely annoyed that I was always such a goody-two-shoes, but didn't protest as they sat at their desks.

The day went by slowly. Admittedly, I checked my phone more than I usually did — which was almost never, before the era of Joe Burrow — looking for a text or two from him. And if there was nothing, I'd scroll through our last texts, smiling like a psycho before I realized I was obsessing over him. I couldn't go through and edit a round of photos without seeing Joe's face, and that only made me spiral more. Ugh! I was unfocused and feeling out of control. This was not like me.

I looked at the clock. "I'm going for lunch."

I headed for the PR employee break room and opened the fridge. I wasn't exactly hungry, but getting something in my stomach could distract me from being, well, distracted. To my surprise, my lunchbox wasn't inside. After being slightly confused, I remembered that I had gotten home from Louisiana too tired — and too pumped with adrenaline — to make time to run to the grocery store, which meant I had to run out and get something to eat. Not in the mood to sit anywhere for too long, I braved the outside world and headed to one of my favorite sandwich shops, walking distance from headquarters.

March was only a few days away, which in Cincinnati meant I'd be in for weather whiplash. It would be freezing rain one day and bright and sunny another; one of the downsides of living in the midwest, I supposed. Today, it was somewhere in between, and I buried my face in my wooly cardigan and chunky scarf as I walked, watching my feet. I had this strange feeling that someone was watching me, though living alone for the last year or so — and for all my years by myself at college, anyway — I'd developed this need to look around whenever I was out. That initial paranoia would always fade away, though, whenever I found myself in a more populated place. As soon as I walked into the sandwich shop, it disappeared.