Chapter 16

It was already dark outside when Carmen sat on the floor of the corridor, outside of Shane’s apartment. She could have knocked on the door, or used her keys, but she didn’t want to. She wanted Shane to have all the space she needed, in order to gather her thoughts, to figure out what to do and how to do it, to realize that she, Carmen, wasn’t pushy at all.

At least, that had been her intention when she had left Shane’s apartment in the morning. At that very moment, after all had just happened, she didn’t even know what she was doing there.

It had been a very long day for Carmen, an extremely wearing one. After sharing that wonderful breakfast with Shane – and after struggling hopelessly against her own instincts, because Shane acted like a magnet to her -, Carmen had finally gone to ApplePie.

She needed to work, to busy herself with something different than Shane. Obviously, it wasn’t that easy, considering that she was still working exclusively on DEW. She had been sitting at her desk for hours, checking several different creative proposals, all involving that infamous photograph portraying she and Shane melting over each other.

Carmen had rubbed her forehead pensively, had sighed almost perpetually, had opened and closed the window at least twelve times, had tried desperately to look at the photographs with a clinical eye, had turned on the air conditioner feeling that it was suddenly getting hot in the room, and finally had given in.

She missed Shane. A lot.

It wasn’t exactly a physical longing, even if her whole body craved for Shane’s. It was more something of exclusively emotive. Carmen missed the little slice of life they have been building together before the whole drama started to rip everything to shreds. She missed Shane’s genuine smiles and not for a second she thought that those same smiles could hide lies. Not for a single second.

Carmen knew the truth. She knew almost everything about Shane’s second life, at that point, but still she believed – firmly – that whatever she had shared with Shane was completely true. And Carmen missed that so much that it was hurting.