Chapter 18: Second Time’s a Charm
** Harper **
They kept chatting until late into the evening. It turned out that four years was quite a long time to be out of touch, and there was too much news in both of their lives to catch up. When Eli finally decided it was time to call it a day, he suggested that they set up a schedule every week to meet up in the future — both to make sure they don't fall out of contact again and to guarantee a slot on his chaotic calendar for the "regular practices".
Harper was a bit surprised that Eli was taking their arrangement so seriously. Even more surprised that he picked Saturday night as their default rendez-vous time, because it meant that she would be seeing him again ... tomorrow.
But most of all, she was surprised by what he had told her about his job and his father.
Eli had always been a private person. Harper wouldn't be surprised if the number of his friends who knew about Sterling Trust could be counted on one hand. The fact that he was telling her all of this might have a bit to do with his move back to Davenshire — it'd probably be hard to stay private about it for much longer, now that he was officially a member of the company — but still, admitting to her how he felt about the job meant that he trusted her as a friend, and that he still saw her as someone worthy of having a real conversation with.
It shouldn't be a surprising revelation. But for Harper, it somehow was.
She had been trying to redefine her relationship with Eli ever since their first re-meeting. They hadn't seen each other for too long, and the experience of talking to a first-crush-in-life so explicitly about sex was too surreal and embarrassing to even think about. So she decided to think of him as "just an editor" instead, to make things easier. Because if all they talk about was simply "business" and "for the web novel", then she could let those awkward moments pass with much less mortification.
But just as their conversation tonight reminded her, that was not how things worked. They were friends. They'd known each other for so long and shared so much in their lives already. It wasn't something she could just change or ignore.
Maybe that meant it was time to change her view instead.
~ ~
At a quarter to eight on Saturday evening, just before their meeting time, Harper turned on some ambient music, double checked the coffee table which no longer had embarrassing books piled on top, and examined herself again in the mirror.