Love You Can’t Say

Maybe because I thought too much, I couldn’t fall asleep.

Lying in bed, I couldn’t sleep for a long time, and my head was buzzing.

So I just got up, went to the kitchen, got a glass of water and had a drink. The moonlight in the alley was beautiful.

I stood at the window looking at the scenery outside, and I was a little distracted.

…

The next day, Dennis, who had no intention of leaving, was whisked away by several phone calls.

“I’ll be back as soon as I finish my business in City P.” He looked at me with distant eyes. This man, he always seemed so charming.

I nodded. “Be safe!”

Instead of saying goodbye, I just watched him leave.

As his car pulled away, I went back to the yard and pulled out my phone. The headlines stood out.

“The construction site accident of the George Group four years ago that killed a child was deferred for three years without giving any compensation to the families involved.”

It was hard to ignore the headline.

Four years ago?

Accident where a child died?

I thought I heard it before, but I didn’t know how Dennis handled it.

Now it was being reported again, obviously someone was looking for trouble.

Was it Mario Bennett or the Lewis family?

I stopped thinking about it. It was not my problem anyway.

With Dennis gone, things seemed to be going back to normal.

At the hotel, the gossip between Nathan and me seemed to be getting more and more intense, even as word spread that we were living together.

I didn’t care. To take nothing to heart was trouble. Thanks to Link, most people didn’t have any obvious malice when they saw me.

Some people tried to suck up to me, but I was introverted and I had very few people to approach. Sometimes I even bordered on apathy.

The middle of August, payday.

Nathan handed me the pay slip and smiled, “You should buy me dinner!”

I nodded as my salary doubled, “What do you want to eat? All on me!”

Someone overheard the conversation and heckled, “Since you said all on you, can you invite us all? Clara, since we all work together, and you got a promotion and a raise, don’t you think that you should take us with you to celebrate?”

“Yeah! I haven’t been out in a while.”

Nathan looked at me and smiled, but made no comment.

I smiled and said, “How about we all have dinner together tonight and then go to the bar after dinner?”

“Wow, great!”

They were young and energetic girls, and eating and playing were the theme songs of their youth.

When the heckling subsided, Nathan looked at me and laughed, “Your total salary is only 8000, and there are more than 20 people in the company. A meal would cost you about 1000 or 2000, and if you go to the bar, I don’t think you will have much left.”

I smiled, “It’s okay. I don’t have any expenses right now. If everyone is happy, let’s play together!”

“Okay, I’ll send my mom over to pick Up Clariana and Joey tonight, so we can get back later. How’s that?”

I nodded.

Restaurants in HL Area had low consumption. I found a relatively large restaurant and chose two private rooms on the second floor because one room was not enough.

A few colleagues started to order the dishes, and someone began to say jokingly, “The place Clara chose is estimated to be the best restaurant in HL Area, with per capita consumption of more than 200. How generous she is!”

“Yeah, that’s gonna take a big chunk out of your paycheck.”

Someone answered, “It’s no big deal. Miss Kennedy doesn’t depend on a few thousand dollars. Why do you care?”

The speaker was Antonia Gilbert. I smiled, didn’t say much, and asked everyone to order the dishes.

We were all acquaintances, and we didn’t have to introduce each other when we sat down, so everyone was talking with each other.

Someone looked at me and said, “Clara, are you coming to HL Area to live here forever? Or are you going to stay for a while and go back?”

I said, “I don’t know yet!”

“I heard that there’s a lot of competition in business between the George and Gibson families in City P. Both of them are courting the Kennedys, so can you spill the beans so we can gossip?”

A bunch of people sat around and gossiped. I smiled and said, “I’ve only been in City P for three years. I don’t know much about those things in City P.”

Antonia Gilbert, after all, had always been a high-profile figure, and now he was unhappy to be left out in the cold without his father.

She looked at them and said, “What’s the point of talking about this? I think miss Kennedy’s daughter is four years old. Why do you, as a rich girl, take a child to hide in this remote county?”

It was a very gossipy topic.

For a moment everyone looked at me, and one of them said curiously, “Clara, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you mention your daughter’s father.”

I pursed my lips and took a sip of wine. When the waiter brought the food, I looked at everyone and said, “You’ve been talking so long. You should be hungry. Help yourselves!”

I didn’t like gossiping about other people, and I didn’t like to be talked about, especially it was Antonia Gilbert who brought it up on purpose.

The people in the small town were pure and kind, but there was not much to do for them, so there were also many rights and wrongs.

You either didn’t bring up the subject, or you explained it. But the explanation was certainly out of my reach, so I had to leave it out.

When I said that, the questions stopped. It was a harmonious meal.

It was nine o’clock when the dinner was over.

Clariana and Joey had already been picked up, and since I was the host, there was no excuse for not going to the bar.

So we went downtown to a bar, which was more like a café.

There were a lot of people, so I found a place on the second floor so that we could see the stage performance on the first floor.

Three men, who appeared to be in their thirties, tuned up the sound system as songs played on a large screen onstage.Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.

After ordering wine and snacks, everyone sat together to chat and catch up. It was not noisy, but was very lively.

The passionate music and the men and women under the stage, and the atmosphere was lively enough.

Nathan sat next to me and leaned closer. “Is Clariana Dennis’s kid?”

I looked back and saw him looking at me. He paused and smiled. Then I did not answer him.

Grown-ups didn’t get to the bottom of it, and when I didn’t answer, he stopped.

Just sitting around drinking was boring, so people started playing games. Nathan couldn’t drink because he had to drive.

I didn’t usually play games, so after a few rounds, I lost a few times and had a few drinks.

I was a little tipsy, and before I knew it, someone was standing in front of me with a bunch of flowers.

Looked like a kid in his 20s. Everyone looked at me for a moment.

The boy looked at me, and I could see the shyness on his face in the dim multicolored light. “Hello, my name is Luke White. May I have the pleasure of meeting you? Are you Bernice Miller?”