Chapter 25
The Offer
ZOE
Fun fact: Zoe Lane, professional communicator, has the skills of a wet sock when it comes to telling the man I have been sleeping with that I’d like to keep sleeping with him from five hundred miles away.
After dropping Eli at school, I’ve been rehearsing in the bathroom, and I have a whole opener.
It’s casual. It’s breezy. “Hey, so, funny thing about the new job—” and then a pivot into the vouchers, and then a transition into the virtual work possibility, and then we land somewhere around the idea that maybe, possibly, in a hypothetical universe, this could be the kind of thing where two adults figure out a long-distance relationship.
That’s it. That’s the pitch. I’m not proposing. I’m not asking him to fly a banner over the rink that says ZOE LANE IS MORE THAN A NANNY. I’m simply, breezily laying out a set of logistics and seeing what he does with them.
In my head, this goes great.
He does that intense thing with his eyes, and his jaw works the way it works when he’s about to say something honest, and he says, “Sure, let’s do long distance. Even better, don’t go at all because I love you and need you.”
Okay, more romantic and drawn out, but some form of that.
I take a breath. I go downstairs.
He’s at the kitchen island, hunched over a coffee, scrolling through what looks like a team itinerary on his phone. The morning light in the kitchen is warm, expensive, and magazine-quality, and the whole thing is so domestic I almost lose my nerve.
“Hey,” I say.
Jonah glances up. He gives the smile that he seems to have stored in a safe and finally got to spend. “Hey.”
“Got a sec? I wanted to talk about something.”
His eyebrows tick up. “Yeah. Of course.”
Jonah follows me to the far end of the kitchen, by the big window that looks out onto the pool.
He leans his hip against the counter, arms crossed, attentive in that focused way he has, like I’m a coach, and he’s about to take notes.
The morning light catches in his hair, and I have to look at the cabinet handle instead of his face for a second.
“Okay,” I say. “So. Seattle.”
“Seattle,” he echoes.
“I found out a few things this week. Logistics things.” I make my voice the bright, competent one. “Turns out the job comes with monthly flying vouchers. Like, baked into the package. So travel is basically free.”
His face doesn’t move. “Okay.”
“And.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. “I had a call with HR yesterday, and they mentioned that in about six months, depending on how the team restructures, there may be options for a hybrid setup. As in, working remotely some weeks. They’re piloting it with a couple of senior producers.”
He nods. “That’s a good deal.”
“It’s a really good deal.”
I let the words, the shape of them, and the implication underneath them sit there. I’m not going to say I want this to work, and I’m not going to ask him to make it work. I have my pride, and he gets to do this part.
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
For one long, suspended second, I’m absolutely sure he’s going to do it. His jaw works. His weight shifts off the counter just enough to suggest movement that isn’t happening yet. There’s a flash in his eyes, and my heart hammers so hard, I’m genuinely afraid he can hear it.
This is it, I think. This is the part where he says some version of what I outlined for him in my head.
He doesn’t have to be elegant about it. He doesn’t have to give a speech.
He could just say, We’ll figure it out, or, I don’t want you to go, or, Stay, or, We need you here.
Any of it. I have a whole library of acceptable scripts, and I will accept the cheapest version; I’m not picky.
I’m the person who knows Eli’s juice cup has to be the blue one or the world ends.
I’m the person Jonah comes to for everything.
I’m the person whose hand he held on the gearshift driving back from Gwen’s house.
Whatever this is, it’s not nothing, and we both know it’s not nothing, and all I’m asking is for him to acknowledge that out loud, in daylight.
Say it, I think. Say it.
His face closes.
All at once. Like a door swinging shut on a hinge that’s been waiting to close.
He stares at the counter. He picks up his coffee mug, which is empty, and sets it back down. When he looks back up, his expression’s been rearranged. Carefully. Professionally. It is the face of a man giving a post-game interview about a loss he didn’t take personally.
“Zoe,” he says, not like the way he said it in the dark. “This is a huge opportunity.” His voice is unbelievably even. “You should be all in on it. You should go up there and become a killer executive producer.”
“Okay,” I say automatically. My voice is also even. We are both being very even.
“But for sure,” he goes on, and his tone sounds rehearsed now, “whenever you’re in town visiting family, we can do lunch.”
Do lunch.
Do lunch.
The words slap like a wet dishcloth across the face.
I’m pretty sure I wince but recover. After that, I don’t move my eyebrows. I don’t move my mouth. I don’t let so much as a single muscle in my throat betray the fact that my chest has just been opened up with a can opener.
I wait one more beat and give him every chance in the world to take it back. I give him the kind of beat in which a competent person could’ve realized they had said the worst possible combination of words in the English language.
He doesn’t.
He keeps going. “And listen. I want you to be set up. You’ve been—you’ve done so much. Let me put together a bonus to help you get started. Deposit, moving costs, whatever you need. I don’t want you walking into this without a cushion.”
He means it. That’s the part that actually empties the bottom of my stomach onto the floor. He’s not being cruel. He’s being thoughtful. He’s being the most considerate version of himself, the version that takes care of people. And he’s being absolutely, devastatingly practical.
It is the kindest possible way a person can tell you that you’re not the thing they cannot lose.
And I can’t feel my face, or my legs for that matter.
“And don’t worry about Eli, Zoe,” he continues.
“He’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. He’s so much further along than where we started.
That’s because of you.” His words are warm, generous.
“He’s going to miss you like hell. We’ll figure it out.
We’ll Facetime. You can fly back. He’d love Seattle.
There’s that aquarium he keeps watching videos of. ”
“Right.” My voice is barely hanging on. “Right, the aquarium.”
“It’s gonna be fine.” He nods. “We can talk numbers later in the week.”
“Sure. Yeah.”
“Zoe—”
“That’s really generous, Jonah. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I’m thanking you, anyway.” I blink, the blood in my veins turning frosty.
I don’t look him in the eye, just plant my hands flat on the counter when I say, “So, I’m gonna head to my parents’ tonight. Maddie can take the Nanny Baton starting tomorrow, so you’re covered.”
“Zoe, you don’t have—”
“Don’t worry—I’ll take Eli to ice cream tomorrow,” I cut him off, no longer interested in what he has to say. “I’ll make sure he understands that I’ll still be here for him. He can FaceTime me or text anytime he wants, day or night.”
I turn before he can read whatever’s assembling itself on my face. I make it out of the kitchen and past the lamp in the living room. I make it to the foot of the stairs before my legs remember they’re not made of steel. I put my hand on the banister and take a breath.
Then I continue to my room, close the door behind me, and get to work like I’m in a race against the clock.
One suitcase, one duffel bag, plus my laptop, charger, phone, and a package of Twinkies. Clothes and shoes in the suitcase, toiletries in the duffel, which I zip it with one smooth motion, and survey the room.
It isn’t mine, never has been.
I check the bathroom again for any missed items, and I catch my reflection. My eyes are the wrong kind of shiny, so I do the thing where you shake your hands out and exhale and focus on what’s next.
When I come back out, the kitchen’s empty, and there’s comfort in that. Maybe he thought it would help, or maybe he just needed air. Either way, I’ll take it.
I shoulder my duffel, pull my suitcase, and walk down the hallway. The Twinkies are wedged under my arm.
The afternoon is cool as I walk through the shadow of the porch, past hockey sticks and plastic dinosaurs in the yard.
I pop the back of the Jeep, which coughs open. I load the suitcase, duffel, then the laptop, and keep the Twinkies.
Then I’m driving. Hands on the wheel, telling myself this is what moving on looks like.
I make it all the way to my parents’ house and park on the curb.
I’m not crying, but it’s stacking up in the back of my throat. For now, I’m just absorbing it, the way you absorb a hit you weren’t braced for, the way your body takes a second to register that something’s broken before the pain shows up.
Do lunch.
He’s giving me a bonus.
I let that sit for a while.
I said it first: that’s the thing I keep coming back to. I’m the one who said it, in the parking lot of Room Bloom. No feelings. No complications. He wasn’t allowed to fall for me.
I made the rules. Me.
And then, somewhere—I don’t even know where, exactly, somewhere between the night spent on Eli’s closet floor.
The Death Star on the living room rug. Mac and cheese nights, three stools at the island.
Pantry. Paprika. Jonah’s palm at the small of my back, showing me off to his teammates. The ballroom. The night in the dark.
I’m the one who broke my own rule. I’m the one who fell in love with him since the night in the dark, and I let myself believe—because he kissed me like that, because he looked at me like that, because he came to my room with no socks on—that he had broke the rules too.
He hadn’t.
He’s going to be fine. That is the thing. He’s going to be fine, Eli’s going to be fine, and I’m going to be the woman who used to live here, who they FaceTime on holidays, who sends Lego sets in the mail.
Eli.
Oh, Eli.
That’s the one that does it. Not Jonah. Eli, with his Flash action figure and his too-old eyes and the way he hooked his toes around my fingers without looking up from the book.
Eli, who lost his mother almost three months ago, and who’s just decided, against considerable evidence, that some people stay.
I’m going to have to look him in the face and tell him I’m leaving.
I’m going to have to be the next person who walks out of his life with a suitcase, and I’m going to have to do it with a smile on because that is what adults do.
I put both hands over my face.
The first thing that comes out of me is not a sob. It is a sound I don’t recognize, low and ugly. Then the rest of it arrives, quiet because the walls are thin, my shoulders shaking, my breath catching on the way in.
I sit back in my seat, crying, the way you cry when you have to keep it under a certain volume, which is the worst kind.
I’d told him not to fall for me. I’d made it a rule.
He, it turns out, is a man who follows rules.