CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
(Charlotte)
“And I don’t care what you think about it, I’m leaving here with grandmother’s ring.”
“Ms. Holmes? Ms. Holmes?” Marshall’s fingers snapped in my face. “Charlotte? Hello? Are you there?”
“Sorry, I drifted off.” Straight into a land of terror, where my boyfriend had angrily demanded his family’s legacy engagement ring and never mentioned a word of it to me.
“Obviously,” Marshall said under his breath. “Did you get the email? About the site?”
“Ummm...” I extended the word out while I picked up my phone and unlocked the screen. “Oh, I guess I did get a notification.”
“Read it,” he advised.
I skimmed over the text on the screen. Fuck. “We didn’t get it.”
“Afraid not. I’m sorry, I know you liked that location,” Marshall said with genuine sympathy.
Planning Ascend Manhattan—I still wasn’t thrilled with the name—had turned out to be the easy part.
Finding a place to put it was a challenge.
The first building, which I’d been deeply in love with, would have needed a massive plumbing and HVAC overhaul that would rocket us above our budget.
The second building had a great parking garage beneath it, which was probably why we’d been outbid.
The very idea that we could be outbid at all annoyed me; there was so much money in Matt’s company that I couldn’t understand why the sky wasn’t the limit on this project.
Obviously, I understood that there were other properties being developed, and they all had their own budgets, and then the established resorts and hotels also paid taxes and maintenance and advertising. ..
I wished I wasn’t so committed to not throwing around my weight as the boss’s girlfriend to get what I wanted.
“Onto the third choice, then,” I said with a sigh.
“That’s New York real estate,” Marshall said, then added with a grimace, “Well, so I’ve heard. I’ll never be able to own my apartment.”
“If I hadn’t ended up fucking a billionaire, I wouldn’t, either,” I reassured him. “Can you call Patricia and tell her to go ahead and make an offer on the ugly midtown? She’ll know which one I’m talking about.”
“No problem. Anything else?”
I chewed my bottom lip. “Yeah. Not a boss thing. Just a general question.”
“I’m intrigued.” Marshall dropped onto the armless chair on the other side of my desk.
How much did I need to explain to ask the question?
Probably not the entire story of setting off in search of Matt, only to overhear him arguing with his mom about the ring.
That wasn’t the heart of the issue. I distilled my fears down to their essence.
“What if you knew that someone was going to ask you to make a life-altering decision, and you didn’t know how you were going to respond to that, but you also didn’t know when it would happen? ”
“Mr. Ashe is going to propose to you?” Marshall asked, blinking behind his large, round-framed glasses.
My mouth dropped open momentarily. “N-not, no, I mean, that’s not what I—”
“So, that is what you’re talking about,” Marshall said, seeking clarification.
Fuck it. Fine. “If you suspected someone was going to propose to you, but you didn’t know how you would answer the question... what would you do?”
“I would wait until they proposed and ask if they come with dental insurance.” The answer came so quickly, it was definitely something he’d thought about before.
I frowned. “You don’t have dental?”
He shook his head.
“Jesus.” That was going to get fixed, ASAP.
“Are you afraid of him asking you because you can’t say yes?” Marshall steered us back to the matter at hand. “Or because you’ll say yes, and you think it’s a bad idea.”
I considered. “Neither. At least, I think neither. If he asks me to marry him, I’ll probably say yes because it’s a good idea. We’re perfect for each other.”
He shrugged, shook his head with a look of outraged confusion, and asked, “Then what’s the problem? What’s the drama here?”
“There’s no drama.” Other than what I was manufacturing at the moment.
“Oh, good. Because I thought we were wasting time on this for no reason.” He consulted his tablet. “I suppose now is not a good time to remind you that Mr. Ashe has you booked for a table for two at Marseilles at seven-thirty?”
Oh god. That’s a fancy place. He’s totally going to propose. Cold sweat rolled down the back of my neck. I cleared my throat. “Fancy place?”
His eyebrows rose above the rims of his glasses. “Um, yeah.”
“So… cocktail dress?” I asked.
He said nothing for a long moment and blinked at me in silence with his unreadable face. Finally, he said, “With all due respect: I am gay. But I’m not Project Runway gay. You’re going to have to ask someone else.”
“You know, a lot of people would fire their assistant for that kind of back talk,” I warned.
“A lot of bosses wouldn’t fire their assistants after the words, ‘I’m gay,’ came out of their mouths,” he countered. “Go watch Philadelphia a few times and get back to me. I’m going for coffees. Want one?”
“Yeah. White chocolate oat milk latte,” I said in utter defeat. I didn’t wait for him to leave before I put my head down on the table.
Matt was going to propose.
And I had no idea how I was going to respond.
* * * *
My anxiety was too big. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Matt before dinner.
He would sense whatever was on my mind. I didn’t know if that was because he knew me so well, or because of my face and its constant betrayal whenever I tried to hide my emotions.
As far as I knew, he wasn’t aware that I’d overheard his conversation with his mother, or that I knew anything about the family ring.
What if it was ugly?
I texted Matt that I had errands to run and not to wait for me at home.
I would meet him at the restaurant at our reservation time.
He’d reassured me that he would be working pretty late, anyway, and had already picked up his suit from the apartment.
Translation: he’d sent someone else to pick it up.
At least, he wouldn’t be there when I headed home to get ready.
I chafed at the mention of the suit and stewed all the way to the apartment.
Why had he brought that up? To passive-aggressively remind me of the dress code?
Because I still wasn’t fancy and sophisticated enough to even anticipate a dress code?
Did he think I would roll up to Marseilles barefoot, in denim cut-offs and a bikini top?
“Don’t borrow trouble,” I heard my dad’s voice in my head.
And as always, the dad voice was right. Matt had probably anticipated me asking if he had something to change into, since he’d be going directly from work to the restaurant.
That’s how the conversation would have gone, if he hadn’t volunteered the information.
Why was I suddenly thinking the absolute worst of him? He’d done nothing wrong.
My therapist and I had discussed ad nauseum my tendency to ascribe judgment to everything Matt or anyone in his social circle might say to me.
Instead of jumping to negative conclusions about what people meant, she’d advised me to look at it from an alternate point of view: what did my belief—that others thought poorly of me by default—say about that individual as a person?
I was insulting Matt by assuming that he would be ashamed of me and quick to safeguard himself from embarrassment.
But it didn’t help that I’d heard him arguing with his mother over the distinction between our classes.
Elizabeth didn’t want him to propose to me.
Her position had been clear from the few sentences I’d overheard before I’d hightailed it out of there.
The same sick, rejected feeling that had gripped me all the way back to Matt’s room that night returned with a vengeance.
I combatted it by making myself look as hot and expensive as possible.
When I walked into the private dining room he’d reserved at Marseilles—a red flag the size of a rain tarp at a Major League ball game—his expression was proof that I’d pulled off my sartorial mission.
Matt rose from the table, buttoning his jacket with one hand in the smooth motion of someone who’d been to a thousand fancy dinners and had the mannerisms so memorized, they were as unconscious as breathing.
“You look incredible,” he said, taking me in from my expertly curled hair to my form-fitting—but not too tight—black strapless dress with its notched neckline and all-over embroidery of jewel-toned flowers.
“Thanks.” I made a little turn in my strappy black stilettos. “I guess I clean up pretty good.”
He pulled my chair out for me and gave me a wink. “I know. I’ve taken enough showers with you.”
His hand skimmed the bare skin between my shoulder blades as I sat.
“So,” I said with a shaky exhale. “What’s the occasion?”
He returned to his chair. “I thought we had stuff to talk about, and it would be more fun over an incredible dinner.”
“No menus,” I observed.
“Prix fix.” He shrugged. “I hope you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.” I was getting used to dining experiences that were guided by the chef, not the person eating the food.
Is this the life you want? I asked myself. Is this better than what we had in California?
Shut up , I scolded my doubts. The only reason I was even asking those things of myself was because I was afraid. Because I wanted to run, the way I always wanted to run when things seemed too good to be true.
My boyfriend, who I loved so much that I sniffed his shirts sometimes because I missed him while he was in the other room, the guy who was so sexually compatible with me that we were building a kink club together, was going to propose to me tonight.
And here I was, trying to sink it all before he even asked the question.
A sommelier entered with the first wine pairing and the appetizer course. I was sure both were delicious, but when I sipped from my glass, it tasted like licking wood.