Chapter 2 #5
“My number,” he explained. “Which you already have because I used it to harass you this morning. Save it. Tomorrow, you ask me questions before you improvise.”
“Understood.”
“And Ms. Hale?”
“Yes?”
His eyes flicked over me, not unkindly this time. “Buy a lint roller.”
I looked down. There was one pale thread clinging to the sleeve of my black blazer. Possibly from my towel. Possibly from the collapsing chair laundry. Possibly placed there by God just to humble me.
“Thank you, Ben.”
“Mr. Mercer when you’re annoyed with me,” he quipped, and walked away.
When I stepped out of Rowe Tower, I noticed that the rain had stopped.
The sidewalks shone with wetness. The clouds were beginning to thin in places, and light seeped through them in pale, uncertain beams, catching on windows and puddles and the polished hoods of taxis.
People streamed past me, some in a rush and others not.
I stood beneath the black awning and took my first full breath in what felt like hours.
Then I called Jules.
She answered on the second ring. “Are you employed or incarcerated?”
“I have a job.”
There was a loud crash on her end, like she had dropped something. “Shut up.”
“I have a job,” I repeated, and this time the words came out strange, softer, almost disbelieving. “I start tomorrow at nine.”
Jules screamed, not quite loudly enough to damage my ears, probably, but close. I held the phone away from my ear and laughed, then immediately felt tears sting my eyes because apparently my body had decided to celebrate by becoming useless.
“I knew it,” Jules gushed. “I knew threatening you would fix your life.”
“That is not what happened.”
“That is exactly what happened. I am a life coach with better cheekbones.”
“His assistant hates me.”
“His assistant sounds like the only person in that building with taste.”
“He called me a variable attached to a sentimental obligation.”
Jules made a pleased noise. “Oh, that’s hot.”
“Why is everything hot to you?”
“Because I am alive.”
I turned and looked up at Rowe Tower. From the sidewalk, the forty-seventh floor was invisible, swallowed by glass and height.
Somewhere up there, Callum Rowe had probably already gone back to his day.
Maybe my email had been a five-minute disruption, a kindness efficiently handled before lunch.
Maybe he had already filed me away under complete.
I should have wanted that.
Instead, I remembered how he had said my name and how he had not let me turn my failures entirely into jokes as well as how he had looked at me when he said responsible. Firmly, like he was handing me something heavy because he believed I could hold it.
“Avery?” Jules said, her voice changing. “You there?”
“Yes.”
“How was he?”
I closed my eyes for half a second.
He was warm, dangerous, and impossibly kind. Older than I should want and more familiar than I was comfortable with under the circumstances. The last person I should have been thinking about that way and the only person my mind seemed interested in offering up for my consideration.
“He was good to me,” I said finally.
Jules was quiet for once. Then she said, softer, “Good.”
I opened my eyes. “He was also very clear that it’s a real job.”
“As opposed to what? A decorative goddaughter residency?”
“Basically.”
“And?”
“And he was right.”
“Annoying.”
“Deeply.”
“But you’re going tomorrow.”
I looked down at my shoes, at the damp city grit along the edge of one sole, at the thin line between disaster and opportunity.
“I’m going tomorrow,” I answered.
After we hung up, I did not move right away.
I watched people pass under the awning, watched the revolving doors turn behind me, watched my own reflection flicker in the glass.
I looked like a woman who had gotten ready in twenty-three minutes and been professionally insulted by a man named Benjamin before being offered a probationary position by her godfather.
I looked like I needed more coffee, less shame, and possibly a lint roller, but I also looked, if I tilted my head and allowed the possibility, like someone at the beginning of a brand-new future.
That was the dangerous part. This whole thing inspired hope. A little spark cupped between both hands, fragile and hot enough to burn me if I held it wrong.
And as I stepped into the thinning rain and started toward the coffee shop on the corner, trying very hard not to look back up at the forty-seventh floor, I did look back.
I made it six whole steps before my spine gave up on dignity and turned around, my heart still doing that stupid, hopeful little thing it had no right to do.
I looked, as if I might catch some impossible glimpse of him standing at the window, one hand in his pocket, already regretting or defending or forgetting the decision he had just made.
He had given me a job. That was all. A probationary position, a desk somewhere far from his office, and a warning dressed neatly as a chance.
Still, as I turned back toward the corner and continued into the bright, wet morning, I could feel the shape of my life turning around.
And for some reason, I couldn’t wait for tomorrow to come.