Chapter Thirty-Six
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Will: Please talk to me
Josie: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you. I just can’t figure out what to say.
Will: Can I see you tonight?
Josie: I can’t. Derrick is coming into town this afternoon and he wants to look over the materials for the B Lab review call tomorrow. I’ll see you then? It’s your very last job as a consultant! We’ll celebrate after.
Will: I’ll be there.
Derrick swans into town with a zero-bullshit tolerance. We work hours into the night, going over every scrap of material that might be called out during our review call tomorrow. Announcing B Corp approval isn’t going to recoup all the lost sales, but it will help, and we can’t take any chances.
I get a handful of hours of sleep that night. My shower the next morning is just water hitting skin, and my ICOML is just chemicals reacting in my brain to raise alertness. When I show up at the office, I feel as though I’ve time slipped.
All our executives trickle into the conference room with one addition: Will. My stomach doubles over when I see him. His face is pale, his eyes dull. He looks impossibly sad.
He sits down next to me, hunching in my direction. “Hi.” His voice rasps out like a salty wave against rocks.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’ve been a bad communicator.”
“You’ve been in crisis,” he counters, voice low.
“So have you.”
He frowns, eyes jumping over my face. “I don’t mind being associated with you on the internet, Josie, unless it’s something you mind.”
“Only in the sense that it’s perhaps unethical to date your consultant.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not your consultant much longer, isn’t it?” He finds my hand underneath the table and brushes his against it. His touch calms me, centers me.
Reminds me none of this is as important as I am making it out to be.
At ten o’clock sharp, the review meeting begins. A projected screen on the wall flashes from solid black to a view of our analyst, who smiles tightly at us.
“Good morning, all,” he says. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
There was no way you could have known, he says.
Your Spanish supplier was a B Corp, he says, until they failed their recertification. We change our standards all the time, and this year, they didn’t make the cut.
Unfortunately, it means the score for Revenant has also dropped below the passing threshold, he says.
You can reapply in the future, he says, and eventually, he ends the call.
My mom always used to say trouble comes in threes.
The internet hates you.
Your company failed the test of goodness (and the internet still hates you, just, you know, as a cute little reminder).
I’m beginning to fear I already know what number three is.
When I head for the garage, I have every intention of wallowing on the UT Austin campus for the rest of the afternoon. But it’s sweltering hot, and come to think of it, I’ve barely eaten in forty-eight hours, haven’t drunk much water, or slept well, or taken enough deep breaths that aren’t riddled with stress. My brain starts to fog. My vision spots.
I make it to the edge of my car and slump against it, pushing my forehead against the cool metal exterior in an effort to regain control over my body. I don’t know how long I linger there—maybe seconds, maybe minutes—before I feel a hand rest lightly on my back. He rubs back and forth, coaxing life back into me.
“I’ll drive,” Will murmurs.
He half scoops me, half walks me to the passenger side door. I schlep my body into the seat and rest my head against the window after he closes me inside.
Will drives in complete silence to my house, where he again half scoops me, half walks me to my bed and deposits me in the center of it, under the covers.
I gaze up at him, a single tear fogging into existence in the corner of my left eye. He sits on the edge of the bed and gently kisses my forehead, the tip of my nose, my chin.
“Everybody hates me,” I say with a tiny sob, feeling pathetic. Useless. Paltry.
“But I love you,” Will says.
“I’m so tired,” I say, barely managing the words as my throat chokes closed. “I’m exhausted from trying so hard.”
“Sleep.”
“I don’t think that’s going to help.”
“You have to start somewhere.”
I close my eyes, relish the feeling of his thumb rubbing tiny circles on the edge of my jaw. He never falters until I lose consciousness.
I dream of Barcelona. I dream of the almond shape of Will’s perfect blue eyes, the way he’d stand there patiently while I brushed my thumb back and forth across his top lashes as many times as I wanted. I dream of the way he’d smile when he thought I said something funny. Every variation of his one dimple, of both, of what kind of smiles brought them out. I dream of his voice and the way the tendons of his hand flexed when he shook the hand of the business partner we met in Barcelona. I dream of every atom that separated our bodies during that tour. I dream of his hands gripping the underside of my knee when we sat down for lunch, the way I could feel it in at least a dozen other places on my body.
I dream of everything I remember about that day. Except I can’t dream of a single detail about that supplier’s facility because I didn’t pay any fucking attention.