Chapter Forty
CHAPTER FORTY
The intern send-off party is now doubling as Camila’s goodbye gathering. She picks me up from my house at four p.m. and we drive together to Zilker Brewing. In the car, we blast all our favorite songs we listened to on repeat during college.
“You look how I feel!” I shout over the wind, which shoots past in humid gusts outside our open windows.
“Lightweight? Carefree? Unbothered?”
“All of the above!”
Camila slants me a grin. She flips on her blinker. “I’m getting married this weekend.”
“You’re getting married this weekend!”
“I’m moving to New York City!”
“You’re going to be a wife and a student in New York City,” I say.
“Will you visit? As soon as you can?” Cami asks. “I’m not talking about a dinner when you’re in town for work, I’m talking about a real visit.”
“You name the day, Cami. I’ll be there.”
“I know it isn’t your favorite city,” she says.
“I want to give it another chance.”
She smirks at me. “You really are in a good mood. I take it the conversation with Zoe went well?”
I gape at her. “You knew about that?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “You think I just left your house without conspiring with Will on a plan ? Give me a little credit.”
The second we show up to the party, my own career woes are forgotten. What’s amazing about college interns is their drama will always knock out your own.
Of course, once the party gets going, I receive curious looks from some of our employees. There are even a few who come up to me and urgently whisper-promise that they never said a word to Margaret Dwyer and don’t know anyone else who did, either. I thank them and otherwise get very uncomfortable about it, even though their sincerity means so much to me.
It isn’t that I’ve ever expected to be liked by everyone. But it’s nice to be liked by, at the very least, quite a few.
And then, the intern drama begins.
It starts with three girls who burst into tears at interspersed twenty-minute intervals, each of them looking forlornly in the direction of freckled-intern Andrew whenever they wipe their eyes. Andrew, in turn, surrounded by the other guys, can’t keep his eyes off Eugenia—who has remained by my side from the first instant she spotted me.
“What is going on ?” I ask her. We’re sitting at a picnic table outside the brewery with Camila and a few of the retail staff. The bulk of the interns, Andrew included, are in a huddle a few tables away, gossiping and pointing between Eugenia and the three crying girls (commiserating by the outdoor bar).
“Andrew and I hooked up a few times at the start of the summer,” Eugenia explains. “I ended things because it was getting too serious, and then he hooked up with Eva. But Eva’s boyfriend back home in New Hampshire found out she hooked up with Andrew, and also, Melanie—who lived with Eva this summer—got pissed because she’s apparently had a crush on Andrew the whole time and supposedly Eva knew that and boinked him anyway. I don’t know why Cassie is crying, that one is lost on me. But look, it’s not my problem those girls are in love with him and he’s in love with me.”
“Are we watching a live reenactment of A Midsummer Night’s Dream ?” Cami asks.
“If so, then you’re Puck,” Eugenia decides.
“Me?” Cami raises an eyebrow. “Why am I Puck?”
“Don’t think I wasn’t listening when you predicted this exact scenario at the donut breakfast months ago.”
Camila smirks. “I am sort of omniscient, aren’t I?”
Eugenia takes another sip of her drink. Her eyes drift over to Andrew’s. “I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings,” she says, her voice softening into wistful territory. “But I can’t have it all, and for the next several years, I need to prioritize my career.” She turns to look at me. “Same as you did. Right?”
“I don’t think it’s true you can’t have it all.” I nod at Camila, whose eyes soften. “Cami and David have been together since she was twenty-two, and she’s one of the most successful businesswomen I know. My college boyfriend and I didn’t last not because I couldn’t have made it work,” I explain, “but because he wasn’t the right person for me. When you find the right person, your brain moves past wanting to have it all. Instead, you start to think about how you can have as much as possible with each other.”
“That’s…” Camila tilts her head, biting on a smile. “Exactly right.”
“I can be wise sometimes,” I say.
“You guys aren’t helping,” Eugenia grumbles. “He goes to UDub! And yeah, I dumped him, but it hurt my feelings he slept with Eva.”
“Which one is Eva?” Cami asks.
“The software engineering major,” someone reminds her.
“What does your heart tell you?” I ask Eugenia, only halfway serious.
She considers for several long moments, her gaze lingering on the freckled boy in question over Camila’s shoulder. At this point, everyone at our table, including the retail team, is waiting on her answer with bated breath.
“My heart tells me if it’s meant to be, Andrew and I will find our way back to each other,” she decides, and then nods once. “But right now, it’s not a relationship I would describe as healthy. And we don’t give our unconditional love to the things that hurt us.”
We all stare in stunned silence.
“I can be wise sometimes,” Eugenia says.
I find Derrick in the Revenant office, just as I predicted.
It’s perfectly quiet up here, save for the soft tapping of his fingertips on his laptop keyboard. He’s in his favorite conference room, the lights dimmed, his salt-and-pepper hair pushed away from his face, wire-rimmed glasses across the bridge of his nose.
When he spots me through the glass wall, he doesn’t look surprised.
“What’s that?” he asks when I open the door.
I set the six-pack of pilsner down on the table. “You weren’t at the party, so I brought you some beer.”
He gives me a half smile. “Crack them open.”
I pull two cans out of the plastic and pop the tabs. “What are you doing?”
He gives me a look. “You first.”
I set one of the beers down in front of him and take a seat.
I know this place so well that I know exactly which chair I’m sitting in. It’s the one that has a tiny squeak when you swivel left.
“I’m really tired, Derrick.”
When I glance at him, he’s already nodding, like he knows what I mean. “I…” He drifts off, tapping on the screen of his phone. It lights up with a picture of his daughter Maggie. “I never told you this, Josie. But the day before you pitched me, Maggie had basically already convinced me to invest with you.”
I tilt my head at him. “She did?”
“Maggie was your biggest advocate. Loved the brand. Respected your ethos. Don’t get me wrong, you knocked your pitch out of the park, but I was biased in your favor coming into the room.”
I smile at the table. “Tell Maggie I said thanks.”
It’s quiet for a moment.
“Just say it, Josephine.”
The beer can between my hands starts to glisten as my vision blurs. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” I whisper.
In my head, Eugenia’s words repeat on a loop: We don’t give our unconditional love to the things that hurt us.
“I have loved this company with my whole heart, the whole time,” I go on. “It has saved me, and healed me, and broken me in half. I’ve given the employees and the customers all I can. And now I just don’t know if I have anything left to give.”
I’ve spent seven years in a tunnel, focused on only this. Making this. Building this.
But six years later, Revenant has legs to stand on. It can weather a storm without me.
Probably, it can weather a storm better without me.
“I know, Josie,” Derrick says.
When I look at him, his eyes are calm, unsurprised. “How?”
“Camila.” He shrugs. “I knew if she had burned out, you weren’t far behind.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I tell him, sighing. “I loved my CEO classes. I love the people I work with, and I love the work, too. But lately, it hasn’t been loving me, my body, my mind. I’m not showing up as my best self anymore.”
Derrick leans forward onto his elbows. “I want to make you a deal.”
I smirk. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Because we’ve known each other a long time now,” he says. A blip of humor crosses his face, and then he’s back to business. The Derrick I know. “I hear you, Josie. And I see what you’ve been through. Not just that, but I’m starting to see what all women in executive positions have been through, dealt with, that men have never once had to entertain. I’m starting to understand. And I want to make you a deal.”
A tiny smile steals over my face. “I’m listening.”
“I take over for one year,” Derrick says. “If one year goes by, and you don’t want it back, then together we look for a new CEO.”
I cock my head sideways in disbelief. “You could do that for an entire year? What about your other investments?”
“I have plenty of money,” he says, “which means I have plenty of people who can handle the other investments. This is the one that means the most to Maggie.” He shifts in his seat. “Frankly, this is the one that means the most to me. I’ll move here temporarily to make it work.”
We stare at each other for a few moments.
“What if I can’t do it?” I ask. “What if a year passes and I still don’t feel right about it?”
Derrick shrugs. “Then you become a board member. And you watch someone else pick up the torch.”
In a trance, I nod. Somehow both unsure about and okay with this option.
I don’t know what the future holds, and for the first time in a long time, it’s better that way. Right now, I’m operating with one goal. He has blue eyes, dimples, a crooked smile. He takes my tired body and pulls it into his arms.
Today, this month, maybe all year, he’s what I’m working toward. Not because I want to deserve him, but because I already do.
But when I leave the office a little while later, my hands skimming over the racks of sample clothes on my way out the door, it occurs to me this place and these people don’t actually need me anymore.
Camila and I can both go, and Revenant will stay.
It’s fucking freeing.