Chapter 18
Marin
I slam the basement door behind me and answer on the third ring.
“Marin?”
Julia. Mid-level TV actress. Minor Botox addiction. Major trust issues. Also the closest thing I have to a sure bet right now, which tells you everything about the state of my sure bets.
“Julia, hi—sorry, I had someone here. Contractor. The house is gorgeous but it’s a project. You know me, I don’t do anything small.”
“I heard you moved,” she says. The way people say I heard you have cancer.
“Temporarily. It’s a whole—wellness thing.” I wave a hand at the window like that’ll erase the deer in my front yard. “You know how it is. Everyone’s running off to do digital detoxes and milk goats or whatever.”
“Hmmm.”
“But it’s also the best decision I ever made,” I say, and I mean it. Or I will mean it. Same thing. “I’ve got this incredible farmhouse, tons of space, total privacy. It’s like a creative retreat but without the insufferable people in linen pants telling you to journal.”
She laughs. Good. Laughing means she’s not pitying me yet.
A beat.
“You’re still working, right?”
The question lands like a slap wrapped in silk. Of course she’s asking. She’s heard the rumors. Probably got a call from the agency. Probably got told Marin’s in transition, which is corporate for she’s radioactive, don’t touch.
“More than ever,” I say. “In fact, I’m building something new. Smaller. More personal. Fewer layers, all strategy, no fluff. The kind of representation we always talked about but the agency was too bloated to deliver.”
“So…you’re freelancing.”
“Julia.” I lower my voice, like I’m telling her who really killed Kennedy. “I’m selectively choosing who to bring with me. Quietly. You’re on the short list.”
That gets her. She always did love being chosen.
The thing is, I have been working. Not the way I used to—corner office, three assistants, a client roster that could fill Madison Square Garden. But working.
I’ve got two email accounts open on the laptop downstairs, three calendar apps, and at least four Google Docs all titled some variation of “Independent Client Strategy—FINAL FINAL 2.”
I’ve been up since four a.m. most mornings, drafting pitch decks on a Wi-Fi signal that cuts out every time the wind changes, sending emails with subject lines like You Wanted Bold. Here I Am.
I left a voicemail yesterday for a producer I once saved from a tell-all scandal—just the right tone of urgency and vague threat. I’ve been texting former clients like it’s a political campaign. Personal. Targeted. Relentless.
From upstairs, a sound. Low. Muffled. The kind of sound that could be the house settling or could be a sedated man shifting on a mattress I dragged up from the basement at two in the morning because I couldn’t have him and Luke in the basement together.
And I couldn’t risk Luke finding him up there.
I press my hand flat against the kitchen counter and keep talking.
“The way I see it, Julia, this is the version of my career I should have been building all along. No overhead, no politics, no board of directors who think ‘strategy’ means whatever the last consultant told them over golf—”
Another sound. Louder. A groan that travels through the ceiling like it’s using the ductwork as a megaphone. I glance toward the basement door. Luke is still down there. If he hears that—
“Marin? You still there?”
“Yes—sorry. Terrible signal out here. Rural charm. The one downside.” I laugh. Breezy. Confident. The laugh of a woman who has it all figured out and is definitely not listening to her drugged boyfriend moan through the floorboards while her handyman measures walls directly below him.
“Listen,” Julia says, and her voice shifts into that careful, pre-rehearsed register I’ve heard a thousand times from clients about to leave. “I think what you’re doing sounds really amazing. Really brave.”
Brave. There it is. The word people use when they mean stupid but don’t want to say it to your face.
“But I just signed a new two-year with the agency. Mitchell’s handling things now. He’s been great.”
Mitchell. My junior. Twenty-six. Cheaper. Never once questioned why the men in charge always had lunch behind closed doors. Of course Mitchell’s handling things now.
“That’s fantastic,” I say. “Mitchell’s smart. He learned from the best.” Meaning me. She knows I mean me. “But Julia — when that contract starts feeling like a ceiling instead of a floor, you call me. Because I’m not going anywhere.”
I am going everywhere. I am standing in a kitchen with a dying phone battery and a man upstairs who can’t stay quiet and a man downstairs who can’t know why, and I am still—still—closing.
Or trying to. Because that’s what I do. I pitch.
I pivot. I perform. And I will keep doing it until the performance becomes the reality, because that’s how it’s always worked and I refuse to believe it won’t work now.
“We should get coffee when you’re back in the city,” Julia says, which is what people say instead of goodbye when they know they’ll never see you again.
“Absolutely. I’ll call you.”
She hangs up. I stand in the kitchen, phone hot against my ear, listening.
From upstairs: silence. Finally.
From the basement: Luke’s footsteps, slow and steady across the concrete floor.
I need to get him out of there. Not because of what’s in the basement—there’s nothing in the basement now.
But because Charles is directly above him, separated by a floor, a mattress, and whatever’s left of this morning’s sedatives.
And if Charles picks the next five minutes to start moaning again, no amount of pitch decks and pivot strategies will explain that away.
I check my reflection in the microwave. I look like someone who’s been awake for three days straight trying to hold two lives together with caffeine and audacity. Which is exactly what I am.
I straighten my sweatshirt. Fix my face. Walk to the basement door.
Temporary, I told Julia. This is all temporary.
Which means I’d better make sure it is. Because if I don’t fix things with Charles—and fast—this new life I’m pitching won’t just fall apart. It’ll fall apart with witnesses.
And one of them is currently in my basement with a tape measure and a jawline I don’t have time to think about.
I open the door.