Chapter 29
29
Having finished the slideshow part of my presentation, I am practicing the spoken parts in the living room. Doing so until my throat is sore will be the only thing to stop the plague of locusts raging around my stomach.
“In conclusion,” I declare with a flourish, “with this strategy, Ditto will pave a new way to match users and bring a breath of fresh air to the industry. Market research suggests the new generation of potential users has been experiencing dating-app fatigue. Ditto cuts out the awkward preamble and gets straight to the date but in a safe, controlled environment.”
My face scrunches with indecision as I ask Yemi and Alice, “Did that last bit sound kinda lame?” I fiddle with the edges of my oversize linen shirt, tucked into frayed denim shorts to counter the lack of air conditioning in our building.
“No, it sounds really good!” Alice gushes, lounging next to Yemi on the sofa, their feet curled up in a yellow knitted blanket.
Flopping down on the tatty gingham-print armchair next to them, I admit, “I want to get across how passionate I am about this idea. I genuinely think it would be great.” Warm honey fills my chest. “I haven’t felt this way in a really long time.”
“Why don’t you talk about your passion then? They will be looking for the numbers and data and stuff, but they want someone who will champion the brand. You know, speak from the heart,” Alice suggests.
“Yeah.” Yemi nods. “The ultimate goal for users is to find someone who shares their passions in life, so it would make sense to speak about yours.”
After scribbling down their advice on my cue cards I look up to see both of my wonderful friends stuffing their faces with leftover popcorn. I’m on a high, an adrenaline rush fueled by this rare, precious feeling of self-esteem. Is this what confident people feel like all the time? I take a gratifying breath. “I feel like I actually have a real shot at this.”
“Do you think Eric’s presentation will be as good as yours?” Alice asks.
“I know it will be, and he’s got the Black Book of Dreams to back up his strategy. This could really go either way.” I suck in my cheeks. The thought of the decision coming down to that goddamn Rolodex is a very real possibility. Being twice as good as him is a tall order, but it’s the bare minimum I need to be to stand a chance. “Now that I’ve started practicing, I can use the next ten days to refine everything and really nail it.”
“Have you spoken to Eric since the, ummm...” She mulls the word in her mouth. “... incident?” I filled Alice in when I got home a couple of hours ago and safe to say her reaction was not as subdued as Yemi’s. Weeks from now we’ll still be finding the popcorn she threw into the air like confetti at a wedding.
“Not properly.” I run my hands through my hair, wilder than usual from being towel-dried in a rush at the hotel room this morning. “What would I even say? Hey, thanks for the mind-blowing sex, I kind of want to do it again but I know it won’t work long-term. Also, I have some pretty damning accusations about one of the few people you trusted being the person who has been ruining your life and relationships for over a year.”
Yemi shakes her head in disbelief. “It’s so shady. Surely you have to tell him about that?”
“I feel like I should.” I cross my arms as though already protecting my body from the potential blowback. Would he even believe me? Or think it’s some sort of mind game to throw him off before the presentations?
Of course, I could do what he did to me. Keep it quiet to protect him, but maybe like me it would just cause more pain in the long run. Maybe if Eric had been upfront with me about William, it would have hurt but it would have saved me further pain. It would have helped me make decisions for my future instead of dwelling on the past.
“The main thing I need to do for now is clear the air.” I purse my lips. “Establish that what happened at the hotel can’t and won’t happen again.”
“Even if you want it to?” Alice’s lips curl and I blush. “Being in competition with someone while having a sordid affair with them is giving major Dangerous Liaisons vibes.” She wiggles her fingers at me like mini jazz hands.
“But it’s going to end the moment one of them gets the job. They’re both too competitive to handle something like that,” Yemi argues to Alice.
My finger points toward Yemi in agreement. “Exactly! I know my limitations. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off before it even gets put on.” While it’s still just a gaping open wound.
My phone stares at me from across the room, the red circle of seven unread messages like an evil eye of doom. I could make this easy for myself and text him, but something this sensitive needs to be done in person. “OK, I’m gonna go talk to him,” I announce. “I’ll decide what I’m going to say on the way.” My keys jingle in my hand as I pace down the hallway and fling open the front door. My entire body freezes like a deer in icy blue headlights as I see Bancroft walking up the stairs toward my front door.
“We need to talk.” His low words echo up the stairwell and land right between my thighs. Fuck. He somehow looks perfect despite the evening being so humid it’s almost wet. His simple but impeccably cut white T-shirt and jeans manage to look so put together, leaving no doubt he’s wearing those subtle designer labels only people in the know can identify. Meanwhile, I’m wearing Daisy Duke shorts, which are slowly unraveling at the seams and a top I found for 50 percent off in a bin at the charity shop.
Yemi’s curls bounce as she flips around to a wide-eyed Alice. “Pub?”
“Pub!” Alice confirms, overly enthusiastic about being forced out of her own home. “Text us if you’re... busy later.”
Behind Bancroft, I stare wide-eyed at Alice bending Yemi over the stairway’s iron railing and miming spanking her with glee.
I glare at both of them as they skip down the stairs, leaving me alone with a stony-faced Bancroft lingering in the threshold.
“Can I come in?” he asks in an unreadable tone.
“What are you, a vampire or something?” I sigh, attempting to disguise my heaving chest as annoyance. I widen the door for him as his large body brushes past mine. It leaves a faint trail of the cologne that has been haunting my sense memory for the past eighteen hours.
We both make our way into the main living area in silence. A sudden wave of self-consciousness hits me, like stepping out into the beating sun from an air-conditioned building. Nobody beyond Yemi and Alice has been here before, not even my family. His home taught me so much about him I would never know otherwise, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to know those things about me. Inviting him in is slicing through a taped-shut box containing precious parts of myself and saying, “Please, rifle through!”
OK, would I have done the exact same thing if I hadn’t been temporarily incapacitated while in his home? Absolutely. Do I feel good about that truth? No. What I found just from sifting through his coffee table decor started a chain of events in my head, ultimately leading to the shift in dynamic between us. A swooping sensation takes over my stomach as I remember the versions of us in those photos: tipsy in a Christmas-themed photo booth with cheeks pressed close. The way he looked at me when I was completely oblivious seems so far away from this reality.
He wanders to the carved wooden bookshelf on the far side of the room, shoulder muscles forming valleys across his T-shirt. He runs a finger over the creased spines of romance novels I used to read obsessively. They’ve been gathering dust since I moved here. I told myself it was because I didn’t have time to spend my nights combing their pages anymore, but all I’ve been doing instead is combing through pointless emails from Susie about what weeks-old TikTok trend she thinks would be good for a paid ad.
I clear my throat, and lean against the kitchen counter, immediately remembering what happened the last time I leaned against a kitchen counter with him in the room. I push off it and pace into the living-room area, leaving an entire sofa’s length between us. He scans the room silently, analyzing pieces of me he’s never laid eyes on before. The sensation it gives me is oddly reminiscent of him roaming my body with his mouth, cataloging everything he felt and saw when the early-morning sun started to leak into the room.
“Where’s the painting?” His face is indecipherable as he studies the art- and film-poster-coated walls.
“In storage,” I lie, forcing my eyes to stay fixed on him and not my bedroom door, where the painting is hung above my bed.
“Hmmm,” he grumbles suspiciously, gliding a palm over the side of the couch.
He cuts me a faint sideways glance, sandy hair flopping over his forehead. My hand folds into a fist to stop from brushing it back.
“How was your date?” he asks.
“It was... nice,” I say to the floor.
“ Nice? ” He spits out a harsh laugh.
A line forms between my brows. “You have a problem with ‘nice’?”
We’re circling the living room now, like two cowboys waiting for the other to draw their pistol.
“I just didn’t realize your bar was so low,” he scoffs, one eyebrow raised.
I open my mouth to snap back some ill-thought-out retort but he continues, “You deserve more than ‘ nice .’” He tilts his head and paces slowly toward me. A wild panther measuring the reaction of its prey. Before I get eaten, I jolt to the other side of the sofa and start frantically folding a strewn-out blanket.
Honestly, I’ve never considered anything more than “nice” as the criterion of what I’m looking for. I hold the folded blanket in front of me like a fluffy shield, before asking, “What would you recommend instead?” One side of my mouth twitches as I try to underplay the minor revelation occurring in my head. Maybe after William the bar was so low I thought nice was the best I could ever dream of. Someone who didn’t try and control me, deciding my future as though it belonged to them.
“Someone who understands you.” He dips his head, rounding the corner of the sofa. “Who wants you for who you are, not what you could be.”
The air around us goes completely silent. With William, I had to fit within a rigid box. I had to be the sort of person who was worthy of all the love he gave me. He loved me so much, but he loved the version of me he had built. His own creation. But with Eric, I’ve only ever felt like myself. I can be my most outspoken, ambitious, confident self. I can be the best version of Grace. The Grace who sticks up for herself. The Grace who knows her worth and isn’t afraid of the consequences when showing it.
As if he’s reading my mind he says, “The best version of yourself.”
“You two bring out the best in each other.”
Even Mr. Catcher noticed it. But it can’t happen. The neon sign flashing “Presentations in ten days!” in the back of my head fills my vision. We will enter the ring together and only one of us will come out. And why is he saying these things now when he’s had all this time to say them? When he could have told me at the Christmas party months ago; he rejected me instead. I shake my head, his words tumbling out onto the ground like rocks in an avalanche. The only reason for saying these things now is to throw me off my game. This is what we do. We compete. We play dirty until we win. We’re the same, and what was I just thinking about before he arrived? How could I throw him off before the presentations to give myself the edge? My head spins like a blade of grass in a hurricane. Who’s to say he isn’t doing the same thing? That he won’t take all of this back the moment I’m too love-drunk to care who wins or loses? Tell me he wants me forever then take it all away in an instant, just like William did.
I school my face into the stony expression he held at my door. “Why now?”
“What?” He places both hands on the back of the sofa, the veins in his forearms becoming distractingly pronounced.
I take a steadying breath. “Why come here and say this now? Why did you decide, just days before one of the most important moments of our careers, you wanted to come here and make me—” I stop myself, blinking furiously and start again. “When you had the entire night to say something. When you’ve had months to say something...” I take a step back, gripping the blanket tighter. “Why now?”
His jaw tenses. Eyes laser-focusing on me. “Because last night changed things.”
We both stand in silence, fingers dancing over our weapons.
I take the shot: “For you.” It hits him right in the gut, his brow knits as the words seep into him. Even if the lie hurts now, this is the best thing for both of us, I tell myself. “It changed things for you.” I clear the emotion from my throat. “When we find out what happens one of us will be happy and one of us will be crushed.”
He rolls his shoulders back. “Right.” It doesn’t seem as if he’s agreeing with me, just accepting my opinion.
He rounds the sofa toward me but I’m stuck to the ground. The withered romantic buried in my depths bursts a hand up through the dirt and tells me to stop what I’m doing. To tell him the truth. Stop going on the defensive, stop trying to protect myself from a version of events that might not even occur. We can get through anything together because we are and have always been Grace and Eric, pretending to be Hastings and Bancroft.
Moving closer until we’re toe-to-toe, his body shadows over mine and I bask in his presence. His jaw ticks as his intrusive gaze flicks from my lips to my neck to my burning eyes. Without saying a word he brushes past me. I listen as his footsteps bounce against the floorboards. The front door opens and clicks shut behind me.
A sobbing exhale I didn’t realize was waiting finally bursts free. My palms push against my eyes as every expletive I’ve ever heard runs on repeat like a siren. How is this possibly the best thing for both of us? If we were the same, wouldn’t he have come here to emotionally destroy me? To take a devastating blow at my self-confidence? Not to talk to me as though I can do anything I set my mind to. I’ve fucked everything up.
Before my brain can catch up, my legs are moving out of the door, down the staircase toward the building entrance. My arms fling open the door to catch up and throw themselves around him, but he’s already gone. Along with any shreds of hope remaining between us.