11. Violet
ELEVEN
VIOLET
I dressed quickly in the off-white pleated dress I'd worn the day before.
It was the only clean thing I had. Wearing the same dress two days running was its own kind of professional faux pas, the sort that announces itself to anyone paying attention, but there was nothing to be done about it.
I smoothed the pleats over my hips, checked the top buttons, and headed downstairs.
He was already at the kitchen island, dressed and waiting.
Black suit, black inner shirt. He stood with his phone pressed to his ear, and when I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked at him, the stark black of his shirt sat against the off-white of my dress like the two outfits had been chosen to go side by side.
I looked at him. I looked down at my dress. I looked at him again.
He was doing it on purpose.
He ended the call and tucked his phone into his pocket. "You're ready?"
I nodded.
He looked at my dress, then down at his own dark outfit. A satisfied little smile played on his face.
"I can see you went out of your way to complement my outfit today," I said, dry.
He looked down at himself, innocent. "It wasn't out of my way. It was directly in my path."
My heart did one clean, terrifying skip, and I ordered it to settle down.
"I just called my lawyer and told him to track down your landlord," he said.
I frowned, caught off guard. "How do you even know my address?"
He lifted both eyebrows at me. "Violet, I have full access to internal employee information. Your home address is on file."
The realization landed a beat late. Of course it was. I nodded and said okay.
"He's located your landlord and is bringing him to the building," Simon added. "We just need to get there now."
We made our way out to the town car, and Manuel drove us toward the city. In the backseat, I kept my eyes glued to my phone, not reading anything, just gripping it to give my shaking hands something to do. His eyes were on his glowing tablet. Neither of us said a word, which was strange for us.
We talked in cars. We talked in private elevators and long hallways, and at the end of the day when the floor was empty and one of us had a passing question that grew into a conversation and bled into another thirty minutes before either of us noticed the time.
We talked about nothing and everything, and the silence between us was usually comfortable, an easy quiet that never needed filling.
But this silence was different. It had a heavy texture, like something volatile had been pumped into the air that neither of us was brave enough to name.
I didn't look at him. He didn't look at me.
Manuel drove on, and whatever sat between us on the leather backseat stayed unspoken all the way to my building.
A sleek black car was already parked in the lot when we arrived. Two men stood waiting in front of it. One wore a sharply pressed suit with a silk tie. The other wore a wrinkled collared shirt and slacks, more casual, a cell phone clutched in his hand.
Simon's hand came up to rest at the small of my back as we walked toward them, a light, brief pressure. He'd done it before in professional contexts, a small, polite steering gesture, but in the open air of the parking lot, my shoulders drew up before I willed them to relax. I kept my face level.
"Ms. Paige," my landlord greeted me, nervous. He held up his phone. On the screen was a saved contact, my name with a different phone number. "This is what I had on file. This is the number I was texting all week."
I looked at his screen, then pulled up my own phone, opened my text messages, and showed him the number I'd been texting. The last three digits on his end were transposed. I looked at him. He looked at me.
"I changed my business number last year," he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. "There were some messy issues with a previous tenant.
"I sent out a mass notice asking for updated contact information from everyone in the building.
Whoever updated your file must have entered the wrong number.
" He held up his screen, defensive. "The relocation notices went to that same dead number, and the posted ones went up in the lobby on weekdays, when you'd already left for the office.
I figured the silence meant you'd found a place and moved on.
" He spread his hands. "I had no way of knowing it wasn't reaching you. "
"So the renewal notices," I said, tight.
"All went to this dead number," he admitted. His eyes dropped to the pavement, then came back up to mine. "Ms. Paige, I apologize. This wasn't your fault. There was a system error, and it fell through a gap that shouldn't exist. I'm sorry for what happened to you last night."
I studied him a long moment and gave a stiff nod.
"The building," I pressed. "What's actually happening with the building?"
He let out a long breath. "I've sold it.
The new corporate owners are converting it into a boutique hotel.
I've been trying to get everyone relocated with proper legal notice, but the communication failure with you—" He stopped, wincing.
"Internal construction begins on Wednesday.
I need you out as soon as possible. I'm sorry. I know this is abrupt."
Simon spoke up from just behind my shoulder, his voice like ice. "You'll extend her access through tomorrow evening at six." It was not a question.
The landlord blinked at him.
"And you'll formally rescind the abandonment notice right now, on this call, with my corporate lawyer standing here as a witness," Simon continued, nodding sharply toward the suited man beside him.
The landlord cast a nervous glance at the lawyer, who'd already lifted his phone to record. The call was hastily made. The notice was rescinded. Simon demanded written confirmation within the hour, cold, and the landlord agreed to every term.
Simon turned to his lawyer. "Help him coordinate a professional moving company for her."
"I really don't need one," I cut in.
Simon looked at me, confused.
"The apartment came fully furnished." I gestured at the building. "I only need to grab my clothes and a few personal things I bought myself. It isn't a lot to pack."
He studied me a moment. "All right. I'll come up and help you pack."
We went upstairs together.
He walked into my small apartment and stopped just inside the doorway. He looked around slowly, his sharp eyes moving from my favorite green reading chair to the overstuffed bookshelves, then to the window and the curtains.
"This is a really good apartment, Violet."
"I really loved it here," I admitted, my voice thick.
The forced smile slid off my face before I'd finished the sentence. I stood in the middle of the living room and looked at the space, learning it by heart without meaning to.
I remembered the day I moved in. Sloane had been so happy for me.
She'd come over that first weekend with a cheap bottle of wine, and we'd drunk it sitting right on the hardwood floor like a couple of students, too giddy to bother with the couch a few feet away.
Just us and the bright city light pouring in.
She'd looked around with her glass raised high and declared, You did it, Vi.
Your own place. Good money. A stable, respectable job.
I'd gotten everything I said I would and none of the things my parents had demanded, and Sloane was the only person alive who understood why those two opposing facts could sit together in peace.
This apartment was what had finally made me believe I wouldn't end up the spectacular failure my parents assumed I was becoming. And now I was standing in it for the last time, and it was looking back at me like a door swinging shut.
I blinked back the sting in my eyes and turned to the cardboard boxes.
We started packing in earnest. My clothes were already sorted, folded, and organized the way I kept them, by type, by color, a spatial system I'd worked out over years of living in small spaces, and I moved through them fast, pulling empty boxes from the closet and working the shelves.
Simon helped without being asked, picking up my rhythm, handing items across when his reach was faster than mine, hauling heavy boxes to the door when they filled. We worked in a comfortable silence for a while, nothing like the tense quiet in the car.
Then he reached the large bookshelf.
He pulled a paperback out and turned it over in his big hands. "Is this romance?"
"Yes." I didn't look up.
He opened it and flipped through a few pages. His eyes caught on something and went still, widening as he read. Then he snapped the book shut with a sharp crack and shoved it back onto the shelf.
I knew the page he'd landed on. That book had a fair amount of smut.
I couldn't help it. I laughed out loud.
"So, you like reading smut?" He turned to look at me, slow, one eyebrow arched dangerously high.
"I'm not a child. Of course I enjoy smut."
"What do you like about it?" He crossed his arms and leaned back against the bookshelf, trapping me.
I shrugged, folding a sweater to avoid eye contact. "It's just good storytelling. Real love between two people needs lust. Lust is what steers it."
"You think lust is that important?"
I looked up at him. "Can you love someone romantically without lusting after them?"
He swallowed hard. Then he turned away and picked up another empty box, keeping his back to me. "I mean, I get what you mean," he conceded. "But putting it so plainly on the page, isn't that like an instructional manual? Why not let your readers' imaginations carry it instead?"
I stopped folding. "What do you have against it?"
He shrugged, still not looking at me. "Women carry a lot of fantasies. A lot of complicated ideas. What happens when they meet a real man who doesn't share those same ones? Or a man who just isn't as—" He paused, choosing his words. "—equipped as the fictional characters she reads about?"