Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Sutton
"Sutton Kane," I say.
"Ms. Kane, this is Patricia calling from Drake Industries in San Francisco.
" Her voice is professional and brisk, the kind that moves through a high volume of calls without losing its precision.
"I'm reaching out regarding your resume submission — I apologize for the delay in following up.
We've had some internal transitions this week that shifted our timeline. I'm hoping you have a few minutes."
"I do." I keep my voice even. My hand is flat on the counter to give it somewhere to be.
"Wonderful. Your background caught my attention — it's not the profile we typically see for the executive assistant position we're now prioritizing, but given recent developments here, we're looking for someone who can step in at a high level immediately.
Before we go any further, I want to confirm — are you open to relocation? The role is based in San Francisco."
I look at my kitchen, at the Los Angeles light coming through the window, at the life I've been living in this apartment for two years that has never quite felt like it was finished being built.
"Yes," I tell her. "I'm open to relocation."
"Perfect. I'd like to schedule a formal interview call for early next week, if that works for you. I want to walk you through the role in detail and get a better sense of your background."
We settle on a time. She ends the call with the efficient finality of someone whose day has twenty more items in it, and I set my phone face-down on the counter and stay very still for a moment. Then I open my laptop.
Drake Industries is a cleaner, more sophisticated operation than I gave it credit for during my initial research pass.
The company's press footprint is substantial — features in technology publications, business journals, a Forbes profile from two years ago that covers the company's AI development division with the kind of reverence reserved for operations that are genuinely changing the competitive landscape.
Logan Drake is mentioned in all of it in the way that powerful men are mentioned when journalists know better than to probe too personally — his name attached to decisions, to growth metrics, to strategic acquisitions that reshaped the company's market position.
There are photographs from industry events.
A speaking engagement at a tech summit. A profile image that matches what I already found on LinkedIn — the salt-and-pepper hair, the jawline, the particular quality of a man who has never once been photographed looking like he wasn't exactly where he intended to be.
None of it tells me who he is. All of it tells me the company is the real thing, which is what I needed to know.
I research until midnight, the same way I research everything — building from the broad structure down to the granular details, filling the gaps in my tech sector knowledge with the focused urgency of someone who refuses to walk into any room unprepared.
By the time I close the laptop my notes cover four pages and my understanding of Drake Industries' market position is considerably sharper than it was three hours ago.
I go to bed thinking about San Francisco.
The interview is on a Tuesday. I've been preparing since the call with Patricia, which means I've had four days to build a working knowledge of Drake Industries' operational structure, its primary competitors, the specific challenges facing enterprise tech firms in the current market, and the particular demands of supporting a CEO who runs his company with the kind of precision that the press coverage makes abundantly clear.
I know what this role actually requires. I know what I'm walking into.
What I don't know is Logan Drake, and I've made peace with that gap because nothing in the public record is going to tell me what four pages of notes can't cover.
Patricia runs the call with the same efficient professionalism she brought to our initial conversation.
She's thorough without being excessive, specific without being rigid, and she asks the right questions — not the scripted kind designed to produce scripted answers, but the kind that tell me she's actually trying to assess whether I can do this job rather than whether I can perform well in an interview about doing this job.
I appreciate the distinction. I answer everything directly, without hedging, and when she asks about my tech sector experience I'm honest about the gap and specific about what I've done in the past two weeks to close it, which I can tell lands better than a rehearsed claim of expertise would have.
By Thursday she calls with an offer.
The package is strong — strong enough that I sit with the printed numbers for a full minute before I let myself respond to it, not because I'm uncertain but because I've learned that decisions made in the first thirty seconds of good news are rarely as considered as decisions made in the second thirty seconds.
I've earned this. The offer reflects that.
San Francisco's cost of living is not Los Angeles' cost of living, but the compensation accounts for it and then some.
Then Patricia adds something that sharpens the entire conversation.
"I do want to flag the timeline," she says.
"Our current EA is in a two week transition window. We need you in place before she's out — so we'd be looking at a start date within two weeks if you're able to make that work."
Two weeks. I do the math automatically — notice to my building, the logistics of the move, what needs to stay and what needs to go. It's tight but it's doable.
"That works," I tell her.
"Wonderful. We'll get the paperwork over to you today."
I tell her I'll have a signed offer back by end of business. Then I call Caleb.
He picks up on the fourth ring, which tells me he's between setups on set rather than in the middle of one. I can hear the ambient noise of a production environment behind him — voices, equipment, the particular controlled chaos of a working film set.
"Hey," he says. "What's up?"
"I got the offer from Drake Industries." I keep my voice measured, not because I'm not excited but because the excitement feels like mine to hold for a moment before I share it.
"It's a strong package. I'm going to accept."
A beat. "Yeah? That's great. I told you the name would open the door."
"You did," I agree. I wait for the next question — the one about what this means for us, about the logistics of a relationship where one person is now in Los Angeles and the other is in San Francisco.
The question doesn't come. Caleb asks how the interview went, whether the role is what I expected.
All of it reasonable, all of it surface-level, all of it existing in the specific register of a man who is engaged enough to ask but not present enough to listen to the full answer.
"I need to be up there within two weeks," I tell him.
"Their current assistant is transitioning out and they need someone in place before she's gone."
"Two weeks," he repeats. A pause that lasts just long enough to be noticeable.
"We can make the distance work. It's not that different from now, really."
He says it easily, which is the thing about Caleb — he says difficult things easily, not because he's careless but because he genuinely doesn't register their weight.
The distance isn't that different from now.
As if now is a standard worth maintaining.
As if the geography is the only variable worth naming.
"Right," I say. "I'll keep you posted on the timeline."
"Sounds good. Hey, I've got to get back — they're calling me. But congrats, Sutton. Seriously. You're going to crush it up there."
He hangs up and I look at my phone for a moment after the call ends.
The congratulations were genuine. That's the thing about Caleb that makes simple conclusions about him feel insufficient — he means well, in the specific way that people mean well when meaning well has never required them to inconvenience themselves.
I put the phone down and call Patricia back twelve minutes before the Friday deadline. Then I call Maggie.
Margaret Ellis — Maggie, always Maggie, never Margaret except on legal documents and in the memory of every Northwestern professor who ever tried to take attendance — answers on the second ring with the particular energy of someone who has been waiting for news and is trying not to show it.
"Tell me," she says, without preamble.
"I took the job."
The sound she makes is immediate and entirely unself-conscious — a sharp, delighted noise that I know has turned heads in whatever open-plan accounting office she's currently sitting in, because Maggie has never once successfully contained a reaction in her professional life and has built an extraordinarily successful career in spite of it.
We met the first week of freshman year at Northwestern, assigned to the same floor of the same dormitory with the same bewildered expression that everyone wears when they've left somewhere familiar for somewhere enormous.
Maggie was from Newport Beach — sun-blonde and quick-witted and immediately, overwhelmingly sure of herself in the way that girls from Southern California sometimes are, the confidence baked in by geography.
I was from Cleveland, which is a different kind of formation entirely, and the contrast was precisely why we worked.
We pledged the same sorority sophomore year.
We studied for finals in the same library carrel for four consecutive semesters.
We've kept each other informed about every major life development since graduation with the specific consistency of people who understand that some friendships are structural — they hold the whole thing up.