Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“You look sick.” Callie jams her finger on the elevator button as she side-eyes me.
I try to just look over her head and pretend what just happened didn’t. I’m not that much taller than Callie, but it’s enough to pretend I don’t see her giving me a dirty look.
And I also pretend not to hear her cursing at me as we walk into said elevator.
“It was peculiar,” I finally say to her.
Peculiar. The word arrives in my mouth wrong-sized, like a coat from somebody else’s closet.
Peculiar is what you call a missing earring or an off-tasting wine.
Peculiar is not what you call a man asking when your last period was while you tried to lick his neck.
I know this. I say it anyway. I can’t find the right word and the wrong word is what comes out.
I lean back in the same spot I was in earlier. Only this time I want the guy to come back.
Which makes less sense than kicking him out. That makes sense.
Callie doesn’t answer. She reaches up, she has to reach, I am taller than her and in heels, and she tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear that I did not know had come loose. Her fingers are cool as they linger for a moment. Probably secretly checking for a fever.
“When was the last time you got laid?”
The doors open far too soon.
“Barnaby this morning, five a.m.” My favorite vibrator.
I follow her out and pause. Her security station is nowhere near where I need to go but I also don’t want to just walk away from my bestie yet.
Probably the unhealthy attachment I have to her. I’ll walk away and then text her immediately, or call. Only mildly unhealthy.
“I mean a real dick, Hadley.” Her thumb twitches as she rests her palm on her baton and leans on her right leg. “Not silicone, not glass either.” She points at me.
“I know what you mean.” I push her finger away. I smooth the satin over my hip. The fabric is still damp from earlier where I leaned against the cinderblock in the parking garage hall. The damp will dry. The dress won’t forget. “And I don’t know. It’s been a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“A while is a while, Callie.”
She hums under her breath and doesn’t push further. We both know the answer. Two years. Two years and three months. I don’t count, I just know.
Because at the end of the day? I don’t hold that for anyone. Not anymore. I have a reason. The reason is still good. Tonight is the part that doesn’t fit.
Not to mention she should absolutely take her own advice and I know she won’t, so why should I?
“You got that comm on?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I’ll see who is giving you the looks in there and you hit on them.” She presses a finger to my lips. “Shhh. Get you some good dick tonight. Just leave your location on.”
I nod, because nodding is what you do when Callie talks at you like this. Her plan doesn’t apply to me. Her plan applies to a woman who walks up to men. I have never walked up to a man in my life. Men arrive in front of me and I deal with the arrival.
Callie knows this. But she’s going to try anyway.
Callie’s eyes narrow. “You are going to nod and ignore me, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You’re nodding right now.”
I stop nodding.
“I…”
“Can get some good dick tonight.” She cuts me off, walking backwards.
“Callie.” I look around, but it’s just us. No one can hear her yelling dick across the museum.
“Dick.” This time it echoes.
Face bright red, I turn around and walk out of the hall and back toward Africa and then Egypt. Callie might be right. But not tonight.
Following in my predecessor’s footsteps at her own memorial foundation. This isn’t a test. This is the test. If it goes bad, I lose my job.
Callie may lose hers because she was the one who convinced her boss to hold it here.
I had six months after Angela’s death to plan this fundraiser memorial. Her events will fund archaeologists for the next year, uncovering artifacts lost by… unconventional means.
Pirates. Grave robbers. Rich men with far too much money and terrible hobbies.
Walking past the Sahara, I step in front of the open Penn Museum doors. Most people have entered by now, but George stands at the door tall in his suit and just happy to be here.
“Ms. Hadley,” he says it in that southern twang with a touch of Philadelphia that always gets me.
“George, it’s nearly seven.” I walk toward him, my heels clacking on the floor. “Let me help you get these doors closed.”
“Too old,” Callie hisses in my ear, nearly causing me to jump out of my damn skin.
“Ms. Hadley, you alright?” His nearly ninety-year-old body waddles toward me, his hand outstretched, shaking before he lays it on my bicep.
“I’m fine,” I say it too loud because Callie is laughing in my ear.
George doesn’t laugh. George looks at me the way my grandfather used to look at my mother the next morning when she came home after sneaking out late the night before. Quiet and patient and just waiting for her to break.
He pats my bicep once and then says, mild as Sunday, “Callie, stop whispering to her.”
She only laughs harder.
“Long night ahead, Ms. Hadley,” George says it to the closed door, not to me. “Pace yourself.”
What does that even mean?
“Let’s get these shut. It looks like rain.” I step out for the briefest of moments, letting the humid city air roll over my sweaty skin. A fine mist coats my flesh as I grip the heavy door.
Outside it smells like wet asphalt and the river two blocks over and somebody’s cigarette and somebody else’s perfume and the hot-bread bakery that runs ovens overnight.
None of it is curated. None of it is on the list.
The satin drinks the mist in, darker where it lands, the black going to true black across the bodice. My dress is taking on water. I can’t tell if I am sweating into it or if it is sweating onto me. I breathe in deeply, before I remember I have a job to do.
“Wait.” I hear a voice.
The doors are heavy and half-closed, and the rain is starting and the bakery exhaust is roaring two blocks over and the voice came from somewhere on the other side of the lot I can’t see from where I am standing.
I hear him anyway.
Then my ears ring the way they ring after a concert. Except the last concert I went to was with my mom to see Collective Soul at Penn’s Landing.
The door swings under my palms and I am already stepping into George’s space to move him back. That’s when my brain finally arrives at the situation, panting, late, useless.
Son of a bitch. It’s him!
“What is it?” George steps back obligingly, looking at the man running toward the front door, no sprinting. How? He was two floors down and bound and outside three minutes ago. My mind slowly catches up to my hands, and my hands catch up to…
“Wait! You don’t understand I have to ta—”
The lock clicks shut, stealing his words.
My hands stop shaking, just barely. My breath, however, is still panting.
And my chest aches, not with relief from shutting him out but irritation I shut him out. As though I’d just locked a door on something important and couldn’t explain why.
“There ya go, Ms. Hadley.” George stretches his back a little. His spine makes a series of pops that he sighs in relief at, before he does a gentle shake. “I’m going back in to keep an eye on all those rich people.” He begins his slow, and I do mean slow, walk back to the event room.
My hand stays on the deadbolt for one more second. Two. The dress is too warm at my back, too cool at my front. It doesn’t know what it is anymore. Neither do I.
Going back inside feels like stepping into a closed jar.
Which means I can’t avoid it anymore. I have to go back in there. Mingle. Smile. Function like any other thirty-two-year-old woman. Pretend I know what I’m doing, what I’m talking about. And not feeling like I need to chase a stranger down and have my filthy way with him. How utterly disappointing.
The museum remains quiet behind me.
Most of the guests are already in the main hall doing what guests do, drinking my champagne, eating my hors d’oeuvres, talking about Angela. As they should. They will be talking about Angela for the rest of the night.
Angela who built the foundation we are celebrating tonight from the ground up.
Angela who is fucking dead.
Angela who I cannot be evaluated against without losing because the dead are unbeatable.
“Go get fucked,” Callie says far too salaciously in my ear. Causing me to nearly stumble over my two left feet.
“I will mute you.”
“No, you won’t.” She giggles, which is honestly a beautiful sound.
“I’d never.”
“Steal me one of those puff balls. And the crab quiche. The one I priced.” The one she priced. She picked the caterer. She picked the venue. She helped me pick everything in that ballroom except who got to walk into it.
“Callie—”
“Don’t. Just bring me the quiche.”
“Where?”
“Behind Aphrodite.”
“And if I get caught?”
“I’ll kill the witness.”
“Cool. Cool. Cool.”
“You going to go in?”
“Yes.” I do not in fact go in.
“You should. Because that fucking sexy piece of deliciousness you call a boss is heading right your way.” She pauses. “He doesn’t look thrilled. Odd.”
I dive for an alcove. “What?”
“He’s mean-mugging everyone.”
“Callie,” I hiss.
“And he’s headed your way.”
“What do I do?” My voice echoes a little.
“Fuck him.” The line seizes like a code blue before going dead.
That bitch cut me off. With no backup and nowhere to hide.
His footsteps. I know his footsteps. Two years of his footsteps approaching my desk, approaching my office, approaching the breakroom while I pretended to read the bulletin board. I would know them in a coma.
He rounds the alcove.
“Hadley.” Just my name. No Ms. No Hey. No there you are. My name in his mouth like he is testing whether it fits.
The cupcake smell arrives a half-second after he does and my dress, my dress that has already been through too much tonight, registers him before I do. The satin shifts at my collarbone. Damp again from my sweat.
“I need a word with you.”
The comm in my ear goes dead with a high-pitched beep. The hallway behind him is empty. Callie is gone. George is gone. There is only my boss and the humidity in the air and the wet seam at my collarbone.
“Of course, sir.” My voice is nothing more than the soft squeak of a mouse. “Anything you need.”