Chapter 4 #3
When I finished my glass of wine, I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror under lighting that had clearly been designed by someone with a vendetta against pores.
I looked less pale than I had that morning, mostly because Jules had forced me to eat half a sandwich and stop narrating my own downfall for eight consecutive minutes.
My hair had dried into soft, imperfect waves around my face.
My lipstick was gone. My hazel eyes looked too bright.
“Get a grip,” I told my reflection.
A woman in a stall flushed.
I closed my eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean you.”
When I got back to the table, my phone was in Jules’s hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Protecting you.”
“From what?”
“Your lock screen.”
“Juuuules…”
“I didn’t open it. I’m not a criminal. I was simply staring respectfully at the notification that says Callum Rowe texted you.”
Everything in me stopped as Jules turned the phone around.
Callum Rowe: Avery, it’s Callum. You did well today. I know tomorrow is a formal start, but before that, I’d like to have dinner with you tonight if you’re free. It’s not an interview. Just dinner, so we can catch up properly. I’ll pick you up at seven. Only if you’re comfortable with that.
For a few seconds, the world narrowed to the glowing screen in my hand.
Then Jules whispered, “Oh, that man edited himself.”
“What?”
“He wrote ‘I’ll pick you up at seven’ like a bossy skyscraper daddy, panicked, and added consent language.”
“Do not call him that.”
“Which part? Bossy? Skyscraper? Daddy? Because legally—”
“Jules.”
“I’m processing.”
I read the message again. He hadn’t exactly called me a good girl, because the universe had not yet lost all subtlety, but his words were close enough that my body, traitorous and apparently illiterate, reacted anyway.
“I can’t go,” I breathed, fighting panic.
Jules blinked. “Of course you can go.”
“I start tomorrow.”
“Exactly. Free dinner before capitalism consumes you.”
“He’s my—”
“Technically.”
“Stop technically-ing me.”
“Never.”
“He’s also my future CEO.”
“You will not be discussing quarterly projections over appetizers.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If he discusses quarterly projections over appetizers, you are allowed to fake your own death before dessert.”
I looked down at the phone, thumb hovering over the reply field. “What do I say?”
“Dinner sounds nice. Seven works.”
“That’s too calm.”
“You need calm.”
“I am not calm.”
“That is why we outsource.”
I typed her suggestion exactly and my thumb hovered over send.
Jules leaned close. “Do it.”
“I hate when you supervise my bad decisions.”
“I prefer the term formative experiences.”
I sent it. The delivered notification appeared immediately. My pulse took the stairs two at a time.
Three dots appeared, then disappeared.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered.
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“You are making haunted teakettle noises.”
His reply came through.
Callum Rowe: Good. Send me your address.
I stared at it.
Jules made a soft, strangled noise. “Good girl.” She squeaked the last word in a strangled whisper. I closed my eyes.
“Stop.”
“No. I will be buried with this phone.”
I sent him my address. Then, because it seems a job offer and dinner invitation had not fully satisfied my appetite for humiliation, I typed another message before I could stop myself.
Me: Should I bring anything? Resume? Paperwork? Emotional damage organized by category?
I hit send and immediately dropped the phone face down on the table.
“No,” I said.
Jules clapped both hands over her mouth.
“No, no, no.”
“That was adorable.”
“That was insane.”
“That was personality.”
“That was unemployment trauma with punctuation.”
The phone buzzed and I flipped it over with one eye closed.
Callum Rowe: Just yourself, Avery.
I did not speak.
Jules did not speak.
The words sat there on the screen, simple and devastating.
Finally, Jules said, very softly, “Well.”
I put the phone down as if it had burned me. “I need to change my entire face.”
“You do not.”
“I need to buy a dress.”
“You have dresses.”
“None of them are for dinner with Callum Rowe.”
“What does one wear to dinner with Callum Rowe? Steel beams? A tasteful girdle? The hopes of the city building commission tucked away in her purse?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. That man probably notices tailoring.”
“I have no tailoring.”
“You have me.”
This turned out to be both a promise and a threat.
We left the wine bar at 4:30 with one basket of fries defeated, my nerves alive and shrieking, and Jules in full campaign mode.
She refused to let me go home alone because, in her words, I would ‘dress like a tax deduction and ruin the tension.’ We stopped at her apartment first, which was only four blocks from mine but somehow existed in an entirely different emotional climate.
Jules’s place was chaotic in an intentional way, all velvet pillows, stacks of art books, half-burned candles, and a clothing rack in the bedroom that contained more black garments than a Victorian mourning household, with a touch of nightlife, of course.
She made me stand in the middle of her room while she threw options at me.
“No,” she said before I had even touched the first dress.
“You picked it.”
“And I have grown.”
The second dress was green and too tight.
“I can’t breathe.”
“Breathing is for lunch interviews.”
“No.”
The third was black and elegant and so low-cut I stared at myself in the mirror in genuine alarm.
“I look like I’m going to seduce a widowed duke.”
“Is that not the assignment?”
“No.”
“Fine, but we’re keeping the duke option for later.”
“I hate that there’s a later in that sentence.”
“There is always later.”
An hour later, we had created a small textile graveyard across her bed.
I had tried on five dresses, three blouses, one skirt, and a pair of trousers Jules called ‘celibacy pants’ with such venom that I removed them out of respect for their service.
We finally settled on a navy wrap dress of hers that hit just below my knees and made me look like I had made an effort without declaring war.
It had long sleeves, a soft waist tie, and a neckline that was mostly modest unless I moved exactly wrong, which Jules described as ‘plausible deniability.’
“I don’t want to look like I’m trying to be sexy.” I offered my weak protest.
“You don’t. You look like you have complicated boundaries.”
“That is not a category.”
“It is now.”
I sat on the edge of her bed while she knelt in front of her open shoe rack, muttering to herself like a general surveying terrain.
My phone rested beside me, silent now, which somehow made it louder.
Seven o’clock moved toward me with impossible speed.
Every few minutes, my stomach flipped, not unpleasantly, which was the problem.
I wanted the dinner. I wanted to see him outside the office.
I wanted to hear him say my name again. I wanted to find out whether the warmth from the morning had been real or just the temporary glow of being rescued from my own stupidity.
And underneath all of that, more troublingly, I wanted to know whether he had felt it too.
Jules glanced up from the shoes. “You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you try to talk yourself out of wanting something by making it sound legally complex.”
“It is legally complex.”
“Not legally. Ethically. Socially. Emotionally. Architecturally.”
“Thank you for narrowing it down.”
She held up a pair of black Gucci heels. “These.”
“They’re yours.”
“And tonight, like my wisdom and my last shred of innocence, they are yours.”
I took them. “You are having too much fun.”
“I am having the correct amount of fun.” She sat beside me on the bed, shoulder bumping mine. “But for real. You know you can say no, right?”
I looked down at the shoes in my hands.
“I know.”
“And you know you can go to dinner and let it just be dinner.”
“I know that too.”
“And you know you can fantasize without immediately filing paperwork with the shame department.”
I smiled faintly. “Is the shame department near operations?”
“Second floor. Terrible lighting. Benjamin runs it on weekends.”
I laughed, but my eyes stung a little, because beneath the joke was permission I had not realized I needed. Jules reached over and squeezed my knee once, brisk and warm.
“You’re not doing anything wrong by wanting him.” She sounded so reassuring. I wanted to believe her.
I swallowed. “Aren’t I?”
“Wanting is not doing. Wanting is like weather. You just have to decide whether to pack a picnic or cancel the flight.”
“That metaphor got away from you.”
“It did, but the wisdom remains.”
I leaned my head briefly against her shoulder. She let me, which was how I knew she was worried.
“He was good to me today,” I sighed.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to turn that into something cheap.”
“Then don’t.”
“What if he does?”
Jules went still for a moment, then turned her head slightly. “Do you think he will?”
“No.” The answer came immediately, which told me something. “I don’t.”
“Then maybe tonight you let yourself find out who he is when he isn’t godfathering you or interviewing you.”
“And when I’m not trying to become Employee of the Month before orientation?”
“Exactly. Though, for the record, I think Benjamin already has a plaque that says Employee of the Month in a drawer and gives it to himself every month.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Obviously.”
By six, I was back in my apartment with Jules seated cross-legged on my bed like an emotionally aggressive fairy godmother, supervising hair, makeup, and every spiraling thought that tried to escape my mouth.
My room was warmer than it had been that morning, lit gold by the lamp and the weak late sun pushing through the clouds outside.