Chapter 26
Diane presses her fist against her chest, harder than she probably needs to, but somehow it helps her hold herself together.
She's standing at her office window, her free hand braced against the wall so she doesn't fall.
Eyes wet, breath shallow, gaze locked on the street below in a desperate attempt not to pass out.
She's been dealing with unbearable anxiety for three weeks now, and it often comes to this — a full-on panic attack that cuts off her oxygen and sends her heart racing until she's convinced a heart attack is about to take her out.
Her cell goes off on the desk and she crosses over on unsteady legs to pick it up. She blinks to focus on the screen, draws a ragged breath, and answers.
"Talk to me," she says, and her voice comes out steady.
"I'm on my way," Clara says on the other end.
Diane glances at the clock on her computer and realizes with genuine shock that she's been standing here for over an hour.
She got out of a meeting at ten thirty, reviewed Tatiana's notes, and a few minutes later the tightness in her chest started.
Then came the heat spreading under her skin — her warning sign that anxiety was on its way — and she'd stood up and moved to the window, hoping the change of scenery might help like it sometimes does.
Clearly, this time, it hasn't done a thing.
"Okay, see you in fifteen," she manages to say, keeping the slight tremor out of her hands by sheer force of will.
When she hangs up, she grabs her bag and leaves the office immediately.
As she moves through the hallway lined with rows of cubicles, a hush follows her — everyone averts their eyes and buries themselves in their screens.
The satisfaction she used to feel has dissolved, and now she feels nothing. Absolutely nothing.
She walks into the Asian restaurant where she agreed to meet her friend, and the smell of ginger, garlic, and sesame hits her right away, making her wrinkle her nose.
Her appetite has been gone for weeks, and if she weren't keeping up with her bloodwork — after the scare with the lump in her chest a few months back — she'd think she was sick.
"Hey." Diane sits down at the table where Clara is waiting, tapping away at her phone. "How'd it go?"
Clara types a few more things and sets the phone face-down on the table.
"He's insufferable. He wanted to change two of the points we proposed, and now I have to go back next week for another meeting." She closes her eyes and tilts her head back — this client is something else. "With any luck, that one'll stick and we can actually get started."
Diane nods, slow and without much energy, and says nothing more.
"Good afternoon — do you know what you'd like?" A waiter appears, looking harried.
"Water for me and the daily special," Clara orders without bothering to look at the menu.
The guy enters it into a phone that sends the order straight to the kitchen.
"And for you?"
"Just water," Diane says, and before Clara can ask anything, the waiter is gone.
"You're not eating?" the marketing director asks.
"I'm not hungry." Diane checks her watch — thirty minutes before she needs to leave. "Actually, I wanted to meet here so I could ask you for a favor."
Clara goes still, eyes fixed on her friend, mouth slightly open. She's fairly certain this is the first time in all the years she's known Diane that the woman has ever used that phrase.
"Go ahead," she replies, because she could make a few remarks, but she's too curious about what's coming to bother.
Diane runs her hand across her chest — the discomfort is still there, though leaving her office and the short walk to the restaurant have worked something like a small miracle, letting her breathe almost normally.
She's uncomfortable. She doesn't like that she's gotten to this point.
But she's been turning it over in her head during sleepless nights for days now, and she can't see a better way out.
"I need you to process a transfer — move Cassidy to the corporate communications department.
" Clara's expression hardens immediately.
Diane raises a hand to let her finish. "It's temporary, a few months.
She'd get a different kind of experience there, and when she comes back to marketing, that'll work in your favor. "
Clara Fitzgerald tilts her head without taking her eyes off her friend.
"And why would I transfer one of my most valuable employees somewhere she hasn't asked to go and that I certainly have no interest in?"
Diane doesn't move her lips. Clara lets out a laugh with no warmth in it.
"If you think I'm going to do what you're asking with no explanation, you're wrong.
" Clara leans back slightly to let the waiter set their drinks on the table.
"You know what you mean to me, but at Whitestone you're head of development and I run marketing, which means I'm responsible for my people.
I'm not going to pull a move like that without a real reason. "
Diane takes a short sip of water and sets the glass back in the same spot. She stares at it as if somewhere inside it is the strength she needs to put into words everything she's been hiding under layers of makeup and false composure.
"I can't have her near me." She says it so quietly that Clara has to lean in. "It's unbearable and it's killing me from the inside. It's temporary," she repeats. "I just need some time —"
"For what?" Clara asks sharply.
Diane drags her hand across her neck, then pinches the bridge of her nose.
"I don't know, Clara. To have time to walk away, or to figure out what the hell to do. Can't you just do what I'm asking? God." She closes her eyes and rubs her temples. "I have never asked you for anything, and the one time I do, you act like this."
For more than fifteen years, Clara Fitzgerald has been at this woman's side in a way that borders on compulsive.
She fell in love with her, had to put her own heart back together while watching Diane sink into the bottle, and never once turned her back on her — even when she deserved it.
And there's the fact that for a long time now, she and Elizabeth have welcomed Diane like a sister, and the answer to that has been to turn down eighty percent of their invitations and behave, in some instances, like a completely self-absorbed stranger.
She loves her deeply — but she has limits, and Diane just crossed one.
"I'm not going to tell you that what you just said isn't unfair, because somewhere deep down you already know that.
" Clara settles back in her chair and laces her fingers together on the table to keep herself from reaching across and slapping her.
"But I am going to say something, and I don't care if you think I'm throwing it in your face.
I have never left your side. I've backed you up in everything, always — even when you chose a goddamn bottle over me.
I've been your girl, your friend, and your closest ally in this consultancy, and you're right about one thing, Diane — you've never had to ask me for anything, because you never needed to.
I just did it. You never even had to open your mouth. "
Diane's neck goes taut, and that bold vein rises like a threat.
"And now it turns out you've fallen for a girl, but you can't get out of your own way long enough to be with her — so instead you ask me to move her away from you while you figure out the cleanest way to walk away without a scratch.
" A dry, humorless laugh escapes her. "Is this because she's moved on, or because you think you have the right to manage her career however you feel like it? "
Diane's expression tightens. Her brows pull together in a confused line and her eyes shift to a strange, cold blue.
"You really don't know?" Clara can feel that she's hurting her, but she won't be part of the cover story her friend is trying to spin after setting a wildfire.
"Cassidy is seeing someone. Heather — tall, dark, her age.
Elizabeth and I were leaving dinner when we ran into them.
She looked happy. It's been three months since you got your biopsy results — and I'm sure since you pushed her away again — so she moved on. "
Diane forces down the wave of nausea that hits her out of nowhere and clenches her fists until her nails dig into her palms. She's dizzy, poisoned by information she didn't ask for and that has landed like a sledgehammer straight to the chest. She's a textbook hypocrite — one of those women who neither lives nor lets others live.
A damned monster who has had to shrink herself in spite of everything just to survive, to protect herself.
She stands, picks up her bag, and speaks before she goes.
"The transfer request has already been submitted," she hisses, like a cobra that's been waiting to strike.
"Monday morning, Claire Donnelly — the department director — is expecting her in her office at nine.
" She smiles without showing her teeth. "She's thrilled to have a marketing expert on her team for a few months. "
Diane turns to leave, but the fury is suffocating her and she needs to let it out somehow.
"Let me be clear about one thing, Clara — I don't need you to get what I want." She pauses for a beat without looking away from her. "This was a courtesy."
She walks out, heels destroying the floor with every step, moving with the kind of confidence that half the people in the room can't help but envy.
And Clara stretches her lips into something that isn't quite a smile, picks up her fork, and tries the Kung Pao chicken — which has gone cold but is just as good anyway. She knows Diane Carter well enough that she doesn't need to guess what's coming next. She'll have a front-row seat.