Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Shaye
Water droplets splash onto the countertop and down the front of my shirt.
Leftover scrambled eggs from this morning fight against the current but eventually drop into the garbage disposal. It growls as it eats the debris. The sound is a little more metallic than it used to be, like metal-on-metal.
I turn off the disposal and the water. My favorite hand towel embroidered with lemons that I got on sale at Marshall’s is soft on my hands as I dry them.
The kitchen is filled with the soft glow of the sun’s setting rays. It’s my absolute favorite time of day in this house, specifically this time of year. I walk to the window overlooking the backyard and soak in the warmth.
The fence separating my backyard with the house behind me will eventually fall down during a storm.
I’m surprised it’s still standing. The yard is tiny and uneven, and the overhang on the back stoop creaks when the wind picks up.
Still, I love this little house and its cheap rent and chipped paint because it’s mine.
At least until my lease runs out.
I toss the towel on the counter.
My body fills with a peace that I’ve welcomed in my life in lieu of the sadness and anger I used to feel. It isn’t sunshine and rainbows in my soul, but it’s not fire and brimstone either. My best friend, Lisbeth, says the rainbows will come. I just need to give it more time.
I say she’s more of an optimist than me.
The doorbell jolts me out of my head.
“Coming,” I call out as I walk around the corner of the kitchen island.
“Hurry up! This is heavy!”
I yank the door open and nearly get trampled by Lisbeth Kline. Her cheeks are flushed as she rushes in like a bull, her arms loaded with bags.
“What in the heck are you doing?” I ask with a laugh.
The bags hit the floor with a thud.
“I said I would take a couple of bags of lettuce. I didn’t say you could bring me all the food you’ve ever bought,” I say.
“I went ahead and cleaned out my fridge and my deep freeze.” She wipes a chunk of blond bangs off her forehead.
“You know how I do when I get going. It was supposed to just be perishables that would, well, perish while I’m in Florida for a week.
But then I thought it was a good time to just go all-in.
I mean, I am going to see my parents after the wedding.
You know how hard Mom makes it for me to leave once I’m in Ohio again. ”
I take in the number of containers in front of me. “Tell me this is it. There’s not more in your car, is there?”
“This is it. But we better get it in your freezer before it melts.”
I help gather the bags from various department stores filled with frozen food items and carry them into the kitchen.
“I need a grocery store monitor,” she says, setting the bags on the island. “Or at least one of the new fancy refrigerators with a camera so you can see inside it while you’re in the dairy section.”
I laugh. “Or, you know, you could just make a list.”
She scoffs at me like I just asked her carb-loving self to go gluten-free.
Lisbeth pulls out boxes of Hot Pockets, cartons of milk, and bags of frozen pearl onions from a Macy’s bag.
“When are you leaving?” I ask, putting the items away.
“In a few days,” she fake cries. “Why did I have to RSVP to this damn wedding, Shaye? And why won’t you come with me?”
“You RSVP’d because you and Lydia are friends. And I’m not going because I’m not throwing away that much money on a destination wedding that’s not my own. Also, I wasn’t invited.”
“But you could be my plus-one.”
“No.”
She rolls her eyes.
“But weddings are fun. I mean, I think they are,” I say, taking a half-gallon of unopened orange juice from my friend. “I’ve never actually been to one.”
She makes a face. “They are usually fun. This one held a lot of promise until The Break Up.”
I make the same face back to her.
“I wish I could say that I wasn’t dreading seeing Thomas and the starlet who shall not be named,” she says, her grip clenching so hard on the bundle of bananas in her hand that I think I’ll have to throw them away. “But let’s be real.”
Lisbeth is right. It would be futile to even try to play the devil’s advocate.
Her ex-boyfriend, Thomas Raines, is the talk of professional baseball.
He’s leading the league in a variety of statistics—a fact that I know because he’s a hometown boy.
But Tommy is also the talk of every rag magazine in the world because he was caught with his fingers literally inside the starlet at an award’s show earlier this year.
While probably great for YouTube replay numbers, it wasn’t so good for Lisbeth’s relationship with Tommy.
It also doesn’t bode well for their mutual friends’ wedding.
“I think you should go and enjoy yourself,” I tell her. “You obviously learned an important side of Tommy that you didn’t know before it was too late. Let the starlet find out on her own. This is definitely your win.”
“I just wish I weren’t going alone.”
“So find a date.” I toss the carrots into the crisper. “There are a million guys you could call.”
“Yes. True. But I don’t want to have to entertain someone. I don’t want to have to be nice to them. I’m going to be pissy and self-conscious, and having to dance around someone else’s feelings doesn’t seem doable.”
I raise a brow. “But going alone does?”
She shrugs.
We work silently for a few minutes, trying to find room for all of Lisbeth’s groceries in my refrigerator. I pause every now and then and examine items. Beet juice shots? Okay.
“You really don’t want to go?” she asks out of nowhere.
“No.” I laugh at her. “I can’t. I …” I set a box of ice cream on the counter and try not to smile. “I got a job offer today.”
Her blue eyes light up, and she raises her hands up in the air. “You did? Why didn’t you lead with that when I walked in? We could be celebrating right now.”
I force a smile and turn back to a bag of frozen peas.
My insides go bananas as I let my mind flip back to the interview this morning. It feels so amazing to have hope that I might be able to turn things around. It’s the light at the end of a disastrous tunnel that I’ve been begging for.
But, then again, it has my stomach in knots because I don’t know how to navigate this anymore.
“Where is it?” Lisbeth asks, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “Is the commute awful? You can always sleep over if it’s closer to my place, you know.”
“I’m not sure I’m taking it, actually.”
“Why?”
The million-dollar question. Or, at least, a hefty-salaried question.
I take a deep breath. “Do you know the guy who I hit yesterday?”
She nods.
“Well …” I blow out my breath. “It’s for him. As his executive assistant.”
It’s as though the room gasps, waiting for an explanation. Lisbeth leans back as if the distance will help her understand.
“Okay,” she says slowly, her lips threatening to split her cheeks. “This is an interesting development.”
“It’s an odd coincidence. That’s what it is.”
“Or kismet.”
“Or a coincidence.”
She sets her jaw and tilts her head. “You said he was hot—a word you don’t throw around lightly. That leans this entire situation into the kismet realm.”
I scoff.
“What happened?” she asks. “Like you just walk in, and he’s sitting there?”
I abandon the ice cream on the counter and sit at the kitchen table.
I might as well get comfortable. Lisbeth and I have been friends for almost ten years.
There’s nothing she doesn’t know about me and vice versa.
She loves a good kismet story, and I can tell by the look in her eye that she thinks that’s what this is.
Poor girl.
“The interview has been scheduled for three days with a woman named Toni,” I say, using the time to replay the scenario for the six-thousandth time today.
“I’m sitting in a conference room, and Toni comes in.
She sits down for a few minutes. We chat.
It’s going well. Then she leaves, and a few minutes later, Oliver walks in.
We were both dumbfounded.” I narrow my eyes, trying to hide the way my heartbeat just picked up.
“Well, I was dumbfounded. He seemed to be surprised but less … shocked.”
I think back to the way his eyes widened ever so slightly and how a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. He was definitely pleased to see me. But shocked? No.
My stomach turns itself inside out.
“So,” Lisbeth says, poking me along as she sits across from me. “What happened? What did he say?”
“He … he sat down. We talked a little bit. I accused him of being a cop and—”
“What?” she shrieks.
“I mean, isn’t that really Occam’s Razor here?”
She snorts in frustration. “No. No, it isn’t, Miss Conspiracy Theorist.”
I shrug at the accusation. It’s not totally wrong.
“So you accuse him of being the po-po, and he still offers you a job?” Her eyes widen. “The job? His trusted confidant job?”
“Well, yeah. I think that’s a little over the top in the description, but basically.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, smirking happily.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say, pointing a finger at her.
Her smirk deepens.
“I didn’t take it,” I admit.
“And why the eff not?”
I rub my forehead with the palm of my hand.
“I’m … thrown off,” I tell her before dropping my hand. It hits the table with a thud. “Can I do the job? Absolutely. Do I need it? One thousand percent. Is it an amazing opportunity? Clearly. But …”
I look at my best friend and silently plead for help. She reaches across the table and puts her hands on mine.
“Look, I know this is a lot for you at once,” she says softly. “A new job is enough to freak anyone out. But you chose this guy to be your first crush since Luca—”
“It’s not a crush. And I didn’t choose anything.”
She brushes me off without a thought. “If you weren’t panicking a little, I’d worry.” She withdraws her hand.
“I am. Don’t worry.”
She laughs.
“I feel so … clumsy,” I tell her. “Let’s set aside the fact that this guy, Oliver, might be my new boss. Let’s just consider him a guy who asked me to have lunch with him only yesterday, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to navigate the dating waters, Lisbeth.”
“Yes, you do. It’s been a long time, I know, but you know how to do it. You weren’t born yesterday.”
“I might as well have been. I only dated one guy before Luca, and I was nineteen. I mean, besides the three blind dates you’ve set me up on this year, that’s it—and those went so well.”
She giggles at the mention of the awful dates she arranged. I roll my eyes.
“I just keep getting thrown into this guy’s life and”—I shrug—“if I take this job, I need it to work. I have to get a grip on my life so I can move on. I can’t work for him and feel myself tingle in all the right places—or wrong places, depending on how you define the word.”
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“Probably.” I sigh hastily. “You’re probably right. I mean, who am I to think that he even sees me like that?”
She laughs. It’s loud and chirpy. “Oh, he does.”
I look at her like she’s nuts.
“Shaye.” She says my name with exasperation.
“You’re beautiful. You have the prettiest hair in the world.
Your eyes tell stories. Your body is banging, my friend, and you’re funny and smart.
So, yeah, I’m absolutely positive he’s attracted to you.
” She grins. “I was just saying that … who knows? You might get to know him and hate him. The chemistry might fizzle. Maybe he has rules about dating co-workers. You don’t know. ”
Suddenly, she seems less crazy-pants.
My shoulders sag as I let her words of wisdom soak in.
I know I’m jumping the gun with some of this. My mind is definitely ahead of reality. But I want this so bad, I need this so much, and it feels too good to be true. Naturally, my mind wants to sniff out all the ways it could go wrong instead of focusing on the ways it could go right.
“Just relax and do what’s best for you. Today, maybe that’s taking the job,” she says.
A chill rushes through my body. I close my eyes and breathe.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “I don’t know.”
I open my eyes as her sweet smile gets sharper.
“Maybe I’m right,” she repeats. “And tomorrow, maybe it’s taking his dick—”
“Hey!” I protest, but not without a giggle.
She laughs too. “If he’s hot enough to flip your switch and he owns Mason Limited, keep your options open. Be smart.”
I get to my feet and roll my eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, standing too.
“I am being smart. I’m well aware of the fact that my judgment on men is broken. Maybe Oliver Mason is a sociopath or a narcissist. He could be married and a total scumbag.”
“Nope.”
I turn to face her. “Nope what?”
Her face sobers. “Don’t write this job off already. Don’t write him off already. Don’t write you off already. You’re defaulting to your mother’s voice in your head.”
“Yeah …”
“Listen to me, Shaye Marie—your mom is fucked up. God love her, but something went wrong with her parenting gene. You gave that woman so many chances to be in your life and be the person she should be, and she failed you every time.”
“I—”
“I’m not done.” Lisbeth smiles softly at me.
“We subconsciously absorb what we hear our moms say and do. Somehow, because it comes from them, we assume it’s right and true.
But in your case, it’s not. You know that.
” She makes a face until I smile. “You’re leaving all of that nonsense behind, okay?
All of the negativity and blame she placed on you was projection.
She was projecting her shortcomings onto you.
That has nothing to do with you in all reality. Right?”
Her words hit the soft, vulnerable spot in my heart. I want to hope she’s right. I want to think she’s telling me the truth and not doing best-friend duty and telling me what I want, even need, to hear. But I’m not sure.
“Right,” I say, my voice not as confident as I’d hoped it would be.
“Good. Now, I’ll break it down for you. Take the job.
” She brushes her bangs out of her face again.
“You need the money. You have the skills. You obviously vibe with this guy. So take the job and get back on your feet. Give yourself a little room to get to know yourself again.” She reaches out and presses her hand against my arm.
“This is the break you’ve been praying for. ”
For the first time in a long time, a blossom of hope begins to flutter in my belly.
This is the advice I’d give Lisbeth if the roles were reversed. I’d tell her to take the job and I’d mean it.
She dusts her hands off as if she just solved world hunger. “Now that decision has been made, go find your wine bottle opener. We’re going to celebrate your new job.”
I want to backtrack, but I know the conversation with Lisbeth will never end if I argue. I’m also not really sure how I can construct an argument against her.
So, I head toward the drawer for the corkscrew. Might as well give in. And rejoice, because she’s right. This is the break I’ve been praying for.
I hope.