Chapter Seven
Autumn
Anna calls early in the morning.
Sam's arm is across my waist, heavy enough that getting out from under it takes some work. I ease toward the edge of the bed until his hand slips away, find my phone on the floor beside my dress and take the call into the hall.
"Autumn."
I pull the bedroom door mostly closed behind me. "Anna."
"O'Keefe wants you in London for the entire tour."
That stops me beside the bathroom.
I'm barefoot and wearing one of Sam's shirts, standing in a hallway I know well enough now to avoid the floorboard that creaks near the linen closet.
"For how long?"
"Eleven weeks minimum. Probably fourteen."
I lean back against the wall. "Fourteen."
"And that's not the whole reason I'm calling."
Her voice has changed, and it straightens me.
"We're opening London."
I blink. "We have a London office?"
"We're going to."
"And?"
Anna lets out a breath like she's been waiting for me to get there. "The board wants to know what it would look like with you running it."
For a second, I'm sure I've misunderstood her.
"Run it?"
"Yes, Autumn. You know the client better than anyone, you've already built half the relationships we'd need, and you're already doing work at that level. I'm not asking you to interview. I'm telling you the conversation is yours if you want it."
I stare down the hall.
The tour. London. An office I could build instead of inherit from somebody else. A title I wouldn't have to spend years waiting for someone to decide I'd earned.
Usually, Anna wouldn't have finished the offer before I asked when they wanted me on the plane.
"Have coffee," she says. "Call me back after that. Preferably before you talk yourself out of it."
The call ends.
I stay where I am for another minute.
When I go back into the bedroom, Sam is still asleep. He's rolled onto his stomach with one arm stretched across the side of the bed I left.
My side, if the evidence is anything to go by.
I stop at the foot of the bed.
There's a book of mine on his nightstand. My charger is plugged into the wall beneath it. One of my earrings is beside the lamp because I lost the back last night and stopped looking for it.
None of those things got here because we discussed them.
Neither did I.
I climb back into bed, and Sam makes a rough sound into the pillow before reaching for me without opening his eyes. His arm finds my waist and drags me back against him. A few seconds later, his breathing settles again.
Mine doesn't.
Eleven weeks for the tour. Fourteen if press runs long. London after that, if the conversation goes the way Anna clearly thinks it will.
I look at Sam's hand spread over my stomach.
What happens to this if I go?
My things are beside his sink. I spend enough nights here that I know which cabinet holds the coffee and which floorboard will wake him.
But I still don't know what I am to him. Fourteen weeks is a long time for something unnamed. And I don't know if Sam would ask me to stay. I can't leave for London hoping a man who still hasn't told me what I am to him will give me a reason to come back.
Sam shifts behind me and settles closer, his face against my hair.
I reach for my phone.
Anna has already sent a message.
Anna: Call me when you're vertical.
I open my email instead.
The first draft turns into six paragraphs before I realize I'm explaining myself to somebody who didn't ask. I delete it. The second isn't much better.
The third takes three lines.
Me: I'm staying on O'Keefe from Chicago. I won't be taking the London assignment, but I'll make sure whoever does has everything they need from me. Thank you for thinking of me.
I read it once.
Then I send it.
For a few seconds, I just stare at the confirmation on the screen.
That's it.
An office in London existed for me for maybe four minutes.
Sam sleeps through all of them.
I put my phone facedown on the nightstand and settle back under his arm before he notices I was gone.
The man in the suit is sitting at the far end of the bar when I come into Vibes a few nights later.
There's a folder in front of him and a glass of water he hasn't touched. Bex passes him on her way toward me without asking if he needs anything, which tells me she's already tried.
She puts my mezcal down while I'm taking off my coat.
I nod toward the other end of the bar. "Who's the suit?"
Bex glances over her shoulder as she hangs my coat beneath the counter. "No idea."
"Bex."
She looks back at me. "I genuinely don't know."
That makes me look again.
Sam is working the rail around the man, but I know him well enough now to see the difference. He's not rude. He's not even unfriendly. A customer asks for bourbon and gets bourbon. Somebody closes a tab. A regular calls his name from the other end of the bar, and Sam answers without stopping.
But nothing gets past the counter.
I take a drink and try not to watch.
Twenty minutes later, I've given up pretending.
The man does most of the talking. At one point he opens the folder and turns something toward Sam. Sam reads it, says something I can't hear, then closes the folder and pushes it back.
The man sits there another few minutes before finally getting to his feet.
Sam walks him to the door.
When he comes back behind the bar, he reaches for a knife. The lime tray is already full enough for a Friday rush, but he pulls another lime toward him and starts cutting.
I wait until the blade goes through the first half.
"Who was that?"
"Bank thing."
He doesn't look up.
I glance toward the untouched water at the end of the bar. "That didn't look like a bank thing."
"It was a bank thing, Autumn."
His voice is easy when he says it. Warm, even. He gives me a small smile before turning the lime under the knife.
I've watched him do this to other people for months.
Give them enough truth that he hasn't technically lied, then find something for his hands to do until they understand the conversation is over.
It looks different from this side of the bar.
"Okay."
The knife stops against the cutting board.
Only for a second.
Then Sam looks at me.
Maybe he expected me to push.
I don't.
A couple at the far end raises a hand, and he goes to them. By the time he comes back, Bex has taken my empty glass and is telling me about somebody trying to swap shifts again.
Sam and I don't mention the man with the folder.
I leave it alone for two days.
That's longer than I usually manage.
The club is slow when I come in again, and Bex has next week's schedule spread across the bar with a pen in one hand. I wait until Sam disappears into the back before turning toward her.
"Who was the guy with the folder?"
She keeps writing. "Told you. Don't know."
"You didn't know who he was." I slide my glass out of the way before she can write through the condensation ring. "You know why he was here."
Her pen stops.
Bex looks up. "You're annoying."
"I'm good at my job."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
I smile.
She doesn't.
"It was financing," she says.
"For Vibes?"
"No."
Bex answers too fast, and I straighten on the stool.
"For what?"
Bex hesitates.
"The Pilsen place."
I stare at her. "Pilsen?"
Now she looks surprised. "He told you?"
"He told me about it over coffee. He made it sound like a someday thing."
"It was." Bex glances toward the back room. "Now he's trying to buy it."
"And the bank said no."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to."
She lets out a breath and sets the pen down.
"There's something old still attached to his name. Company stuff from before Vibes."
"What kind of company stuff?"
Bex goes still, whatever openness was there a second ago closing off.
"That's all I'm telling you."
I hold her eyes for another second, then nod.
"Okay."
Sam comes out of the back room while a regular is calling something to him. He laughs as he crosses toward the other end of the bar, looking nothing like the man who spent the other night cutting limes he didn't need.
I could ask him.
I know exactly what he'd do.
He'd smile. Give me enough. Find something for his hands.
So I don't.
I finish my drink, go home and open my laptop.
The first night, I tell myself I'm only looking.
That lasts about twenty minutes.
The old company isn't difficult to find. Neither is the dissolution paperwork from three years ago. Most of it looks exactly like what you'd expect from two people who intended to shut a business down. Accounts closed. Assets divided. Paperwork filed.
Then I get to the last page.
One signature is missing.
I go back through the filing because there has to be more to the problem than that.
There is one more piece. A judgment tied to the old company is still sitting in the record with both names attached to it. It is the kind of thing that looks small until a lender starts deciding whether unfinished business is a risk they want to inherit.
One unfinished page means the company never finished dying, and the judgment means the old mess is still attached to Sam's name. For a lender looking at another bar, that is enough uncertainty to make Pilsen harder than it needs to be.
I sit back.
Three years, one judgment and one missing signature.
Sam would rather let all of it sit there than call the man whose name belongs on that line.
That tells me more about what happened between them than anything Sam has.
Finding the former partner is easy. Understanding what might make him move takes longer.
He owns a restaurant on the north side now. The reviews are good. So is business, from the look of it. His social media is full of staff dinners, charity events and construction pictures from a second location he's getting ready to open.
I keep scrolling, waiting to find something that makes him easy to hate.
Nothing does. He's not a monster. That would be simpler. He's a man with a business he cares about and another one coming, which means he has something Sam hasn't had for three years.
A reason to finish this.
I go back to the dissolution filing. The problem isn't really the paperwork. It's getting two men who clearly never want to speak again through one conversation long enough to sign it.
I close the laptop. Then open it again.
The second night, I stop researching and start building.
Sam has already spent three years not making this call, so the first thing I decide is that nobody gets to make it for him.
No lawyer opening the conversation. No formal letter arriving on his desk. No third person giving either of them somewhere to hide.
Sam calls him. After that, the problem gets easier.
The former partner wants the same thing Sam does, even if neither of them has admitted it yet. He has a new restaurant to open. Sam wants Pilsen. Neither one benefits from dragging a dead company behind them for another three years.
So I start there. Clean dissolution. Quiet. Done.
I write the opening line, hate it and delete it. The next one sounds too much like a lawyer despite the fact that I am very much not one.
By the third version, I can hear Sam saying it.
That's the one I keep. Then I write what the other man is most likely to say back. And what Sam says after that.
If he claims he thought the company was already dissolved, Sam doesn't argue about whose fault it was.
He brings him back to the signature. If he says he wants his lawyer involved, fine.
Sam gives him room to do that without turning one page into a war.
If he gets angry, Sam doesn't have to meet him there.
Every version of the conversation comes back to the same place.
Finish it.
I work until my coffee goes cold, then make another cup and keep going.
At some point I pull up the coverage surrounding the new restaurant again. The opening has enough attention that a public dispute with a former partner would be inconvenient.
Useful information. I do not put it in the script. Sam doesn't need to threaten him. The man already knows what he has to lose. I make a list of the trade outlets covering the opening anyway. That part is for me. By the time I'm finished, the document is three pages long.
No big speech. No clever trap. Nothing designed to punish anybody for what happened three years ago.
Just a path through the conversation Sam hasn't been willing to have.
I read it from the beginning and make myself stop changing things.
Every branch ends in the same place. Sign the paper. Finish the company. Get Pilsen. It's after two when I finally set the laptop aside.
I've spent four hours across two nights figuring out how to get Sam the bar he told me about before either of us was willing to say much of anything about what was happening between us.
A few days ago, Anna offered me London. I said no before Sam woke up. Now I'm sitting in my apartment building a plan for something he hasn't even told me he needs.
The thought sits there long enough to make me uncomfortable. I don't examine it too closely. The next morning, I print the pages at work and slide them into a plain envelope. No note. He'll know who it's from.