Chapter Twenty-Eight
Autumn
Rain has been needling the office windows since lunch, thin enough that nobody bothered with umbrellas until the sky decided to mean it. By six, the glass beside my desk is streaked silver and the pavement below shines under headlights.
Most of the team has gone. Priti left with two laptops and a warning not to touch the routing she finished. Gemma caught me staring at the same email for ten minutes.
"Whatever crisis you're manufacturing can wait until morning."
"It isn't manufactured."
"Autumn."
"It's a real email."
"Then it'll be a real email tomorrow."
She was gone before I could argue.
She was wrong about the crisis. She was right about the email.
Sam is somewhere in London proving his claim that the city has buildings, food and several bridges. He sent a picture an hour ago of a pastry the size of his hand.
Sam: This seems excessive.
Me: eat it anyway
Now Anna's face fills my laptop screen from Chicago. She looks at me for approximately three seconds before leaning back in her chair.
"You scheduled this call instead of ambushing me with it, so I assume I should be concerned."
"That feels unfair."
Anna doesn't even blink.
"Is it inaccurate?"
I look through the glass wall of the conference room, then shut the door even though nobody is close enough to hear me.
"I want to finish the extension. All of it. I committed to the second leg and I want to see it through."
Anna waits. She knows me too well to mistake an opening statement for the reason I called.
"And after that?"
"I'm going back to Chicago when the extension is done."
Her expression barely changes, which is irritating because I had prepared for at least one raised eyebrow.
"Keep going."
"That's it? That's all I get?"
"Were you hoping I'd clutch something?"
"A little resistance would make this feel more significant."
Her mouth moves.
Then the smile disappears. "Is this about Sam?"
I look down at my hands. A few months ago I would have answered too quickly, because I would have needed the answer to sound uncomplicated.
"He's part of my life, and I want him there. But he isn't the decision."
Anna stays quiet, so I keep going.
"I thought I wanted the London office. I did want it. I wanted what it represented in my career. I wanted to build the team and make the calls and know somebody trusted me with something that big."
A bus hisses to a stop on the wet street below, its lights sliding across the conference-room wall.
"So what changed?"
"I don't want the next thing I build to belong to somebody else."
The sentence has been sitting in me for weeks. Saying it doesn't make me less grateful for London or less proud of what I did here. It just makes the next part clearer.
Anna folds her arms. "What do you want to build?"
"A firm. Small on purpose." I sit forward.
"Crisis work, reputation strategy, launches when they make sense.
People who are good at making things and not necessarily good at becoming public property because of it.
Authors. Performers. Founders. The kind of clients who get flattened inside a big agency because nobody has time to learn how their world actually works. "
Anna is still long enough that my pulse starts climbing.
"Do you have clients?"
"I have people who would become clients the second they found out I owned an invoice template."
"That isn't a no."
"It isn't a yes either."
She laughs. I do too, but my hands are still tight together on the table.
"I don't want leaving to mean I stop working with you."
Anna leans back and studies me. "Autumn. You do not owe me your career because I hired you."
"I know." It comes out easily, because I do. "That isn't what this is. You took me seriously before my résumé made it convenient. You gave me rooms I hadn't earned on paper yet and expected me to prove I belonged once I got inside. I don't forget that."
She looks away for a moment, which is about as close as Anna gets to being caught by an emotion she didn't schedule.
"What are you proposing?"
"Consulting. Select accounts. The disasters you know I'll be furious about if you hand them to somebody else."
"Your rate goes up, I assume."
"Significantly."
Anna shakes her head. "I created a monster."
"You promoted one."
Her laugh comes through the laptop speakers over the rain. When she settles, she points at the camera.
"Finish the extension. Then send me a real proposal. Not three bullet points and a threat."
"That was one time."
"It was four times."
"Two of those worked."
"Send me the proposal, Autumn."
We spend another ten minutes on things that sound less like an ending and more like logistics. When we hang up, I stay in the darkening conference room with my hands flat on the table.
I said it out loud.
I didn't make Anna guess. I didn't build a whole future in my head and wait for everybody else to notice where I'd gone.
My phone lights up beside the laptop.
Sam: I found another bridge. Starting to think they have too many.
Me: come get me when you're done judging british infrastructure. I have something to tell you
He's outside twenty minutes later with rain in his curls, an umbrella in one hand and a paper bag tucked under the other arm. The downpour has eased to mist, but the pavement is still slick enough to throw every storefront back at itself.
"What's in the bag?"
"Food."
"That's not an answer."
"It's food, Autumn."
Then he takes one look at my face.
"You said you had something to tell me."
Before I left Chicago I might have made him work for it, just to see what he guessed. Instead I step under the umbrella with him and say it.
"I told Anna I'm coming back to Chicago when the extension is done. I'm starting my own firm."
Sam stops walking.
For one second, everything I have ever wanted from him is right there in his face. Relief. Happiness. Something almost disbelieving.
Then he catches himself, and I watch him make room for the part that belongs to me.
"Is that what you want?"
"Yeah. It is."
His shoulders loosen. "Okay. Then tell me about the firm."
I stare at him. "That's your reaction?"
"No." Sam's mouth pulls slightly. "I have another reaction. I'm trying not to make your business plan about the fact that I get you back in the same city."
My throat tightens before I can turn it into a joke.
"You're allowed to be absolutely ecstatic about it."
"I am very fucking happy about that."
I laugh, and Sam bends to kiss me under an umbrella doing a mediocre job of keeping either of us dry. When he pulls back, he takes the laptop bag off my shoulder without asking.
"I can carry that."
I let him.
We start walking again.
"Small roster," I tell him. "Creative people. Performers. Founders. Public-facing people who need somebody keeping the machine from eating the person."
"Does it have a name?"
"No."
"Good."
I turn on him. "Why is that good?"
"Because if you already had a name, a website and office furniture picked out, I'd be worried you forgot to sleep again."
"That's offensive."
"Is it inaccurate?"
I stop under the umbrella and look at him. "Anna said that exact sentence to me an hour ago."
"Then Anna and I are going to get along."
"Absolutely not. I refuse to allow it."
I bump my shoulder into his hard enough to put him half out from under the umbrella. He takes it without complaining and doesn't move the umbrella back over himself.
I tell him about the clients I want and the ones I don't. I tell him Anna will keep feeding me crises until one of us retires. He asks questions. He doesn't solve anything I haven't asked him to solve.
By the time we reach the corner, my bag is on his shoulder, the umbrella is tilted mostly over me, and I'm still talking.
The firm doesn't have a name, an office or a single signed client yet.
For once, I don't need the plan finished before I let somebody else hear it.