Chapter 9
The Ghost and the Garden
The break room in the Finance Department was a sterile box of white laminate and humming vending machines, but on this particular Friday, it felt like a war room of admiration. The topic, as it had been for weeks, was Liam.
"Did you see the budget proposal for the Singapore eco-resort?
" Sarah, a senior accountant with a penchant for cynicism, was staring at her tablet with something akin to religious awe.
"He actually factored in the carbon offset tax and the local timber inflation rates for the next three years. Who does that?"
"Liam does," Jessica sighed, stirring her coffee with a plastic spoon.
She was younger, fresh out of NYU, and made no secret of the fact that she rerouted her walk to the printer just to pass by the glass walls of the design studio.
"Most of the architects here treat the budget like a suggestion.
They draw a flying saucer and then get mad when I tell them we can't afford anti-gravity thrusters.
But Liam? He draws a paradise and hands me the receipt for the seeds. "
Emi sat at the edge of the round table, nursing a cup of herbal tea. She listened, a small, melancholy smile playing on her lips.
"He’s into that sustainable tropical brutalism now," Sarah continued, tapping the screen. "Concrete and vines. Heavy structures that look like they grew out of the earth. It’s genius. And the client approved it in one meeting. One! Usually, we’re fighting over the cost of doorknobs for months."
"He’s a wizard," Jessica declared. "A hot, six-foot-three wizard with a jawline that could cut glass."
"He’s a partner in waiting," Sarah corrected, though she didn't disagree with the description. "Management says seventy percent of the new retainers this quarter are solely because of his reputation. At twenty-eight? It’s unheard of."
Emi looked down at her tea. Twenty-eight.
He was a prodigy, a golden boy who had risen through the ranks with the speed of a rocket.
She was thirty now, two years his senior.
She had started at the firm five years ago, desperate for a job, desperate for a visa, desperate for a distraction.
Liam had already been there for two years by then, a rising star even at twenty-three.
She remembered seeing him back then—a quiet, intense young man who always held the elevator door for people but never made eye contact. Now, he was the firm’s crown jewel.
"Do you think he's single?" Jessica asked, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "I heard he lives in the Upper East Side. Probably has a model girlfriend stashed away."
"I heard he's a monk," Sarah snorted. "Married to the job. Works out like a maniac, rides a motorcycle, goes home. That’s it."
Emi felt a sharp pang in her chest. He tried not to be, she thought. He tried to ask someone out on Monday. And she lied to his face.
"He's not a monk," Emi said softly.
Both women turned to look at her.
"Oh?" Sarah raised an eyebrow. "You have intel, Emi? The mysterious Manager of Finance speaks?"
Emi felt the heat rise in her cheeks. "No. Just... intuition. He seems like someone who feels things deeply. He puts nature and earth first in his designs, right? You can't do that if you don't have a heart."
"True," Jessica sighed dreamily. "I walked by him yesterday near the elevators. He smelled like cedarwood and rain. I almost dropped my spreadsheets."
Emi forced a laugh, but inside, she was screaming.
She knew that smell. She knew the warmth of his presence in a cold stairwell.
She knew the way his eyes crinkled when he teased her about being the "Underground HR Manager.
" And she knew, with a sickening certainty, that she was the reason the stairwell was empty now.
The afternoon dragged on, a slow march of spreadsheets and quarterly projections. Emi’s mind, usually a fortress of focus, kept drifting.
She thought about her arrival in New York five years ago. She had come with Tracey’s advice ringing in her ears: Make him regret it. She had come with the "Cape Town Surprise" jar money converted into dollars, which amounted to pitifully little in this city. She had come to find Ran.
She had spent the first six months haunting the places she thought a successful businessman would go.
She walked Wall Street. She checked the directories of every major firm.
She even stood outside the headquarters of CarbonBlack Energy’s New York branch, shivering in the winter wind, waiting for a ghost.
He wasn't there. There was no record of a Ran Coetzee in the system. No alumni listing from the university. Nothing. It was as if he had evaporated over the Atlantic Ocean.
The realization had nearly broken her. The betrayal was total.
He hadn't just left her; he had erased himself to ensure she couldn't follow.
So, she had done the only thing she could do.
She survived. She got a job. She worked her way up.
She sent money back to Pietermaritzburg.
She bought expensive clothes to cover the scars of her poverty.
She built a life that looked perfect from the outside.
But inside, she was still the girl waiting by the phone. And then, Liam.
Liam, who was everything Ran wasn't. Ran was a solar flare—bright, burning, chaotic.
Liam was the North Star—steady, cool, guiding.
He was "half-samurai," as the office rumors went, possessed of a quiet dignity that was undeniably attractive.
He was hard to get, hard to know, but for some reason, he had chosen her to talk to. And she panicked.
At 2:00 PM, Emi stood up from her desk. Her legs moved on autopilot. She grabbed her pack of cigarettes and her book, her heart hammering a hopeful rhythm against her ribs.
Maybe today, she told herself. Maybe he forgives easily. Maybe he just had a busy week.
She walked to the emergency stairwell. She opened the heavy door.
Empty.
The concrete steps were cold and silent. There was no scent of cedarwood. No tall figure in a three-piece suit leaning against the wall with a playful grin. Just the dust motes dancing in the dim light.
Emi sat down on her step. She lit a cigarette, but it tasted bitter. She opened her book, but the words swam before her eyes.
He was avoiding her. It was a "Liam thing"—she knew enough about him now to realize that.
He was a man of precision and dignity. He wouldn't force his company where it wasn't wanted.
He had taken her "no" with absolute respect, and now he was giving her the space she claimed to need for her imaginary boyfriend.
"You idiot," she whispered, exhaling smoke into the void. "You absolute idiot."
She waited for ten minutes. Then twenty. At 2:30 PM, she stomped out the cigarette and went back to her desk, her heart heavy with the weight of missed opportunity.
At 5:00 PM, the office began to clear out.
Emi packed her bag slowly. She needed to walk past the elevators to get to the exit.
It was a masochistic ritual she had developed over the last four days.
As she approached the bank of elevators, the doors to the executive lift—the one that serviced the 23rd floor where the partners and senior architects sat—slid open.
Emi froze.
It was him. Liam.
He was standing in the center of the car, surrounded by two other senior partners.
He was wearing the charcoal suit from Monday, looking devastatingly handsome and utterly untouchable.
He was listening to the older man speak, nodding thoughtfully, holding a roll of blueprints under his arm. He looked up.
His dark brown eyes met hers across the lobby. Time seemed to stutter. Emi’s breath hitched. She took a half-step forward, her lips parting. She wanted to wave. She wanted to shout, I lied! I’m single! Let’s go to the bistro!
But Liam didn't smile. He didn't frown, either. He simply offered her a polite, almost imperceptible nod—the kind you give to a stranger on the subway—and then returned his attention to the partner beside him. The doors slid shut, cutting him off from view.
Emi stood there in the lobby, surrounded by the rush of the Friday commute, feeling colder than she ever had in the snow.
He wasn't angry. That would have been easier.
He was indifferent. He had closed the file on her.
He had calculated the structural integrity of a relationship with her, found it lacking, and moved on to the next project.
She gulped, fighting back the sting of tears. She pushed through the revolving doors and out into the noise of Manhattan, hailing a cab with a ferocity that startled the driver.
Emi’s apartment in Brooklyn was a far cry from the cramped house in Pietermaritzburg, but tonight, it felt just as lonely. She threw her bag on the couch and went straight to the kitchen, pouring a large glass of wine.
She needed an anchor. She needed the only person in the world who knew the truth about Ran and the reason she was so broken.
She dialed Tracey on video call.
It was morning in South Africa. Tracey answered on the third ring, her face pixelated but comforting. She was in the kitchen, the sun streaming in behind her.
"Hey, New York," Tracey smiled, though she squinted at the screen. "You look terrible. Is it late there?"
"It's Friday night," Emi said, curling up on her sofa with the wine. "And yes, I feel terrible."
Tracey stopped wiping the counter. She sat down, bringing the phone closer. "What happened? Did you lose a client? Is it the job?"
"It's a man," Emi confessed.
Tracey rolled her eyes, but affectionately. "Let me guess. He’s rich, he’s handsome, and he lives in a penthouse. What’s the problem? Did he turn out to be a serial killer?"
"He's an architect," Emi said. "Liam. He’s... Tracey, he’s wonderful. He’s kind. He’s smart. He listens to me. He makes me feel calm."
"Okay..." Tracey urged. "This sounds good. Why are you crying into your Merlot?"
"Because I messed it up," Emi choked out. "He asked me out on Monday. He stood in the stairwell in a three-piece suit and looked at me like I was the only person in the building, and he asked me to dinner."
"And?"
"And I told him I had a boyfriend."
Tracey went silent. The connection crackled for a second.
"You did what?" Tracey asked, her voice flat.
"I panicked!" Emi defended herself, wiping her eyes. "I got scared, Tracey. I thought about Ran. I thought about how it felt when he left. I couldn't do it again. I couldn't let someone in just to have them leave me."
"So you lied?" Tracey sighed, rubbing her temples. "Emi, honestly."
"I know! And now he’s ignoring me. Not in a mean way, but in a... professional way. He thinks I’m unavailable. He’s respecting the lie."
Tracey looked at her sister through the screen, her expression hardening into the matriarchal look that Emi knew well.
"Emi, look at me."
Emi sniffled, looking at the screen.
"Ran is gone," Tracey said. "He has been gone for five years. He didn't just leave the town; he left you. He is a ghost. You are letting a ghost haunt your apartment and ruin your life."
"It's not that simple—"
"It is that simple," Tracey cut her off. "You worked your ass off to get to New York. You saved. You studied. You cried yourself to sleep for years. Did you do all that just to be miserable in a nicer zip code?"
Emi shook her head.
"This Liam," Tracey continued. "Does he treat you like Ran did?"
"No," Emi said. "He treats me... better. More like an equal. Ran treated me like a queen, but Liam treats me like... like a partner."
"Then fix it," Tracey commanded.
"How? He won't even look at me."
"You’re a Manager of Finance," Tracey said. "You solve problems for a living. You calculated the risk, and you got it wrong. Now you need to recalculate. You go to him. You tell him the truth."
"Tell him about Ran?" Emi asked, terrified.
"Tell him you lied because you were scared," Tracey said. "Men like honesty, Emi. If he’s as smart as you say he is, he’ll understand fear.
But he won't understand silence. If you let this weekend go by without fixing it, he’s going to move on.
A man like that doesn't stay single because he has to; he stays single because he’s waiting. Don't make him wait for nothing."
Emi took a long sip of wine. She thought about the stairwell. She thought about the elevator. She thought about the "half-samurai" patience Liam possessed.
"You really think I should just... tell him?"
"I think if you don't," Tracey said softly, "you’re going to spend the next five years wondering 'what if' just like you did with Ran. And you deserve better than a life of 'what ifs', Emi. You deserve the dinner. You deserve the guy in the suit."
Emi nodded slowly. The advice settled in her chest, heavy but solid. Tracey was right. She had let the trauma of the past dictate her future for too long.
"Okay," Emi whispered. "Okay. I'll fix it."
"Good," Tracey smiled. "Now go to sleep. You need to look gorgeous when you apologize. No puffy eyes."
"Thanks, Trace. Give the girls a kiss for me."
"Love you, Sisi."
The call ended. Emi sat in the silence of her apartment. It wasn't the suffocating silence of Pietermaritzburg anymore. It was the expectant silence of New York City.
She stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the skyline. Somewhere out there, in the Upper East Side, Liam was probably awake. Maybe he was reading. Maybe he was working.
She wasn't going to wait for the emergency stairwell on Monday. That was passive. That was the old Emi.
She went to her desk and pulled out a piece of company letterhead. She picked up a pen. She wasn't going to text him—that felt cheap. She wasn't going to email him—that was too corporate.
She began to write. It wasn't a budget proposal. It was a confession. And for the first time in five years, she wasn't writing to a ghost. She was writing to a man who was very much alive, hoping that on Monday, she could convince the North Star to shine on her one more time.