Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
“So he damsel-in-distressed you,” Ava says. “Vile.”
It doesn’t feel like an entirely accurate characterization of what happened last night, but I nod emphatically. “The nerve, right?”
“The nerve!” She’s video-calling me from our kitchen, her hair in a topknot as she putters around in her bathrobe making coffee. “Why were you even at a bar with him, Mattie? I thought we were steering clear.”
“We are,” I insist. I’m in a club chair by the fireplace in my room, knees pulled up to my chest like I could hide myself from what happened last night. “It felt like something I needed to do to be professional.”
“So he professionally damsel-in-distressed you.”
What Campbell actually did, I can admit to myself after an entire night playing it back, is extract me from a bad situation without making me feel like a burden. Get a man off my case without being asked. Notice what was happening without being alerted to it.
And then he played the whole thing off as a joke so I didn’t even have to say thank you. Which, I can also admit, I should have.
Every time I close my eyes, I see his hand over the bar top. The way it shook as he reached for my martini. And the way his arm hovered so carefully around me on our walk back to the bar, protective but hesitant.
“And now what,” Ava continues, “you’re going to the spa together?”
“We are not going to the spa together.”
Muffled, from deeper inside our apartment, I hear Lev. “Mattie and Campbell are going to the spa?”
“Not Mattie and Campbell!” I say, raising my voice. “All of us together, as part of our job!”
“I wish my job was to go to the spa,” Ava says.
“You don’t even work in the summer.”
She sighs. “This is true.”
A knock sounds at my door, and I stand from the chair. It’s Saturday morning and Lucia’s booked us all into Wicksteed’s on-site spa for an “amenities immersion.” Lord knows I could use the relaxation.
“I’ve got to go,” I tell Ava. “Can you look at that list of restaurants I sent you for Miami and let me know where you want to make reservations?”
“Yes, yes,” she says, kissing her fingers and wiggling them at me. “Love you.”
“Love you.”
I open the door, and Dexter regards me warily. “Love you, too?”
“Not you.” I slide my phone into the pocket of my yoga pants. “But hi, love you.”
“You, too,” he says as I step into the hall. “Did you see these massages we’re booked for cost three hundred dollars? Krishna’s so jealous I think he might actually show up here and try to get in on it.”
“Not bad as far as work perks go,” I admit as we make for the elevators.
The high-ceilinged hallways are lit by warm, wavering lights—not candles, but special bulbs meant to emulate them (I opened one of the sconces to check).
“Remember when Greg went to Jackson Hole for that pitch last year and we all thought his two-night stay in that ski lodge was, like, the pinnacle?”
“Two nights,” Dexter says, a bit longingly. “Imagine.”
“Oh, come on.” I nudge him with my elbow. “I mean, what would we be doing today, back in Chicago?”
“Not hanging out with our boss, for one thing.” Dexter hits the elevator button. “No offense to Iris, who’d probably rather be home with Hazel than us anyway.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t be going to the spa,” I say. “I’ve never had a massage before.”
“Never?” Dexter’s eyebrows hike. “No wonder you’re so tense.”
“I’m not t—” I start, but Dexter cuts me off with a bark of a laugh.
“Fine,” I mumble as the elevator doors slide shut. “I’m a little tense.”
I fall asleep during my massage. Rookie mistake, probably, but I’m exhausted from spending all night staring at my ceiling while replaying the past few days on a torturous loop.
The proprietary Wicksteed scent is strong enough in here to be hallucinatory, and the sheets are so soft they nearly feel like water. I can’t help it.
When the masseuse gently nudges me awake, I have the distinct feeling that I’ve wasted someone’s three hundred dollars. Also that she thinks I’ve wasted someone’s three hundred dollars.
Dexter and Iris wait for me in the relaxation room, a dimly lit space full of soft lounge chairs and carafes of cucumber water. Hanging out side by side with my boss in fluffy white spa robes was not something I ever pictured in the cards for me, but here we are.
“Hey, Mattie,” she says, smiling as I take the chair beside her. Soothing string music plays softly from hidden speakers in the ceiling. “How was your massage?”
“Um.” I contemplate whether or not to lie, then land on, “So relaxing.”
“Same,” Dexter says on a contented sigh. “I almost fell asleep.”
I take a gulp of cucumber water as Iris leans back and closes her eyes.
“I’d like you both to take the rest of the day off,” she says. Dexter and I look at each other over her prone body. “For real, no working. Put your brains on ice after this week, let things marinate. We’ll get together tomorrow to keep pushing, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, a blatant lie. By the sounds of Dexter’s long-suffering exhale, he knows it. There’s no way I’m taking a full day off with Campbell gallivanting around somewhere in this very spa.
As if he’s been summoned by magic, the door to the relaxation room pushes open and he steps through it.
He’s looking backward over his shoulder and smiling, saying thank you to a woman in a spa uniform.
His white robe, tied at the waist, gapes a bit at his throat so I catch a flash of his chest and the pinked-up line of his collarbone.
His hair is uncombed and wild. I imagine the rest of his body, just out of sight, and the heat of his arm around my back last night in the bar.
Campbell’s as good as it gets. When his eyes find mine, I feel like I’ve been caught committing a felony.
“Hey, Art Room,” Campbell says easily. Walking toward us with his cup of cucumber water like I can’t see the inside line of his left pectoral muscle or the flat, freckled stretch of his sternum.
Like his cheeks aren’t flushed, like his hair’s not mussed, like he’s not one precarious article of clothing away from being naked immediately in front of all of us.
When he lowers into the chair beside me, I see a glimpse of his thigh and swallow a scream.
You hate this person, I think. But it’s hard to hold on to, the words dissolving the same second I summon them.
“Not too shabby, right?” Campbell looks between the three of us. “I guess Soraya and Nolan are still in there.”
Who the hell thought it was a good idea for all six of us to be in this room at the same time? Campbell adjusts his robe, and I stare so pointedly at the ceiling my eye twitches.
You good, French? he asked me last night.
Decidedly no.
I clutch at the opening of my own robe, bunching it around my throat.
I’m very aware of my bare legs stretched out on the chair in front of me, my feet just there for Campbell to look at.
I feel acutely conscious that he could glance over at any moment and see my pinky toes.
This strikes me as incomprehensibly intimate.
When I start rubbing my feet together, Campbell raises his eyebrows.
“You cold, French?” His eyes drag from my feet all the way up my legs and, finally, to my face.
“No!” I chirp. I turn to Iris, tilting my head a full ninety degrees so Campbell’s entirely out of my sight line. “Didn’t they say there was a sauna? I might go find that.”
“Back through the pool,” Campbell says. He points to a door at the end of the relaxation room marked Swim. “It’s pretty great. I think I sweat out every drop of moisture in my entire body.”
I make a muffled sound and practically vault myself off the chair and away from him.
The last thing I need to do is picture Campbell—what, naked?
With a towel over his lap?—in the sauna, but it’s already happening.
I blink hard, but behind my eyelids it’s just the line of Campbell’s collarbone, that slice of his chest. His tanned, freckled skin framed in stark contrast by the white robe.
“Enjoy!” Iris calls after me.
“Try not to steal any pens!” Campbell adds as the door swings shut.
It’s a bad joke, neither as quick nor as clever as I know him to be.
I think of Campbell’s shaking hand and his eyes on my bare legs and thrust myself into the sauna still completely wrapped up in my robe. Something’s got Campbell off his game, too. Something that is, maybe, someone.
I sit there until I’m so hot I can’t think at all.
I spend the rest of the day justifying my own lunacy to myself.
As I sit in my massive hotel room, drafting pitch language on my computer because I can’t do it in my notebook.
As I pace in front of the window, trying to brainstorm Wicksteed ideas instead of counting Campbell’s chest freckles from memory.
By evening, I’ve gotten the logic to go something like this: Campbell’s work was so impressive at the headline-off that it affected me from a purely professional perspective.
Then that gross man in his cowboy hat made me uncomfortable, and Campbell happened to help.
Which also affected me, as can only be psychologically expected.
Then I saw him a little bit naked and I’m a human being with eyes. Only natural, there.
It’s all explainable. I still hate Campbell, and everything is completely fine. I’m repeating this like an affirmation—I still hate Campbell, and everything is completely fine—when I head down to the resort’s convenience store past eight to finally find some food.
The room is high-ceilinged and brightly lit, with a sign over the door labeling it The Pantry.
It’s full of phone chargers and eye drops and individually wrapped snacks.
I was too buried in my work (my work) to remember dinner, which leaves the Pantry and its fun-size wares my only remaining option.
I still hate Campbell, and everything is completely fine.
I repeat it to myself as I pick up a tin of Pringles.
I still hate Campbell, and everything is completely fine.
As I reach for an apple from a round wicker basket.
I still hate Campbell, and everything is completely fine.
As I grab a ruled notebook from a corner full of office supplies.
I still hate Campbell, and everything is completely fine.
As I look up and jump nearly out of my skin at the sight of Campbell Porter in gym shorts and headphones, walking directly into the Pantry.
“Yes, Ma, but I can’t get in until seven. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you; we’ll have to go Saturday because—” He shuts up the second he sees me.
It would be funny, if my stomach weren’t doing a nauseating free fall clear down to my feet. Campbell’s been working out, his shirt ringed in sweat at the neckline and his hair damp. Why is this man always so flushed? His pink cheeks make me want to hide behind my purchases like a child.
“Let me call you back,” he says, holding my gaze.
“No need,” I say, quickly. I try to step around him, but he stops me with one, outstretched fingertip pressed to the notebook in my arms.
“Is this you admitting defeat?”
I meet his eyes, dark and glossy. He blinks, and they shimmer gold.
“What?” We’re standing too close to each other, corralled by the narrow aisles of food. I can smell his shampoo, Wicksteed’s proprietary formula, and his sweat.
Campbell taps the notebook. “I’d give yours back, you know.”
I lift my chin. “Would you?”
He smiles, slanted and taunting. “If you asked nicely.”
“Well.” I shove away the image of his bare collarbone. “That’s not happening.”
Campbell lifts his eyebrows. “No? I’d settle for getting my pen back.”
“I know you have more of them.” I force myself not to break eye contact, though in truth it’s making me feel a little out of breath to hold his gaze. “I saw you using one yesterday, when you were working in the lobby with Soraya.”
He smiles, like this pleases him. God damn it. “Spying on me?”
I scoff, starting to turn away. “You wish.”
“Maybe,” he says, lightly. Then he waves at the small pile in my arms. “What’s all this?”
I look down at it: notebook, apple, Pringles. Maybe? “A square meal.”
“This is your dinner?”
“Yes?”
“You’re kidding.” Campbell plucks the Pringles out of my arms. “Do you know how they make these?”
Who is this man, Ava? What does he care how I’m nourishing myself?
“No,” I say, “and I don’t want to.”
“Well, you can’t survive on potato composite alone.”
I snatch back the can. “I can, and I’m going to. Pringles are my stress food.”
“Are you stressed?”
I glare at him. At the exact same height, our eyes have always been perfectly level. “Maybe,” I echo.
I think Campbell’s going to say something else. Provoke me. Force me to buy a snack with protein in it. But something passes over his eyes—a flicker I don’t recognize—and he just blinks.
“Should be,” he says, finally. The tone of his voice feels affected, not quite honest. He meets my gaze one last time before stepping around me toward a display of Gatorade. “Full send, French. Enjoy your chips.”