19. Anouk
Anouk
“Ineed to nail this,” I tell Dot after I unceremoniously barge into her office.
She looks up from her screen, eyebrows lifting. “Nail what?”
“The presentation.” I sit across from her. “I want to do this.”
For the longest time, Dot has been nagging me to present more, not worry about the stutter, and just own my data. But I was always reticent. But now I want to make Luther proud.
Dot studies me for a long moment, then smiles slowly. “Good.”
She doesn’t warn me about board meetings or the challenges; she simply gets to work with me.
Dot pulls in Pallavi, Mila, and Ian—no managers, no politics, just people who care about the work and about me.
We book Conference Room 4B every afternoon for an hour, sometimes two.
Sometimes we practice with the lights on full blast and people walking in and out, sometimes with the lights dimmed and a timer ticking loudly in the corner.
Everything they do is designed to make me comfortable with chaos, to get me used to it.
Pallavi drills me on structure. “If they interrupt you about the data logic for the inventory management, you pivot to slide twelve.”
Mila works with me on pacing. “Take a power pause. If you need a moment because you’re stumbling over your words, make it a pause.”
Ian sits in the back and plays devil’s advocate. “What if Jacob Grant challenges your assumptions on supplier elasticity?”
I answer the question.
I record myself on my phone and listen back—wincing, adjusting, repeating.
I practice transitions in the shower.
I whisper numbers while brushing my teeth.
I recite assumptions while biking to work, timing my breaths to traffic lights.
I don’t try to eliminate the stutter. I just work around it.
I build pauses into the slides. I swap out words that trip me up without dumbing anything down.
I anchor myself to the data, where I never feel lost.
By the end of the week, my throat is sore, and my brain feels wrung out—but I am ready.
“You know,” Dot tells me a couple of days before the presentation, “most people think confidence is about not hesitating. It’s not. It’s about knowing where you’re going even when you slow down.”
I haven’t told Luther about any of this. I want to surprise him. I want him to see how well I present. I can’t wait to see the look on his face. The pride, the awe…no one has looked at me like he does, with such love and affection.
But I’m dying to tell him.
When I see him in the hallway, I have to bite my tongue not to spill everything.
When he texts me about dinner plans, I almost send him a voice memo of me practicing slide seventeen.
I want him to see how hard I’ve worked and how much he means to me.
I go to his place for dinner on my last prep day. According to Dot, I should just relax and not stress about it the day before.
As I ride up the elevator to Luther’s apartment in the Four Seasons, I’m still mesmerized by how my life has changed.
I have a boyfriend. I am dating.
Wow!
I never thought it would happen to me. I never thought I’d find a man I could trust enough to let him in.
Every time he drives me somewhere, rests his hand on my knee at a stoplight, and when his doorman welcomes me, all of it feels surreal.
This is someone else’s life. Not mine.
I love spending time at his place, not because Finn isn’t there, but I think he’s more at ease in his own milieu.
His apartment is immaculate, all clean lines and good light, windows framing the city like a painting.
He cooks and moves around the kitchen with the same ease as Finn.
I sit on the counter, swinging my legs, telling him about the week in fragments that carefully avoid work. It’s important to keep things separate, so we get a break from the stress of the workday.
He’s making duck breast with orange sauce, which he’s done for me before. He poured some excellent Bordeaux to go with it, which he’s also done before.
He’s quiet today. Takes a half-second longer to respond, like he’s distracted. His laughter doesn’t quite reach his eyes. When I touch his arm, he still leans into it—but it feels like he’s elsewhere at the same time.
I tell myself I’m imagining it.
I am, after all, very good at imagining rejection.
Stop it, Anouk. He’s just worried about the board meeting, that’s all. Once that’s done, everything will be back to normal.
We eat at the table on his balcony.
We talk about a book I’m reading. A documentary he saw. Normal things. Neither of us brings up the presentation. We make an effort not to talk about HelixSphere.
But I expected it today, what with him so stressed. He doesn’t broach the topic, and I don’t either.
I tell myself, it’s better this way.
After dinner, we curl up on the couch. He pulls me against him, his arm heavy and solid around my shoulders. I fit there easily now, like my body has learned the shape of his.
He kisses my hair.
When we go to bed, he’s gentle in the way that has come to mean everything to me.
He touches me as if I matter.
Still, afterward, lying in the dark, my head on his chest, I sense it again. That faint tension under his skin. Like a held breath.
My mind starts to spiral.
Is he regretting us?
Is this the part where he realizes I’m too much? Too complicated? Too broken in ways that don’t show until you’re close enough to feel them?
Is he getting ready to dump me?
Stop it, Anouk, don’t give your insecurities a microphone into your soul. You’ll only hurt yourself. Don’t be the person who assumes the worst and shrinks before anything has actually happened.
Luther shifts, his hand sliding along my arm, fingers lacing with mine. The contact steadies me.
In the morning, sunlight spills across the bed, pale and forgiving. He’s already awake, watching me like he’s been doing it for a while.
“Morning,” he murmurs.
“Morning.”
He kisses my forehead. Then my nose. Then my mouth. Softly, like we have all the time in the world.
Whatever I’m afraid of doesn’t live in that kiss.
Still, as I get dressed, pulling on the change of clothes I brought with me, I know something ominous is hovering at the edges and that the ground under my feet isn’t quite as solid as it was a moment ago.