Bennet
Deciding on my career over my emotions, I walk back in and take my seat, doing my best to keep my mouth trained on professional mode.
The board has left, likely headed to another ‘Sullivan fucked up’ meeting.
Rosalie's eyebrows haven't straightened out since I sat back down.
She has the look of a woman who is one wrong word away from dragging me into the hallway by my ear, and I respect the restraint she's showing by not doing it.
I tune back in somewhere around "—requires cooperation from everyone in this room, including you, Mr. Sullivan."
She doesn't even look up when she says my name. Just keeps writing whatever she's writing in that portfolio, like I'm a line item she's already accounted for.
"So," she sets her pen down. "Where would you like to start?"
I take a breath.
"I have a date tomorrow."
Rosalie's head comes up.
Blaire pauses mid-note.
"She lives in the building," I continue, since I've started and may as well finish. "We work out together."
A brief silence in which both women are looking at me, and I am looking at neither of them.
"Good." Blaire's pen moves again. "Where are you taking her?"
The question irritates me in a way I can't fully account for.
Not the question itself, the professionalism of it.
The way she's already filing it as a strategy piece, something useful, a building block.
She doesn't know me. She thinks she walked in here and read a stranger from a file and she did, except she didn't, because I am not a stranger and she doesn't know that, and the not-knowing has been sitting in my chest since she walked through that door and has not gotten smaller.
Fuck. I need to start smoking.
"Verona," I say. "I was going to take her to Verona."
Blaire and Rosalie look up at the same time with expressions so similar I would find it funny under other circumstances.
"The restaurant," Rosalie says slowly. "In this building."
"Yes."
"The building in which you live," Blaire adds.
"Correct."
"And work in." Blaire again.
"Also correct."
She sets her pen down carefully, the way you set something down when you're carefully choosing your next words.
"Mr. Sullivan. You cannot take a woman you're trying to impress to a restaurant where every member of staff knows your name, your order, and your standing reservation.
That is not a date. That's a home court advantage wrapped in a breadbasket. "
Rosalie converts something into a cough. Unconvincingly.
"It's a good restaurant," I say with a shrug.
"I'm sure it's exceptional. It's also a power move so obvious it will read as either arrogance or insecurity, and neither works for the image we're building." She tilts her head. "What do you know about her? What does she like?"
I think about Jenn. Her elaborate squats. Her practiced smile. The way she said some other time like she was keeping score. The way I walked across the gym floor and said You're of childbearing age like a man who has never once successfully interacted with another human being in a romantic context.
"She likes—" I start. "She works out."
Blaire looks at me.
"In the mornings," I add.
"Does she have interests? Hobbies? Food preferences? Anything that would indicate what kind of experience would feel like an effort rather than a convenience?"
The problem is, I have spoken to Jenn a total of perhaps eleven minutes across eight months of proximity, and this morning's interaction does not reflect well on either of us.
"I'll find out," I say.
"Before tomorrow?"
"I'll make it work."
She holds my gaze for a moment.
"I'll send you a list of appropriate venues by end of day," she says, writing in her little fucking notebook. Write this! I scream inside my head, mentally shooting her the middle finger with both hands.
"Somewhere that requires a reservation you had to work for, where the press might see you but not obviously, and she can talk about afterward without the story being he took me downstairs."
"Downstairs," I repeat.
"You live here, Mr. Sullivan. Everything in this building is downstairs. She should feel like you came to get her, not like you pressed an elevator button."
Rosalie has gone back to studying the window.
I look at the side of her face and make a mental note to address her amusement later, privately, at length.
"Fine," I say. "Send me the list."
"I will." Blaire gathers her laptop, her little fucking notebook and rises.
She has the posture of someone who has accomplished exactly what she came for.
Well fucking yay for you. "I'll also need thirty minutes with you this week — just the two of us — to go over the full strategy before I present Thursday. Your assistant can find the time."
What kind of poison can I find before then?
"I'll have her reach out," I say, and force a smile that probably looks like a very toothy threat.
She nods. Extends her hand across the table.
I stand and take it.
She is looking at me with the same focused pleasant expression that I’m giving her. She still doesn't know. Ten years and she is standing two feet away from me shaking my hand and she does not know.
I let go.
"Thursday, Mrs. Monroe."
"Thursday, Mr. Sullivan." She turns and moves toward the door, and I watch her ass as she goes because I cannot seem to stop myself.
Call the fucking therapist.
The door clicks shut.
Rosalie turns from the window and looks at me.
"The gym neighbor," she says finally.
"Please, not right now, Rose."
"You told your PR consultant about your date before you told me."
"I said please."
"Michael—"
"Rose." I gather my folders. "Don't."
She watches me as I walk to the door.
"She's good," Rosalie says quietly behind me. "At what she does. She's good, Michael."
I stop with my hand on the door.
"Yeah," I say. "She is."
I walk out.