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“No,” said Zoe.
Nick stopped and frowned. “No? You think there’s a better way for you to learn this stuff?”
“No,” said Zoe. “I just…”
“Then what?”
“Just not today.”
Nick shook his head. “Walking’s too hard? There’s something you’d rather work on? How you chew gum could be improved. If you insist on chewing it. Which, actually, Vanessa wouldn’t chew gum. So improve on it by not chewing it—how’s that.”
“No, no,” continued Zoe – she felt her stomach tightening as she reached the crux of the point. “I need a break.”
“A break?!” For someone who had spent his adult life drawing a salary from a company for which he did nothing, Nick seemed surprisingly unfamiliar with the concept of ‘time off’. “What do you need a break for?!”
“It’s my Mom’s birthday this weekend…”
“She’ll have another one next year. Just send her a card.”
“I’d really like to be there. There’s a family barbeque…”
“Sounds horrifying. You should be thanking me for giving you a good excuse not to be there.”
“I enjoy it,” said Zoe pointedly.
“No,” said Nick firmly. “You don’t enjoy barbeque. Sabrina… I mean, Vanessa wouldn’t enjoy barbeque.”
“I’m not Vanessa,” Zoe reminded him. “And I don’t have to be her for a little while yet. For now I still get to be myself. Zoe. Remember her? And, I gotta tell you – Zoe likes barbeques.”
But Nick still shook his head. “There’s far too much work to do. There’s the walk, the whole gum thing, dining out, not talking with your mouth full…”
“Aren’t we ahead of schedule anyway?”
Nick tried to avoid her gaze, his own well-prepared schedule was suddenly his undoing. Days had been set aside at the start of this project for Zoe to be taught good business practice, but that had proved unnecessary when it turned out that Zoe knew what she was doing on the business front. Since then they had been working a few days ahead in the schedule, which meant, logically, that a weekend off would not make them behind, it would merely put them back on schedule.
“I still…” Nick began to object, although now rather half-heartedly.
“I’m going,” Zoe interrupted – time to cut to the chase. “If you choose to fire me because of it then that’s your call. But I am going. I need time to be myself.” That, if she was honest, was the real reason, the reason she could not tell Nick.
This past week she had felt as if she was losing track of who she was, losing the real Zoe behind the façade of the Zoe-Vanessa hybrid which Nick was creating. She had never even considered that a possibility, after all; who would want to be Vanessa? Who would be that big of a bitch by choice? But it was not as simple as that – while she still had no desire to be Vanessa per se, to be like Vanessa but not Vanessa was different. There were aspects of Vanessa’s lifestyle that were seductive and tempting: the clothes, the food, the glamour, the attitude. It drew Zoe in a way that she had not anticipated that it would.
She wanted – she needed – to put it aside for a few days and remind herself of who she really was before she allowed herself to be subsumed totally into this exciting new world into which Nick was indoctrinating her. And where better to get in touch with your old self than with family? If you want to be brought back down to earth, to get a taste of reality, then family will do it every time. Well, maybe not every time; a lot depends on the type of family that you have.
Nick frowned from behind his desk. “You really want to spend time with your family?”
“Yes.”
Nick nodded to himself. He seemed to be wondering: why would anyone want to spend time with family?
“Well, okay,” he finally accepted. “If it’s really that important to you. There’s certainly stuff here I can be getting on with while you’re gone.”
There was something about the way he said the word ‘certainly’ that made Zoe think that this ‘stuff’ he would be getting on with was the same stuff about which he and Adam had had their recent heated discussion. Something was wrong in Nick’s world, and while Nick’s world was a world in which most people would have given an arm and a leg to live, that something was clearly of importance to him. But it was none of Zoe’s business, he had not wanted to talk about it, and even if he had, it seemed unlikely that there was anything she could do to help.
“Why don’t you come with me?”
Even Zoe was surprised to hear the words coming out of her mouth. She was sure that she had not intended to say them, she was not at all sure of by what mechanism they had managed to get themselves said. But now they were out there and there seemed to be no way of taking them back.
The response those words got from Nick was one that Zoe would never have predicted and made it all the more impossible for her to take them back. His face seemed to light up with a little bulb of hope.
“Really? You’re sure? I wouldn’t be a bother? I mean; I don’t know anyone.”
“You’d be very welcome,” said Zoe, tentatively, wondering why on earth she had impulsively invited him.
He would be welcome – her family stood behind a fine Southern tradition of hospitality. They would feed anyone who needed feeding until they were ready to burst – and then some. On the other hand, having your boss along to a family party was… well, this was supposed to be her holiday not his, and this was the sort of thing liable to make it very difficult to relax. How was she supposed to be herself – and not Vanessa – for a weekend, when the man forcing her in the other direction was going to be there, pointing out how she walked, rolling his eyes at her clothes, tutting as she helped herself to second helping of ribs?
She looked at Nick and saw the hope glimmering in his eyes. She sighed. “You should come.”
The flight South was not the most comfortable one Zoe had ever taken. Which was odd, because Nick had insisted on paying for the tickets (and Zoe had let him) and, in many ways, this was the most comfortable flight she had ever taken – the seats in first class were huge and engulfing, there was ample leg room for someone twice Zoe’s height, and there was complimentary food and drink. (Zoe always found it odd that the complimentary stuff was saved for the people who could have afforded to pay their own way while the poor folk back in the cheap seats had to pay outrageous prices for a bag of pretzels.)
Physically, it was all extremely comfortable and Zoe could not fault it. But the conversation, and the general atmosphere that seemed to hang in the air between her and Nick, was far from comfortable. It was a long flight (or at least it seemed like one) and they had exhausted their topics of approved conversation (family and the weather) before they had taxied to the end of the runway. In the end, Zoe feigned sleep to avoid further half-hearted attempts at chat – it was just too painful.
All in all, the experience of the flight did not bode well for the rest of the weekend.
At the airport, Zoe’s father, Davis, collected the pair in his pick-up. Zoe made the introductions, Nick politely said hello and Davis touched the brim of baseball cap in greeting. Zoe was confident that her father had a head under his cap, but it existed to her only as an assumption. Davis Blanchard wore his cap when he worked, when he played and when he slept. He had even worn a cap to Granny Blanchard’s funeral (black for mourning, of course). The odd thing was that he had about two dozen different caps, so there must have been times when he took one off to put another on, and yet Zoe could not remember ever seeing this momentous sight.
At the baggage claim her father remarked on her changed appearance, but Zoe brushed it aside, not wanting to discuss it at that moment. Davis hoisted her bag over his strong shoulder and brought the pair out to the parking lot as he filled her in on the latest small-town gossip.
“What is it you do, son?” asked Davis, as he drove back to the Blanchard place, out in the country.
> “I own a bar,” said Nick – that was what he did, CEO was what he was but he didn’t really do anything.
“You work it?” asked Davis, a man of few words.
“Sorry?”
“You work the bar? Pull the drinks?”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Nick nodded. “No sense owning a bar if you don’t tend bar.”
“Good man,” nodded Davis. “Owners own and workers work. But when owners work – then you know they know their shit.”
Davis Blanchard had a way of making everything sound like a deep profundity about the nature of being.
“How’s Mom?” asked Zoe, anxious to pull the conversation away from Nick in case the question of how they knew each other came up – she was not keen to tell her family that she was learning ‘better behavior’. She had been very vague about the nature of their relationship when she’d called to tell her family she was bringing a ‘guest’ for the weekend. She had a feeling that they would not respond well to the idea that they had not already taught her all she needed to know.
“Not wild about turning the big five oh,” said Davis. “I told her: it’s just a number. Take the five off fifty, what have you got? Nothing. And that’s what it means. Makes you think.”
“Did that comfort her?” asked Zoe.
“Hard to say.”
The Blanchard place had been a farm and a ranch in its day, but that day was long passed and the land had been parceled up into neat (but still picturesque) acreages that were worth little and yet still taxed the pockets of the men and women who lived there. It had been a great place to grow up – at least Zoe thought so, and every time she returned she found herself wondering why on earth she had left. They were met at the door by Olive Blanchard, a tidy woman with an unlined face who didn’t look the fifty she was turning. She hugged Zoe, exclaiming over her new hair and makeup, before turning to Nick.
