Martin:
Where are you? I need to schedule the office panic.
Ezra:
Call me.
Noah:
Beatrice. Please?—
“Mom” flashes on my screen, surprising the ever-loving fudge out of me. The photo she insisted I use is her best profile from 1998, the exact angle she used to show photographers. She hasn’t called to check on my well-being since I left. I’ve received only three phone calls over the past year, which were to summon me to some gathering or another so the family would appear picture-perfect.
Letting it go straight to voicemail, I haul my bag over my shoulder, get my carry-on in tow, and head toward the gate.
Before Noah pointed out his limits, I didn’t realize I was using everyone around me as a crutch while I was trying to find myself. Maeve, Martin, my tiny apartment, even Betty.
It’s odd to say, but he showed me that people can be totally independent even if the other party doesn’t want that. I want to be independent before I decide to build something with someone, because I want to bring my whole self to the table. And I don’t think Noah’s ready to do the same. There will always be limits, and I will not keep following others’ while ignoring my own.
44
Noah
I don’t seeit coming.
I step onto our floor with a hanging head, busted plan, and fresh list of mea culpas loaded. Only to find the chair by her desk turned a perfect forty-five degrees, the plant freshly watered and angled to the light, the pen cup filled with the blue ones (I pretend I don’t have a favorite, but she knows I do), and all her personal belongings gone.
Her monitors are dark.
For a heartbeat, none of it computes. Then Martin materializes out of nowhere, clutching his fist to his chest.
“Before you combust,” he says, bringing his hands up in the air, “breathe.”
“Where is she?” My voice comes out wrong, scraping my throat raw.
He winces and tilts his head toward the hallway behind him. “Esther has a package for you.”
A package. At HR. This isn’t good.
I walk to my own execution, and Esther—silently—slides me a thick folder with a letter on top.
I read it once. Twice. The words don’t change the second time, unfortunately, but my brain starts processing the information.
Under it is a fifteen-page document titled “How to Survive Noah King.” There’s a note on the first page saying, ‘To the next guinea pig in the Tyrant’s office.’
My laugh sounds like a choke. I flip through it—contacts, contingencies, all my pressure points annotated with her favorite color codes. She added a joke about cilantro, and I swallow a giant lump, trying desperately not to fall apart in HR.
Esther watches me like I’m a ticking bomb in a suit, and I usually am, if I didn’t have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that my heart, lungs, and all other vital organs were clawing their way through my skin.
I tuck the handbook under my arm and the letter in my pocket and walk out without saying anything, because if I open my mouth, the office will see a different side of me, and I’m not sure they’ll respect me after that. This shitty situation is of my own doing, and I need to fix it myself.
“Where is she?” I ask Martin again in the hall, even though I know the answer is not here.
He lifts both hands. “She was in before seven. Badge, laptop, ritual sacrifice of our collective sanity, were all left on Esther’s desk.”
My throat works, but no oxygen enters my body. “Her phone?”
“Airplane mode, probably.” His eyes go soft, which is an assault to me right now. I don’t want soft. I want angry. I made this mess. “Noah?”
