For a moment, Rowan’s eyes looked wild with hurt before she averted them from hers. Juniper fought the urge to feel bad and dug her heels back in, further this time, out of sheer obstinance.
Stay. Angry.
“Sucks being totally dismissed by someone, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll be next door if you need me. Hopefully you won’t,” Rowan said, in a quietly bitter tone, instead of answering thatquestion or looking at her again.
“No,” Juniper sighed out, listlessly. “You know, I’ve never actually needed you or anyone else. Don’t suspect that will change now.”
She felt triumphant that she managed to maneuver the conversation back to anger instead of remorse. Anger was a much more comfortable emotion for her to navigate.
Rowan paused with her hand on the doorknob. Then she pulled it open and exited without turning back. Juniper allowed one tear to fall that she wiped away roughly with the back of her hand. She reminded herself it was possible to cry from anger too.
???
Rowan tapped her pen against the header of the legal pad sitting on her desk. She was steeling her nerves, or at least trying to, before walking the three feet from her office to Juniper’s for a two-hour long planning meeting that Theo had already put on their calendars. It was almost like he didn’t trust Juniper to actually go through with it.
Where Rowan had had the tiniest of hope while standing in the doorway the day prior that their first reuniting moment might be characterized more by apologies, or forgiveness, or even an unsaid let bygones be bygones, she was now acutely aware that that was not the game Juniper would be playing. She knew she had hurt her, she just didn’t know she’d still be taking it that badly this long after. Even thinking that made her feel like a hypocrite. She knew her heart must have broken after what she did. And it’s not like Juniper was the one semi-stalking Rowan’s social media. Although, maybe she also had?
She mindlessly sketched alternating rows of mismatched geometric shapes on her paper and thought back to how clueless Theo had been during their interaction. Rowan had tracked every slight narrowing of her eyes, the ever-presentslight curve to the edge of her lips, probably imperceivable to anyone else but her. She had always been able to pick out Juniper’s tells. Especially the ones that told contempt.
This was silly. She felt some resolve course through her mind. They were in their thirties now, for fuck’s sake. She pushed her chair back and stood abruptly, knowing she needed to capitalize immediately on this rush of confidence before she came crashing back down into her seat.
She faltered in her steps when she reached Juniper’s office to find the door already open. Juniper was looking at something on the computer monitor that sat angled on the desk at the back of the room. The morning sun gleamed through the windows behind her and emphasized the interplay of the deep golden and dark brown tones in her hair.
“You can come in, Rowan,” she said flatly without looking up from the screen.
“Okay, sure.”
Rowan was already fumbling. When she realized Juniper wasn’t going to get up to go to the center table, she pulled a seat from it and sat on the other side of the desk from her. This was some kind of power play by Juniper, she was sure. Rowan re-centered, took a deep breath, and tried to open up again.
“It smells good in here,” she commented on the herbal, woodsy-sweet scent in the air. It was soothing.
“Sage.”
“Did you burn some or something?” She looked around the room to find the source.
“Smudged. To get out the bad energy.” Juniper pointed blindly to the windowsill, where a large shell with a half-burned bundle of sage nestled inside of it sat.
With all the bad energy Juniper was emitting, she’d need to burn through a whole thicket of sage before that could happen.
“Funny,” she remarked flippantly.
“More like… necessary.”
Rowan dragged a hand down her face. “Sure.”
They then sat in a painfully long silence, Juniper looking atthe computer, Rowan wishing she could fade into the ether at this point. Anything to avoid any further argument or outright silent dismissal by Juniper. Of all people, Rowan didn’t mind the quiet, but this was something else entirely. Any person would feel uncomfortable with this level of chill in the air.
She finally broke the silence again and asked, “How’s your mom?”
Juniper stopped typing but didn’t break her focus from the screen.
“Look, we’re going to have to find a way to work together professionally. So I think it’s best if we keep it that way.”
“Okay,” Rowan breathed out incredulously. “We’re literally sitting here in silence, and either way – I didn’t know asking about your mom would be considered unprofessional.”
“I’m sorry, I just mean that for both of our benefit, we should get this done as quickly and painlessly as possible. I care a lot about this program. As you know, I built it. I didn’t go off to some fancy school and spend the last decade talking about climate change in the abstract. We feel it here, have felt it here for some time, and we don’t have a lot of time left to make serious changes,” Juniper contended, still without breaking eye contact with the computer screen in front of her.
