A very soft, entirely dignified snore issued from the cushions.
Nellie looked at her for a moment—her wine glass safely tilted against her arm, her shoes still on, her expression peacefully slack—and felt only the purest, most uncomplicated fondness in the world for this particular human. She extracted the wine glass from Paloma’s loosening grip and set it on the coffee table. Then she wrestled the throw blanket from behind the couch and arranged it over her, tucking the end beneath her toes once she’d prized off her sneakers.
Satisfied that her friend would be warm and comfortable until morning, Nellie gathered her own glass, the last half-inch of Malbec, and padded toward her bedroom.
The ceiling was doing something mildly unusual in the low light from the bedside lamp. Not spinning exactly. More like it had acquired a gentle, wiggly quality it didn’t usually have. Nellie lay on top of the quilt with her phone balanced on her stomach and stared at it, letting her mind wander into the pensive, philosophical territory usually motivated by a bottle of red wine.
Nellie Fuller had turned thirty-five today. She had celebrated with her best friend, copious amounts of great wine, and a great cake. She had blown out her birthday candles and made a wish she couldn’t tell anyone about.
Before her foggy brain had caught up to what her clumsy fingers were doing, she was scrolling through her phone contacts and clicking decisively on one Sawyer Alburn.
Three rings. Four. The voicemail message was Sawyer’s voice—professional, brief, a sentence and a half before the tone.
Nellie took a breath. And then she simply started talking.
“Hi. It’s Nellie.” She huffed a drunken giggle. “Nellie Fuller. In case you have multiple Nellies.” She frowned at the wiggly ceiling. “That’s a weird thing to say. Ignore that. Anywho, I’m calling because it’s my birthday. Well, itwasmy birthday. It technically ended”—she squinted at the clock—“two hours and eight minutes ago. Paloma came. She brought balloons.”
She smiled to herself about the balloons and strongly considered bringing them into her bedroom, if only she could be bothered to stand up again. She had no idea how much time she had spent just breathing until she remembered she was supposed to be leaving a voicemail.
“Whoops! I’m still here. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, birthday. I made a wish when I blew out my candles, which I’m not supposed to say out loud, but I’m… I’ve had some wine, so I’m going to tell you. My wish was that the very beautiful woman who is a very good kisser”—she let slip a small, slightly dignified hiccup—“will save all the trees that I love so much. That was the wish. All of them. The old growth and the understory and the riparian trees especially, because the riparian trees are essential to the… well, you probably don’t care that much but they’re really important to thewhole thing. The corridor. You should read the section I wrote about the corridor, Sawyer; it’sreally good. I think you’d like it. I think you like things that are really good.”
She paused. Rearranged herself on the pillows. And continued.
“Speaking of really good.Youwere. And I’m a little sad I did not get any birthday sex.” Nellie said this solemnly, her tone appropriate to a genuine grievance being entered into the record. “Which is not your fault, technically, because you didn’tknow it was my birthday. But I’m also sad because I have this little tradition, and I can’t even…” She sighed loudly, and then lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “I can’t even use my vibrator to wishmyselfa happy birthday, you know? Because Paloma is asleep on the couch, which is six feet from my bedroom wall, so… She sleeps like a very alert cat. She’s woken up from a dead sleep before because I was opening a bag of crisps in another room. ” The ceiling received another long, considering look. “Sorry, I’m rambling but yeah… that’s where we are.”
The wiggly ceiling was starting to take on a somewhat hypnotic quality. Nellie’s eyelids started to droop, the phone still propped against her ear.
“Anyway,” she mumbled. “I just wanted to tell you it was my birthday. And about the wish. And about my sad lack of orgasms.” She chuckled to herself softly. “Goodnight, Sawyer.”
Without even hanging up the call, Nellie let her hand drop to the quilt.
And very shortly after, the birthday girl was fast asleep.
18
CHAPTER 18 – SAWYER
It wasn’t the kind of voicemail a person could listen to just once, and Sawyer was only human.
The first time she heard it, she was standing at the kitchen island in her robe with coffee in one hand and her phone in the other. She’d seen the missed call notification when she woke up and assumed that it was some international business that she’d need caffeine before she was in the mood to handle. Instead, Nellie Fuller’s voice had come out of her phone speaker, a little blurry at the edges.
The second time was when Sawyer had put the coffee down and pressed play again to confirm she had heard all of it correctly.
She had.
Every minute detail had her grinning wider under her cheeks started to ache.
Agonizing was the word that surfaced.
Not in any of the ways Sawyer usually applied it to a situation; not meaning problem or liability or unbearablycomplicated. Simply agonizing in the way that Nellie Fuller somehow managed to be eye-wateringly adorable and mouth-wateringly sexy in the same breath.
She pressed play a third time, closed her eyes, and chuckled to herself.
Then, she saved the voicemail before she left her apartment.
Suffice to say, the day was not her best work.
Sawyer was in the office by 6:45, which was well within her normal range; there was nothing unusual in the early arrival, the double espresso from the thirty-eighth floor machine, the stack of overnight correspondence she cleared before Martha had even removed her coat. The exterior performance was fully intact. From the outside, she was a CEO with laser focus and a board call at eleven.
