Scarlett points at her. “Tell her the goldfish story.”
“No, if one more person hooks up through this organization, I’m requesting a trade.” Trey says, sounding exhausted now. “Leave the man some dignity.”
“He has none,” Sophie replies.
“What goldfish story?” I ask, wary. The women exchange looks that tell me I’m about to receive dangerous information. Piper wipes tears from her eyes. “Christopher had a goldfish.”
“That sounds harmless already,” I murmur.
“It died,” Harper says.
“And Max,” Sophie continues, already losing composure again, “held a funeral.”
I blink. “A funeral.”
“He wrote a speech,” Scarlett says.
“By candlelight,” Piper adds.
“With a slideshow,”Sophie finishes.
I stare at them. “No.”
From the kitchen, Trey calls, “Yes,” his defeated tone suggesting he saw it all unfolding. “He put Sarah McLachlan’s music behind the slideshow.” The room completely falls apart. Scarlett is crying. Even Harper looks visibly affected, which I suspect, for her, is the emotional equivalent of hysteria.
“He wore a black tie,” Piper gasps.
“Christopher cried less than Max did,” Sophie says.
I press my lips together. I fail magnificently. The smile breaks loose anyway, and the worst part? The second it happens, every woman in the room notices again. Scarlett points at me triumphantly. “That face,” she says. “That’s the exact face women make right before Max Stevens ruins their lives.”
“I am not having a face.” I reach for my wine again because apparently that’s who I am tonight.
“Oh,” Harper says. “You’re absolutely having a face.”
Across the penthouse, Trey glances over at the laughter, shakes his head once, and mutters to Knox, “He’s done for.”
And somehow, terrifyingly, I’m thinking they might mean me too.
Group Text: Toni: I’m apparently indoctrinated now.
Piper: WHO TAUGHT FUZE HOW TO USE POLLS
Scarlett: Why is he asking people to rank the team emotionally
Harper: I got “feral but trainable”
Sophie: Anthony got “golden retriever with WiFi”
Toni: Why am I in this chat
Piper: Too late to escape now
I don’t recall the drive or deciding to come. I remember my hands on the steering wheel and stopping at a red light, then not registering the color change until someone honked behind me. Sitting in the car in front of his home, I think about the city outside my window doing its thing, the brick structure, and insulation between us. And none of it is helping because the problem is not outside. The problem is the specific phrase I’m not going anywhere and the way it landed in my heart. I didn’t have a compartment for it, and I’ve been trying to build one for the last two hours, and it’s just not coming together. The team and the women at the party didn’t help either because they reinforced the belief I’ve been denying all along vehemently. He's a client. Same organization. Same optics. The kind of situation that ends badly and takes everything with it.
This is all known to me. Since the season began, I’ve made this exact case to myself about forty times, and it has always worked until now, which is inconvenient. I let my hair down because suddenly it’s too tight. The way he clocked the coffeeorder being wrong and said nothing — just watched me fix it. The way he sat with the silence at practice, like he’d decided it was mine to fill or not, and if I didn’t, that was fine too. Eight weeks of that. Eight weeks of him making space I wasn’t asking for and not asking for anything back, and I am completely drained of pretending I don’t notice.
This is the dock talking. Elevated emotion. The lateness of the hour. The particular damage to someone sitting in the dark and telling you the truth when you’re not braced for it. I know what this is. I can name it and I can manage it. The thing is I have been the most careful person in every room I've ever been in. I am twenty-four years old. Sitting in a parking spot in Chicago, talking myself out of a man three floors above who is almost certainly awake. At some point careful stops being a virtue and starts being a habit you hide behind.
