Page 51 of The CEO’s Assistant

"I want to say the next part properly," she said, "because I know how it sounds. If you shut this door tonight and never spoke to me again outside of work, that call still happened and it still stands. I'd have made it anyway. You need to know that before I say anything else or the rest of it sounds like I'm asking you for something."

Wren looked at her for a moment. "I believe you mean it tonight.”

"That's fair," Cordelia said. "I'd like to tell you about Sunday anyway."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

"Then let me tell you the part you weren't there for," she said. "I didn't notice. Not that I was busy and got it wrong. That I didn't notice you were in the room. Something happens to me when things go wrong. I don't know what it's called, and I don't recognize when it's happening." She made herself finish, despite not knowing exactly what she was going to say. "You were in and out of my office all day, and I couldn't tell you now what your face looked like or what you wore. And I've spent nine days since then thinking about how well that day went."

"I got thanked."

"You got managed," Cordelia said. "I'm not asking you to forgive it."

Below them somebody came in off the street and went into a ground-floor apartment and shut the door.

Cordelia continued, "One more thing and then I'll go. The board meets on the third of July. After that, Remy runs the firm and I'm not your employer."

"You've thought about this a lot."

"I've thought about very little else since Saturday."

Wren shifted her weight against the doorframe. She hadn't opened the door any wider and she hadn't stepped back from it.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Was there something on Sunday that I didn't see?"

Cordelia watched her think about it.

"There was," Wren said. "I don't want to talk about it tonight, though."

"All right." She had one more thing, and it was the smallest thing she had brought with her. "I'd like to have dinner with you sometime. Not about any of this, just dinner. And if you say no, I won't ask again."

"I don't have an answer for you," Wren said. "But I'd like to take some time off. A week."

"Take two."

Wren's eyes came up and stayed on her, hazel and tired.

"Veronica can cover you so you don’t have to be on call or answer emails," Cordelia said.

"Okay."

"Goodnight, Wren."

"Goodnight."

Cordelia turned and went down the stairs. She heard the door quietly close above her when she reached the ground floor.

At home she put her keys in the dish, turned on all the lights in the kitchen, and stood at the island. She opened her laptop. The announcement had to be drafted for the third of July, and the note to the senior team after that. She was good at this, and it wouldn’t have caused her any trouble under usual circumstances. But this wasn’t a usual circumstance. She shut the laptop, then she picked up her phone, scrolling to Astoria’s name. Astoria would still be up. She would answer on the second ring and say the right thing, and Cordelia would come off the call feeling a great deal better than she had earned. She put the phone down on the counter, face-down.

After that there was nothing to distract her, so she pulled out a stool and sat at the island with her hands in front of her. She lasted about four minutes, practically an eternity for her, then she got up and washed the dishes. When she was done, she sat down on the floor with her back against the cabinets, in her work clothes, with all the lights still on.

Chapter 24: Wren