Page 54 of The CEO’s Assistant

"You're not."

"I'm being as normal as I'm going to be." Remy pushed her plate an inch away and left it there. "Sorry. Go on."

"I've never said it out loud, not even by myself." Wren turned her wrist over and pressed her thumb into the leather under the watch. "I wanted to say it somewhere it counted."

"So, then what's the problem?" Astoria said.

"Me." She paused. "I do a thing. I've done it since I was twenty-three. I find a woman who's— No. That sounds like I choose it and I don't." She started again. "I become useful. To somebody good at something. And useful is the wrong word; it's smaller than what I mean." She stopped. "When I left Vivian, my first boss, I spent my last two weeks training the woman who replaced me. On my own time. Nobody asked me to." She turned the glass on the table. "I made her a binder. Tabs and everything." She stopped. "And then I went home, and I didn't know what to do with myself for a month. I never leave anything for myself."

Nobody said anything. At the counter, the coffee grinder started and shut off a few seconds later.

"So if I go up there," Wren said, "I have to be able to ask her for things."

Astoria waited.

"That Sunday, while we were at the coastal house working together, she went off wherever it is she goes. I was with her all day, and the only thing I wanted the whole time was for her to look up once and see me standing there." She stopped. "I could have said so. I had ten hours to speak up, but I didn’t. I spent the whole day working and fetching her food."

"Why not say it?"

"Because she could have said no." Wren looked at her. "You can't turn down somebody useful. There's nothing there to reject because there’s nothing personal in it. You just get told you did well." She turned the glass again. "I've never asked a woman for anything I hadn't earned first. Not Vivian. Not any of them."

"And can you now?" Astoria asked.

"I don't know. I've never tried it," Wren said honestly.

"You know, I sat in my car outside your building for ten minutes on Thursday," Remy said. "Working up to do it. I said the whole thing out loud first so I couldn't chicken out."

"You didn't sound like it."

"No," Remy said. "I’d been up since four that morning, and I’ve had a lot of practice masking to sound fine." She reached for her water and caught the edge of the glass with her wrist. It tipped over and spread across the table toward the wall.

Wren snatched the napkin off her lap, attempting to dry the spill, and Remy joined her, blotting the table with her own napkin. Astoria flagged Lavender for a cloth, and they quickly had the table dry.

They all sat back down, and Astoria watched her over the rim of her glass. "Well," she said. "Welcome to the club. We meet on Thursdays."

Remy laughed and Wren joined in, laughing harder than the joke deserved, but she finally felt relaxed in her body for the first time in longer than she could remember. Astoria smiled and asked Remy what exactly Lauren wanted changed in the presentation.

Remy made a small despairing noise. "Eighteen slides. She wants them in her inbox by seven."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight." She reached for her bag.

Wren had built that deck in March. She knew what Lauren wanted moved and it would take her forty minutes, and she had nothing at all to do tomorrow. She felt the familiar urge to jump in and rescue people rise, through her stomach and into her throat. She swallowed it down and was surprised it hurt more than she thought it would. "You'll be done by one," she said.

"Optimistic." Remy stood up and kissed Astoria's cheek. "Wish me a fast night."

Lavender cleared the plates. "Stay as long as you want," she said. "I'm here till eleven."

Wren and Astoria stayed till ten, talking.

By eleven the next morning, she had rearranged the shelf beside the green chair twice, which was not a job that needed doing even once. She sat down in the chair and only lasted nine minutes before she stood up and busied herself with other household chores. At three the phone rang.

"How long have you been awake?” Lillian asked, evidently hearing the exhausted restlessness in her voice.

"Half past four."

"Well, that would be your grandmother’s influence,” Lillian tutted. “Up before the birds her whole life and never once a thing to do at that hour." Something rustled on the other end. "I've started the Nadine Gordimer book again. I'm not enjoying it, but I'm going to finish it out of spite."