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“You probably need to be going now. I need to take care of her.”
He draws a breath to say something else, then lets it go. Instead he nods his understanding and rinses his teacup before setting it in the bottom of the sink.
I don’t feel like I let my breath out until I hear the front door close behind him. Part of me wants to apologize for being so rude, but then I remember I don’t have a relationship with him. He’s just my boss. I don’t owe him anything. When I reached out to him on the hill, letting down my guard suddenly… he rejected me.
I don’t owe him anything at all.
Chapter 11
Maxwell
On Monday morning, I am not surprised at all to see Landry in the reception area at work. Clarissa seems to be keeping her a secret, though, so I just watch them hustle into Clarissa’s office and close the door.
The past few weeks have been impressively productive. Late summer is typically a low point in the commercial real estate market, but Clarissa and I have amassed an impressive amount of work.
Still, it is hard to concentrate. Everything is sort of jumbles together, and I find myself staring at the same spreadsheet, not making heads nor tails of the numbers I am looking at. I need to clear my head.
In the breakroom, I feel Clarissa in the room before I see her. She walks up next to me, stiff but not cold. Briefly, I wonder when our awkwardness will dissipate.
“Good morning,” I murmur, though it is barely still morning.
She glances at me, then immediately looks away as she shakes a sugar packet between her fingers. There are two cups on the counter in front of her and when she sees me look at them, she shrugs.
“I had to bring her,” she explains sheepishly. “She didn’t feel comfortable at my place alone. You understand.”
“Of course I understand,” I answer, happy to have something to offer in the conversation, even if it is only my approval. “You know, I’ve got this strip mall on the West Side…”
“Oh, the Jaguar Plaza?” she asks immediately.
“That’s the one,” I smile, glad that she so easily reads my mind.
“Yeah, that is a bit of a puzzle,” she scowls. “The anchor business won’t move, and the neighborhood has changed so much. I think we need to start by improving the parking lot if we want new tenants.”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” I agree. “That’s a good idea.”
She picks up both mugs and smiles again, and I’m glad to see her relax a little bit.
“Let me drop this off for Landry, and I’ll swing by your office and show you what I put together, okay?”
“That would be great.”
Back in my office, I drag out the file for the Jaguar Plaza and flip through the pictures. She’s right; the exterior still looks dated and hasn’t kept up with the neighborhood at all. When she comes back, she lays out a series of color mockups on the conference table and points to them one at a time, demonstrating that the whole strip mall could be rebranded in just a couple of months.
“This is great work,” I observe.
She pivots toward me, smiling, but we are closer than she estimated, and her elbow brushes mine, tumbling her coffee forward. The dark liquid splashes over the rim of the cup and narrowly misses the front of my trousers. I take a step back, trying to suppress a smirk.
“You know, if you are going to keep ruining my suits, I’m going to have to take it out of your pay.”
She scowls, her eyes flashing, then eases when she realize it’s a joke.
“I should get one of those sippy cups,” she chuckles self-consciously. “I seem to have developed a drinking problem.”
That was a close call. It feels like we are constantly on the edge of bickering. Maybe if she didn’t take things so seriously all the time?
I can tell that she has Landry on her mind and she begins to get anxious, shifting her weight from foot to foot and nodding brusquely as we chat.
“Is it getting late? Do you want to get some lunch?” I ask finally.
