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But when I walk into her office, tentatively brushing my knuckles against her open door, I'm surprised at the look on her face. She is standing next to her desk with a glass of some brown alcohol in her hand, grinning from ear to ear.
“There's my star! There is my brilliant sidekick!”
She raises her glass in the air to toast me, then drops it back on her desk and refills it, plus the glass next to it. I try to stifle my reaction to the word sidekick and walk carefully across the floor to accept the glass.
“Did you already see the… event?” I ask her carefully.
“Who hasn't?” she giggles, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect. Her cheeks are pink and I can see she’s already heavily invested in celebration whiskey.
“Well… did you think it went off okay?” I ask her, squinting over the rim of the glass. The liquid is hot and pungent, nearly burning the tip of my tongue.
“Okay?” she repeats incredulously. “The whole thing was just live streamed from a dozen different people. You had celebrities on the bridge, did you know that? Somewhere out there, Amal Clooney was live streaming you! Amal fucking Clooney!”
“Well, she's no Gwyneth Paltrow, but…”
“Tell me about it!” Hannah exclaims, wobbling around the side of her desk and plopping extravagantly into her leather executive chair. It tips back dramatically and she kicks off her stiletto heels so she can cross her ankles on the corner of her desk.
It would probably be wrong of me to take a picture of her right now. Probably wrong. Tempting, but wrong.
“Okay, so I guess it was definitely good. The windows in the building were a nice touch, I thought.”
“Brilliant!” she yells at the ceiling, toasting the air once again. “That was Dillon, right? He's always had a thing for fireworks and stuff like that. Tell me that was Dillon’s idea!”
I sip at the whiskey again, feeling its hot tendrils soaking through my blood from my chest outward. The taste doesn't bother me as much anymore.
“Oh, that was totally Dillon. He's really creative, insightful too. I couldn’t believe it when I saw how many people gathered around to watch all that. I mean, he arranged it so that everything would fall into place that way.”
Hannah nods to herself, humming quietly through her nose. I don't think she really heard what I just said though. But it's true. Dillon’s real personality was reflected in the whole event, his intuition for what people want, how to make a splash.
And thinking about it, I realize that was a real gift for Emmet too. He wanted both of us to be delighted. I could see how much Dillon loved his brother in the way that Emmet's expression lit up over and over again. It was like we were both walking through the fairytale wonderland that Dillon had crafted for both of us.
The warmth in my chest spreads even further, and I'm not sure it's just the whiskey.
“So… okay,” I stammer, beginning to edge back toward the door. “Everything's okay, then? I am just going to go back and —”
“It's over!” she whispers suddenly.
Her eyes are wide, her smile so broad I think she just gave herself a new dimple.
“What's over?” I ask, confused. “I mean… that was the last thing we had planned, right? We all knew that, didn’t we? I just assumed that —”
“No, you don't understand,” she continues, her voice speeding up. “It's over. They signed. Look. Right here.”
She taps a stack of manila folders in the middle of her desk with her magenta lacquered fingernail. Then she taps it a few more times, even harder.
“It's over! The merger… it's done!”
It all starts to sink in and I take a deep, shuddering breath. “They signed!?”
“All right here in black and white and blood oaths!” she nods, toasting me so hard that the whiskey sloshes out of her glass. She takes a second to refill it, and gestures with her fingers for my glass too.
“Oh my God… already?”
I let her refill the glass and force myself to take a deep drink. I don't usually like to drink too much whiskey since it works on me so fast, but this is a special occasion. Relief washes through me, a cooling, prickling sensation.
“It worked. We did it!” she hoots.
“Well, yeah… I mean of course that’s awesome. But how?”
