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What the hell was she getting at?
“Maizy, are you okay?” I asked.
She looked down at her feet, and her face crumbled a bit.
Jesus.
“I…I um…haven’t been completely truthful about something.” She continued looking down. Whatever was going on, it was tearing her apart. She cleared her throat.
“Well. Here we go,” she said. “Cato, you already know a bit about this, but the rest of you do not. My infamous boss, Eva, informed me a couple weeks ago that if I didn’t have boyfriend, fiancé, or husband by the time of my review at the end of this month, I would probably be passed over for a promotion.”
We all looked around the room at each other.
“They can’t do that,” Von said. “Can they?”
“Not officially, of course. But she made it clear that when I had a man in my life, the firm would look more favorably on me. As if I’d be more respectable than I am right now, as a single woman.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Brade asked. “Christ, I thought the entertainment world was fucked.”
Maizy nodded. “So I’d hoped to have a guy by the end of the month, in time for my annual review.”
I wanted to crawl under a rock, knowing that my sister-in-law was behind this.
Maizy continued. “I just want to say I’m really sorry. I didn’t think things would go this far. I never expected to like all four of you the way I do.” She sat down and put her head in her hands.
I didn’t like seeing her suffer like that. Not at all.
“Maybe I can speak to Eva,” I offered. “See if I can talk some sense into her.”
Yeah, like she’d listen to me.
Maizy looked at me. “No, no please, Anson. Please don’t do that. It would just make things worse.”
“It’s your call, sweetheart.”
“So what are you going to do?” Von asked.
“I have to pick one of you.” She gasped as she held back a small sob.
Here we go.
“Of course,” she continued, “whoever I pick has to feel the same way about me. And who’s to say you will? I could end up alone and without my promotion. Actually, that’s the most likely scenario.”
“What makes you say that?” Cato asked.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. Just my luck, I suppose. Plus, I would think you’d all be disgusted with me at this point, knowing my true intentions.”
We looked around at each other. While we might have been caught off guard by Maizy’s real plan, I hardly think anyone was disgusted with her.
Although there was a new tension in the air.
Cato crossed the room and took her in his arms, where she stumbled, beginning to sob.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, over and over, without moving her face off Cato’s shoulder.
So I walked up to them and rubbed her back.
