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“Did you need something, Mr. Leblanc?” Candy pauses at the threshold off my office door, a worried furrow in her brow.
“No. Emails.” I gesture at the computer, and she accepts that emails are the reason I’m talking to myself in my office.
“I’m headed out for lunch. What can I bring you?”
“I’m okay. Thanks.”
A moment of hesitation. “I did want to let you know—I had another call from that woman.” Oh.That’swhat she’s worried about. “She thinks you’re the CEO.”
“I’mnotthe CEO.”
Candy laughs. “No, I suppose not.”
Fabricswooshes as she gets her coat. Her purse taps against her side. Then her heelsclick-click-click-clickout the door, fading as she goes down the hall.
What’s the worst that happens if you admit you have emotions?
This is too far. This is too much. Obviously, the worst that happens if I start telling people that I spend all day swallowing sharp anger and wishing I was participating in an underground boxing match, I’ll lose my company. What’sleftof my company. I don’t even feel like I can talk to Christa about this.
My phone is in my hand before I know what I’m doing.
Will: My secretary reached out to Hughes’s office days ago. Nothing yet.
I updated them on the conversation with Finn against my will. The two of them wouldn’t shut up in the group text until I did.
Emerson: That doesn’t mean he was lying.
Sinclair: It could mean he was lying. Rich motherfuckers lie all the time. Here’s proof. What are you thinking about, Em?
Emerson: Piece I acquired from Michael last week.
Sinclair: …and?
Emerson: I wasn’t lying.
Sinclair: ……and?
Emerson: Daphne just got out of the shower.
Sinclair: See, Will? Lies, all the way down.
Emerson: Some of us are capable of thinking two things at once, Sin. Flaunting it in front of you would be unnecessarily cruel.
Will: I don’t care that you’re sex crazed. What the fuck should I do about Hughes?
Emerson: I’m not sex crazed.
Will: Again, I don’t care.
Emerson: I was paying attention because she likes for me to dry her hair.
Sinclair: I’ve never heard that euphemism before. Nice.
Emerson sends a photo next. His hand, holding a hair dryer I’ve seen ads for. Daphne in a navy bathrobe, out of focus behind the dryer, her smile still bright in the mirror.
I want to punch Emerson.
No. I don’t. I’m jealous, is what I am. Jealous that Emerson is married and happy and spending all day doing things for his wife, and I don’t know how he can stand it. I don’t know how all that happiness doesn’t make him want to crawl out of his skin.
