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I might as well make a dramatic reveal. It’s the Bailey way.
I draw in a deep breath, turn around, and pull my hat off my head.
As everyone moves toward me to exit the boat, I call out, “Hi, everyone! Long time, no see!”
10
RHETT
After three margaritas, this trip isn’t half bad.
Sarah, Caleb, and I drag beach chairs a solid hundred feet from the others and drink, eat, and laugh.
Sarah, it turns out, is excellent at impressions. She’s nailed Gina from HR, and it’s a riot.
She lowers her voice and takes on a stern expression. “And those time cards are due precisely at five p.m. Not five-o-one. I like to get home for a weekend too, you know.”
Caleb and I laugh and laugh.
I’m on my fourth plate of oysters, and the sun, booze, and surf are working their magic. I can scarcely remember why I felt like I had to be so straitlaced at work.
It’s amazing being me.
I’m the big boss. I call the shots.
Take that, Bailey Johansson.
But I can picture her, the way she would sit at her desk, her head cocked as she stared at the computer monitor. She liked to bend the straw of her boba tea toward her, even though that often meant the pearls got stuck.
There was the way she jumped a little whenever anyone disturbed her, like she was so deep in concentration that the office had ceased to exist. And she would always let out a light, tinkling laugh afterward, like she was so silly for having gotten startled.
Every day after lunch, she would reapply a pale pink gloss on her lips. I could see her desk from mine when the door was open. She had a tiny mirror in her purse, and she would hold it with her left hand, apply the gloss with her right, then press her lips together.
She always made apopsound with her mouth, then narrowed her eyes at her own reflection, as if she didn’t quite appreciate what she saw there.
“Hey.” Caleb elbows me. “I’m going to cool off. You want to go in?”
I lift my margarita. “And let this melt?”
“Glad to see you have your priorities straight.” Caleb hauls himself off his chair and runs out into the waves. Sarah and I watch him high step it into the water, then dive beneath the surface.
“You’re lucky,” I tell her.
She searches for the straw a moment with her mouth before finding it and taking a sip. We’re all three sheets to the wind.
Then she says, “How so?”
I gesture out to where Caleb is swimming parallel with the beach. “Great job. Great relationship. You didn’t let half a million get siphoned out of the company.”
“You handled it.”
I did. No more boba tea straws or lip gloss. But even with all the drinks, I know not to say that out loud. “I haven’t been called on it yet.”
Sarah turns toward me. Her cheeks are pink from the sun. “Does Dougherty know?”
Even Sarah doesn’t know Dougherty is my Uncle Sherman. “No.”
“When will you tell him?”
