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“I do. It’s because you’re obsessed withCaleb.”
“I’m not obsessed.”
“Of course you are. Every time you tell me about a conversation with him, you’re so...impressed. Every time he says something to you—not even something nice; simply something that isn’t horribly rude—you’re like, ‘He’s such a good guy.’”
“You’re making me sound like I’m twelve. And he’s married.”
“Yes, he is. And you have a crush on him anyway.”
“I don’t,” I argue. Because even if I do, I’m not admitting to a crush on someone who belongs to someone else. And I’d certainly never act on it.
It sure doesn’t help, though, that his wife is never around. If she was here, we’d be friends and we’d laugh together about what a jerk he is at the office and my crush would die a quick death.
“His wife’s been gone for nearly a year, though,” I say, refilling Molly’s glass. “That’s got to be hard.”
“Yeah,” she says, toying with her braid. “But that doesn’t make him any less married.”
She leaves, and the house is painfully quiet and lonely in her absence. Is that why Caleb works the way he does—toavoid the quiet of that big lonely house? Who was he before the personal stuff Kayleigh referenced led him to close the seventh floor?
I curl up on the couch under an ancient quilt and attempt to watch a movie I used to love, but my mind keeps going back to work. What TSG lacks is a place where employees can relax, unwind. A place where they can at leastimaginethey’re valued as human beings. And the seventh floor is the perfect location for it.
I throw off the quilt.
No matter what Caleb’s reasons were for shutting it down, if I can prove it won’t hurt his bottom line to reopen it...how could he possibly object?
I’m not going to ask for masseuses or saunas or free food. Just…couches. Coffee. Music and a few magazines.
I’ll need to prove to him that it won’t hurt productivity and that the costs are minimal, perhaps even offset by revenue generated elsewhere—an in-house café or vending machines—but I know I can convince him. I know it.
I work until the wee hours, casually watching the house next door, and his truck never returns.
Maybe I should worry a little less about him being lonely...only one of us, after all, is technically alone.
14
CALEB
I’m pulling into the driveway when my mother calls. “Are you busy?” she asks. She begins every call this way, because she knows I’m exactly like my father—always working, even when I’m not supposed to be.
I slam the door of my truck closed. “Your timing is perfect. I’m just getting home.”
“How’s the house?” There’s the same forced good cheer I always hear in her voice—it’s the sound of a parent trying to pretend she’s not scared shitless on her kid’s behalf.
I slide my key into the lock. “It’s in pretty bad shape. The last owners really let it go, but I’ll get to fixing it up eventually.”
The sun is slipping over the horizon, painting the sky in streaks of orange and lavender. I’d forgotten how much I liked it at this time of day, growing up. I liked a lot of things back then, though, when the future was simply a highlight reel of everything I wanted and something extra, something magic I knew existed but hadn’t yet had myself. When did I fucking lose that optimism, that desire? And how did it take me so long to notice it was gone?
My mother is telling me about the book club she’s joinedand how much she misses it here as I shrug off my jacket and move to the back window. Lucie’s sitting cross-legged in the grass, her hair twisted high on her head in a messy bun.
“Did anyone buy the place next door?” my mom asks out of nowhere, and I feel like I’ve been caught at something, as if she somehow knew where my head was. To be fair, though, my head is there a troubling percentage of the day, so the odds were in her favor.
“Yeah. A single mom with twins.”
Sophie runs to Lucie with the toy she and Henry were fighting over. Lucie hands it back to her, and even from a distance I can tell Sophie is pissed about it. For some reason it makes me want to laugh.
“Poor thing. That place was falling apart when Ruth was there. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.”
“Her nephew should have fixed it up,” I growl, though it’s Lucie I’m thinking of more than Ruth. “Or bought her a new house. How the hell could he do so little for her?”
