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He smiled lightly at me. “And now I see Holcomb’s whisking you away. Rubbing elbows with the mayor?”
“Susanna tells me I should be rubbing elbows with someone less popular… preying on rich people’s insecurities, I think is what she’s saying.”
“You don’t need to put it like that,” Susanna laughed. Solomon set the folder down with a deep, rich laugh. He was a big guy, six two with dark skin and a killer fashion sense, and he’d always been clear about his interest in me… respectfully so, and he was an attractive man, but I just felt nothing.
I think I’d felt nothing from anyone this whole time. There was just work—blessed work.
“Well,” Solomon said, “I’m sure you could get anyone at that party to like you, Harper.”
“Just such a natural at charming people, I know,” I said.
“Hey. Pick out a person in this office who doesn’t like you. Or the central bakery, for that matter. I defy you.”
“Veronica?”
He waved me off. “Veronica’s never liked anyone a day in her life. She doesn’t count. All right, Harper, skedaddle. Any chance I can catch you this weekend in the Upper East Side?”
“I’ll be there.” Not because I was so eager to see people, but… just… just to fill the schedule. To keep me moving.
Susanna led me a ways down the hall before she said, “Normally people wait until the boss isn’t looking to flirt with their coworkers.”
“Solomon doesn’t care what people normally do, I don’t think. Marches to the beat of his own drum.”
She quirked a smile at me. “Very skillful tacit rejection, Harper.”
I shrugged, just keeping my eyes ahead. “He’s nice. But I’ve only just started here… I’m just focusing on the job.”
“It’s been almost half a year.”
I didn’t say anything, just turning it over in my head.Half a year.The words sounded so surreal. It felt like half a year passed in my first week here—waking up alone in a tiny apartment, nobody there climbing in through my window or moving around in my kitchen. Who would have thought I’d miss getting my house broken into?
Those last two weeks in Bayview, after I’d copied my keys for Paisley, she’d barely been in her own house. She fell asleep in my bed almost every night, and for the first week, I moved about quietly in the mornings, getting ready for my early start in the bakery. By the second week, I’d realized I could start a rock band and not wake up Paisley, but there had still been a kind of sacred silence waking up next to her and taking a moment to just… look at her, eyes shut, breathing slowly, before I got up.
And inevitably, I’d be halfway through my shift before Paisley would come down from upstairs, close the bakery for me to have a lunch break, and drag me back upstairs or out somewhere to have lunch. Breakfast for her. Bit odd making it work between someone who woke up at four and someone who woke up at eleven, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Lindsay would have loved it.
Mornings in New York were torturous, especially since I still woke up at four and work didn’t start until nine. I was almost tempted to move somewhere cheaper in Jersey City and just take an hour commute, but… a long commute would have given me time to think.
So instead, I’d just packed everything I could into my day-to-day. And so the first week had lasted half a year, and the next half a year had lasted about a week. Funny how things worked.
“That blow your mind?” Susanna said, stepping into the elevator alongside me. “Time moves faster in the Big Apple.”
“No kidding.”
“That town you moved from, it was a small place, right? I think you said you ran that bakery yourself.”
“Yeah.” My voice came out colder than I meant, and I shifted my posture, watching the floor number go down. “So, tell me about the party.”
She raised her eyebrows, sensing the tension in my posture, the abruptness I steered away from the topic with, but she didn’t push it. Thank god. Bayview didn’t exist anymore. That was how it had to be.
The day melted into a slurry of moving around, walking with Susanna and arriving together at the event space that had a gorgeous 14th-story view of Manhattan and an eye for luxury in the décor, dressed up in Gilded Era stylings that were just on the right side of tasteful versus tacky, balanced out with warm neutrals and a few modern touches. Our display was exactly asI’d helped David Fontaine finish up the design for, an artful array of elegant dishes and pastries, classics accented with a few unusual standouts, taking heavy inspiration from the Gilded Era style to create something that looked luxurious, almost sinfully abundant without veering into overt maximalism.
Susanna was right—Jessica Perler wasn’t as connected as everyone else and was all too receptive to me and Susanna approaching her to talk about the party and how she was enjoying it, and I saw Susanna’s logic in bringing me along. Two against one meant Jessica was pulled into our dynamic instead of it being Susanna’s against hers, and bringing a new hire helped make it less intimidating at the same time, especially matching her presence as a new hire into the executive suite. She opened up before long, and it was a good conversation, getting to know her. Ended up linking us into a couple good chats with some other bigwigs in construction and infrastructure there, including a rail executive who was so friendly and charming you’d forget he was there basically to bribe the mayor into granting lucrative kickbacks.
Susanna left with the event finishing, but I stayed behind to help our crew clean up the catering, just for something to do, somewhere to be, someone to talk to. They weren’t bad in terms of ops either—the staff got the juiciest scoops on what the executives were like when no one was looking, because the executives considered staff to be no one. Soured my feelings on Perler a little when poor Minh, whose English was good but not fluent, mentioned how snappy she’d gotten over her drink.
But it wasn’t about liking people. It was about knowing them. Networking, I guess. Just for something to do—an objective to have. Liking people was inevitable, but I was in no rush to get there—it was just bound to lead to trouble.
