“I spent a week with your daughter—”
“At my insistence.”
God, if I convince Zoe to be mine, I’ll have to deal with his man at work and in my personal life.
Regularly.
I take a deep breath, reminding myself that Zoe’s worth it.
“I spent a week with your daughter and I talked with her. A lot. About shit I won’t share with you because she should.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Zoe hates her job.” Silence. “Zoe hates her field.”
“She seems to like it just fine,” he says.
Either he doesn’t pay attention or she puts a good show on for her father.
“Does she? Or does she just seem to be enduring it until she hits some milestone that even she can’t identify.”
“You’re speaking in code.” My jaw goes tight before I speak again.
“Everything Zoe does is to impress you and your wife. To make you and Mary Ellen proud of her.”
Silence.
This time, I don’t fill it in, waiting for him to speak instead.
“That can’t be true.”
“Can’t it? Did she ever want to do marketing when she was younger? To run some firm? To even live in the city?”
“I don’t—” I don’t want to hear his excuses.
“Zoe loves this town just as much as you do. Loves the people in it, loves being close to her friends and her family.”
“She lives in New York.”
“Her job is in New York,” I say, my blood pressure rising.
“You just said she hated her job.”
“Jesus, you really are dense.” I run a hand through my hair.
“Excuse me, I—”
I should remember that this is my boss and my dad’s best friend, but I can’t.
All I feel is indignation for Zoe.
“Look. When she was nineteen, your daughter came home from school after spending a year in a major she enjoyed but you kept scoffing at.” Silence. “Doesn’t matter how much you told your friends or the men who work with you how proud you were of her, she didn’t hear that shit. She heard you telling her that it wasn’t a stable career, that it wasn’t super smart—”
“The entire country had just gone through a recession.”
“Jesus, she was nineteen, Joe. She was nineteen and an only child and, you know as well as me, a daddy’s girl. She wanted your full support.”
Not a single sound comes down the line.
He knows I’m right.
“She told you she was thinking of marketing. She only said it to see what you’d say and you were gung-fucking-ho. Excited for her, told her to switch. She didn’t, but the next semester, she had a tough class and decided it was a sign. Now she’s spent ten years in a field she hates.”
“I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. She took it that way. Joe, I bought your daughter stupid home design magazines at a gas station, big stack of them. She treated them like gold. Read every page five times. She wants that, but she won’t chase it because she’s too scared.”
“Look, I—”
“I’m not gonna listen to your shit. I’m not. Because really, it doesn’t matter what you think, if you think you did what you were supposed to do. It’s all in the past. But in the present, I’m working on winning her, on keeping her in town. But don’t you put that shit all on me as if I’m not working on making her realize she needs to be with me while also cleaning up the mess you made.”
Silence again.
“Now. I’ve got a plan. I need your input on said plan. Are you gonna give me shit, or are you gonna help me make your daughter really fuckin’ happy?”
I count to ten.
Ten long seconds before Zoe’s dad responds.
But when he does, I’m flooded with relief.
“What do you need from me, son?”
FORTY-EIGHT
YOU ARE IN LOVE
-ZOE-
Hours later, I’m back to staring at the stupid fucking One Direction poster in my bedroom.
It should be a crime for anyone to be smiling like that when I feel like my world is falling apart.
And really, it’s my own fault. I did this to myself.
I told Zander I needed to go to that stupid interview for a job I don’t actually want.
I told Zander we wouldn’t work in the real world.
I told Zander it was all pretend.
And, in all fairness, I told Zander he didn’t have to pick me up after my interview.
I just . . . I guess I didn’t think he’d listen to me.
When has Zander ever listened to me?
I guess that’s not fair either.
He proved over a week that all he does is listen to me, take notes on me, on who I am and who I was and who I secretly want to be.
But maybe a week of having to remind me to pretend, of having to reassure me that we’d work and that it was worth the risk got old. Maybe he thought he didn’t want to have to do that for any length of time.
I wouldn’t blame him, you know.
It just really sucks that when I was sitting in an interview for what one, two years ago would have been my dream job, a culmination of a lifetime of working to hit the top, all I could think about was Zander asking if I liked my job.
And the fact that I said no.
All I could see was the magazines he bought me at a rest stop, the ones I read over and over in the car, figuring out ideas for designing my next apartment.
Mentally redesigning businesses in towns and homes I know could use an upgrade.
And realizing that I need a change.
Not just dumping my boyfriend and quitting my job just to move onto more of the same.
It’s not living in the city.
It’s surely not avoiding Zander for the rest of my life.
The reason my mind blew up when I found that MASH list was because it made me scared to see in black and white just how unhappy I was.
How far I had let myself get from my dreams.
But I can’t change any of that at ten at night.
It will have to be a tomorrow task.
Tomorrow Zoe will do all the things tonight Zoe is terrified of.
Maybe.
In the meantime, I should do something productive.
I should work on an email to turn down the job offer.
Or maybe make a plan to test drive an interior design business, a proposal for Sadie.
Or . . . maybe I should start smaller.
More realistic.
I should unpack.
That’s what I need to distract myself.
The bag is right where Zee left it when he walked my shit up to my room, right next to the door.
Three bags, only one of which I even ended up opening.
Sighing, I pad over to them and sit crisscross applesauce before one, unzipping it and starting to go through it, making a pile for clean laundry and another for dirty.
I’m about halfway through when my fingers hit it.
A familiar worn tee.
Zander’s coach tee that I slept in.
Like that, seeing my name on your back.
He’d said it coming up behind me while I brushed my teeth in nothing but that tee. His words had sent a chill down my spine in a very different way than I’m feeling now.