She dropped her gaze, her head shaking sadly from side to side. She shrugged out of my coat and held it out to me. “So I guess that’s supposed to make it okay that you left without talking to me.” Her voice was distant, cold. “I was just another company employee.” The light of the streetlamp above her cast shadows over her face, but I could still see tears brimming in her eyes. “Here,” she said, shaking the jacket she still clutched in her hand. “I’m going home.”
Chapter Seven
Dani
My Uber driver was chatty. He was nice enough, but it was taking every ounce of my will power not to burst into tears. I really didn’t want to hear about his accounting classes in business school, or his roommate from Nepal, or his four-year-old niece no matter how cute she was. The relief I felt when he finally pulled up outside my apartment was palpable.
Outside the car, I paused on the sidewalk long enough to rate my ride and leave a tip for the driver. When I closed out the Uber app, there was a text notification on my screen.
Dani, I’m sorry about the way our conversation ended. I never meant to hurt you, and I hate that I seem to have only made it worse. It wasn’t my intention. I only wanted to say I was sorry.
Fresh tears filled my eyes and I closed out my screen, hiding the message from view. I didn’t want to read his apologies. Before I could drop the phone back in my bag, another notification lit up the screen.
One more thing. Please be careful at work. Trust Chase, and your own instincts. But no one else. I’m sorry I can’t say more than that.
What was that supposed to mean? Be careful? Careful doing what? If he couldn’t tell me everything, I’d almost rather he tell me nothing at all. Plus, he gave up his right to care whether I was being careful or not.
I hurried up the stairs to the loft I shared with Paige. Well, sort of shared with Paige. She was a full-time nanny and had a room at her employer’s home. She didn’t always sleep over, but it was a little bit of a haul to get from the Upper East Side all the way down to Chelsea so she often chose to stay at work. She was home on the weekends most of the time, but with all the traveling she did with the family, I never knew when to expect her. Still, she paid half the rent. I’d have never been able to afford the space without her help.
The loft was tiny. Anything even remotely affordable in the city always was. But it had high ceilings and huge windows and a funky, modern kitchen with Art Deco subway tile and light fixtures that looked like they belonged in an art museum. We were fairly certain the lights were courtesy of the previous tenant, an artist who had also left a mural that took up the whole of Paige’s back bedroom wall.
I hadn’t seen Paige before dinner, much to my disappointment—it would have been nice to talk through my Alex anxieties with her—so when I saw her purse and coat hanging on the chair by the door, I really did start to cry.
“Paige?” My voice cracked. “Where are you?”
She appeared in the doorway that led to the short hall separating our two bedrooms, her face wrinkled with worry. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Did someone die?”
I shook my head and dropped my bag on the table by the door. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
We met on the couch where I walked her through the entire day, from running into Alex in the coffee shop, all the way through dinner and the disastrous walk afterward.
“Wow,” she finally said, after I’d finished. “You’ve had some day.”
I huffed. “Tell me about it.”
“I saw the flowers when I came home and wondered where they came from. That was at least nice of him, to tip you off about dinner. Can you imagine if you’d shown up and found him sitting there with Isaac?”
I sniffed and wiped my eyes on the back of my hand. “I’d have died. Alex was always like that. I’m not surprised he sent flowers.”
Paige gave me a knowing look. “Ohhh, no.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“You are so not over this guy.”
“Yes I am,” I said, but the new tears welling up from her words indicated otherwise.
She opened her arms and pulled me into a hug. “Oh, honey,” she said, patting me on the back. “No, you’re not.”
“I’m still so mad at him, Paige. And I can’t even begin to make sense of things he said tonight. Stuff that he can’t legally tell me? What does that even mean?”
Paige shifted and I sat up, pulling a blanket off the couch and wrapping it around my legs. “What do you remember about the last time he did talk to you about LeFranc? Before he left.”
“I don’t remember specifics. He had suspicions about Sasha, which made me defensive because I’d just started working for her and I loved my job. She was letting me design, you know? And he seemed so determined to bring her down. I guess I didn’t feel like he had a lot of convincing evidence.”
“But if he had, you would have believed him, right?” Paige said. “If he’d had actual proof that she was doing something shady, you would have taken his side.”
I thought back through the conversations Alex and I had had those last few days before he left. We hadn’t spent a ton of time talking about work. I loved LeFranc, and Alex had only seemed to tolerate it. He’d loved that I wanted to be a designer, but he’d always had complaints about the way Alicio did business, and he was particularly hard on Sasha. He’d never liked her—even less so when she and Alicio had become engaged.
And I’d always defended her.
“What if I didn’t listen to him?” I asked Paige, fear creeping into my voice.
Paige grimaced. “You did have Sasha-shaped stars in your eyes those first few months. But, Dani, this is Alex we’re talking about. You cared about him. You would have listened.”
I shook my head, forcing out the sympathy that had slowly been creeping into my brain. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter if I would or wouldn’t have listened. He could have done a thousand different things to let me know he was leaving. Even if he thought my loyalties were to LeFranc, I didn’t deserve to be cut off.”
I thought of all the texts and emails I’d sent him in those first weeks after he’d left. Ranging from curious, to a little more desperate, to downright distraught and worried. A surge of embarrassment coursed through my veins.
“He doesn’t get a pass on this,” I said, with an air of finality. “I’m glad he apologized. Maybe it’ll help him get some closure, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“Fine,” Paige said, with a defiant fist pound onto the back of the sofa.
“Fine,” I echoed.
She grinned. “Do you feel better?”
I wasn’t quite ready to smile back, but I did breathe out an audible sigh. “Maybe a little.”
“Good. Can we sort of change the subject?” Paige asked. “Also, are you hungry? I’m hungry.”
“I’m starving. I was too nervous to really eat my dinner.”
Paige stood and started rummaging through the kitchen—rather, the tiny counter behind our tiny living room where we kept our food. She returned to the couch with a loaf of French bread, a block of Wensleydale cranberry cheese, a bowl of strawberries, and a knife wedged between her teeth.