“Is this a bad time? Sam Stark gave me this number to reach you on.”
“No, sorry, it’s fine. I’ve been dealing with some telemarketers lately.”
She chuckled, some of the unease leaving her voice. “I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Waverly from the Waverly Hotels Group. He’d like to have a meeting with you on Monday morning at nine. He’s using the offices at the Winthorpe.”
Waverly Hotels Group. Maybe I could salvage this. If not for me, maybe for Sam and Zara. Maybe everything hadn’t turned into fiery rubble.
I ended the call and rushed back to my apartment, firing up the laptop and researching their hotel development programs. Maybe…
44
Zara
Every step to my office was another flood of emotions. Each step threatened to send me back to my apartment, but even there wasn’t safe.
Stella’s muffled voice on the other side of my door, and Leo’s low rumble, had kept me rooted in place in my living room. He hadn’t tried to use my key. Good. I had the chain on. I couldn’t even afford to change the locks. I buried my face in the couch cushions. The soft, beautiful couch cushions he’d bought me, that only made everything worse. My tears didn’t stop until the timid knock from Stella.
There weren’t enough ice cream sundaes in the world to fix this. Chocolate fudge and sprinkles couldn’t fix a shattered heart.
Messages and calls from Leo filled my screen. My finger hovered above the block button before I broke down and tapped it. But that didn’t stop the messages. Hunter’s phone, Jameson’s phone, August’s phone—each one blocked. Leo even borrowed Everest’s, although they weren’t on the best of terms. Each message ended with the line. “Let me explain.”
Only I couldn’t. Not right now. Every text brought tears to my eyes. A reminder of my own stupidity. Once I figured out what would happen to me and Tyler, then I could—there was nothing. Only a yawning abyss of impossibility when I tried to think of how this could be fixed.
My hands shook with each message to Tyler. I’d wait to tell him. No sense killing his happiness with the news that he wouldn’t be returning next term.
It was Monday morning, when I’d normally already be at the office. Instead, I was in sweats, with stringy, unwashed hair, and sneakers, trudging to the office with my empty box.
The lights flicked on when I arrived. Even at seven, I was still the earliest arrival. After two years of bleeding-from-my-eyes level of work and dedication, losing a client Valerie had already lost got me booted out.
I wrapped up the spare cables for my phone into the cardboard box. Tugging open my drawer, I brushed my hair back from my face and dumped the whole thing into the box. Chapsticks, hair ties, safety pins, bobby pins, tide sticks, and more fell like a shower of preparedness into the box. Except I hadn’t been prepared. How could I have been?
After twenty calls and thirty texts, I’d blocked Leo’s number. My eyes were still red-ringed and puffy. The oversized sweatshirt, sneakers, jeans, and messy bun screamed breakup wardrobe, but I didn’t care. Couldn’t care.
In between crying jags, I’d put in over seventy applications over the past week. And just as I’d known when I got stuck there, it wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew. There hadn’t been a single response. I might as well have been drafting personalized cover letters and lighting them on fire, —which was what I’d probably be doing in another month when I got kicked out of my apartment for not being able to make rent.
All my emails to old college ‘friends’ had also gone unanswered. Dammit, I should’ve networked more. Instead, I’d worked my ass off to graduate on time, and look where that had gotten me.
A grating voice broke through my snuffle-filled solitude. “Did you honestly think you could’ve pulled it off?”
“Not now, Valerie.” I emptied out the last drawer under my desk and picked up the picture frame of me and Ty last summer at a carnival.
“It’s not like you’ll be around to say this to later.” She sauntered into the office with a smug smirk. “I told my dad it was a mistake to put you on the job, but he was trying to teach me a lesson about responsibility. Can I give you a little advice for your next job?”
“Can we not do this?”
“I’m only trying to be helpful.” She put on a sugary sweet voice, but glee danced in her eyes.
My stomach knotted.
She was enjoying the hell out of this. “Your little lie about being engaged to Leo. You should’ve seen Kathleen’s face when I told—”
I slammed the box down on my former desk. My back snapped straight, shock ricocheting down my spine.
“You told Kathleen.” Blind fury clouded the edges of my vision. Blood hammering in my veins, making it hard to hear any of the sputtering and stammering before her cool mask slipped back into place.
“You screwed your own father out of a possibly million-dollar client all to get back at me.” I jammed my finger into the center of my chest. “You ruined a man’s business because of your petty, jealous bullshit. You can walk in here with your designer bags, overpriced coffee, and plastic smile, and pretend you’re trying to be helpful, but you’re not a nice person. I should’ve known when you introduced yourself the first day by telling me you hated people and everyone thought you were a nightmare.” I tapped my finger against my chin. “Now, why would anyone would say that about you? Probably because you are. You’ve been riding Daddy’s coattails, fucking things up left and right. I am so happy I don’t have to clean up after your messes anymore.” I slammed the lid down on the box and hefted it into my arms.
There was a flicker of self-reflection on her face—or maybe it was gas. She crossed her arms over her chest without moving an inch when I stood in front of her with the box in my arms. But I wasn’t her lackey anymore and I didn’t have to bow down to her or kiss her ass.
“That’s some other person’s job now, which means I also don’t have to listen to you gloat. So go right ahead with what you’re doing, but some day Daddy won’t be there to cover for you, and who’s going to want to give a job to a…” I wracked my brain for the perfect description.
Andi popped up from her cubicle with her hand in the air, jumping up and down like a first grader who needed to use the bathroom. “Towering thundercunt?”
“I was going to go with bitch, but I like yours much better.”
A drawer opened and closed behind Andi’s cubicle wall, and she stepped out of her cube wearing a feather boa and tiara and fell in line with me as I walked to the elevator.
“I told you I had these at the ready for the day you finally cracked. And you get a gold star.” She pulled out a shiny gold sheet of star stickers out of her back pocket and stuck it to my chest. “What? It motivates my team.”
A screech sounded behind us. It seemed Valerie was finally unfrozen. “Andi, you think you can talk to me that way?”
Andi shrugged. “I don’t think I can. I just did,” she called out over her shoulder.
“I’m telling my father.” Valerie flipped her hair and stormed off.