“Tiger.”
I didn’t stop.
“Emery.”
Still didn’t stop.
The daytime security guard nodded at me as I strolled past him, his opinion of me suddenly more favorable now that I kept him fed. Pride made accepting food from Nash impossible, even if it meant hurting myself in the process.
My vision blurred from the hunger, colorful spots dancing at the corners. I could put myself out of my misery by taking the meals. Instead, I let Nash eat them or gave them to the security guards.
I thought I had hallucinated the fridge, but when I entered the office, an Insta Cart deliverer stood in front of it, cramming a spread of frozen meals, expensive protein, and yogurt inside.
Falling to the couch, I considered my options with Brandon. Really, I had none. He could keep showing up, but I didn’t have answers for him, except my dad’s location, which wouldn’t help. The S.E.C. and F.B.I. hadn’t found anything on Dad the first time around.
The Insta Cart guy turned to me every ten seconds like he thought I would attack him. I spared him my resting bitch face and sloped my head to face the ceiling, toying with a pen as I considered ideas to make the hotel design less of a bore.
The one true save would be to scrap it entirely, but we didn’t have the time or budget for a drastic change, and Chantilly would find another way to run a second budget to the ground. She came from a poor family. While poverty sometimes bred thrifty spenders, it had turned Chantilly into a fiscal nightmare.
She thrived on spending every dollar she owned and then some. Appointing her as the temporary department head was like taking a five-year-old to Toys ‘R Us and telling him to have at it. The Haling Cove budget would make a hedge fund manager weep, yet she’d managed to exhaust it.
We needed a conversational focus piece, but we couldn’t afford one. The snobby hotel crowd would treat D.I.Y. projects as trash, and high-end artists never worked for free. I’d toyed with this puzzle all week. A knot I couldn’t untangle, and I felt like the only one trying.
“You look like you’re deep in thought.” Ida Marie plopped her bag at the foot of the couch and sat next to me. She smelled like Shakshuka from the Tunisian place nearby.
What did it mean that I didn’t get jealous of how pretty or smart or well-dressed people were but rather of the food they ate? I wanted Shakshuka—and Brik a L’oef, Fricassé, and Bambalouni for dessert.
Now, what did it mean if I could have all of that just by asking Nash, yet I refused?
“I’m trying to figure out what to do with the design.” I tossed the pen up and caught it.
“There’s nothing to figure out. We don’t make the decisions.”
No, but Nash did, and he cared. He wouldn’t show it. Probably wouldn’t even admit it to himself.
How would you know that, Emery?
Ugh.
Good question.
I knew Nash cared like I knew Reed muttered under his breath when something irritated him, Betty had a favorite prayer, Hank wiggled his toes each time he laughed, and Nash ran a palm twice through his hair when he thought someone was an idiot and three times when he was somewhere he didn’t want to be.
“I’m not gonna have my first project for Prescott Hotels be one I hate.” I watched the Insta Cart shopper unload the rest of the groceries, wanting to help him but knowing I’d be too tempted to eat something from the fridge if I did. “At this rate, none of us will be invited to work on the Singapore location.”
Everything about the Singapore location rubbed me wrong. Maybe the way Nash seemed too invested in it. Office rumors placed the likelihood of Prescott Hotels winning a bidding war against Asher Black pretty low.
If Nash did win, it would be at a steep cost that wouldn’t be worth the location.
Why go through that?
Why not find another location in Singapore?
Why that property?
My pride crippled me; Nash’s didn’t. If logic dictated he find another location, he would have. Something kept him there, and my thirst to understand him didn’t allow me to ignore it. As with everything involving Nash, my curiosity would remain unanswered like a light switch that refused to flick on.
Ida Marie waved at the Insta Cart shopper when he left, escorted back to the lobby by a security guard I didn’t recognize.
“Singapore is probably going to the design team that did Dubai and Hollywood.” She chewed on her gum and popped a bubble. “I don’t think we had a chance from the start. You ever notice how stunning all the Prescott Hotel locations are compared to the North Carolina ones?”
Her arms swung as she spoke, “It’s like these are the throwaways. They’re still better than everyone’s except maybe Black Enterprise’s, but they’re just… less. You’d think, being from North Carolina, our boss would spend extra attention on these.”
Nash hated North Carolina because he hated Eastridge. I read between the lines in his notes. It seemed like he warred with himself, and the only way he could get his thoughts settled was to put them down on pen and paper.
When he graduated high school and Betty took an extra job doing morning house chores at my neighbor’s, she asked Nash to make Reed’s lunches. He continued to make mine, too. Notes and all.
Some of them spoke of leaving, especially once Nash got accepted as a transfer to a few Ivy League schools and never told anyone except, I now realized, me.
Do you think you’re in anyone’s favorite memory? I think I’m maybe in Ma’s or Dad’s. It’s one of the reasons why I stay in North Carolina. You can’t leave someone who has a favorite memory featuring you, ya know?
Nash
Dad lost the T.V. remote last night, and Ma yelled, “Ain’t nothing lost until I can’t find it.” I asked her if she could find my fucking hope. I was kidding. She didn’t find it funny. She begged me not to say anything like that again.
I was gonna ask her what she thought of me leavin’ for Harvard or Wilton, but I didn’t after that.
I got into Harvard, Yale, and Wilton.
(Fuck Yale.)
Can you believe it? The Eastridge Prep scholarship kid at Harvard. Probably won’t go, but still… Some things you’ve just gotta say out loud to make sure they’re happening.
Nash
You know how they say money can’t buy happiness? Everyone on this side of Eastridge is so damn rich, and I have a theory. I think they’ve managed to buy themselves different degrees of misery.
The Kensingtons are both richer and less miserable than the Abbots, but the Abbots are richer and less miserable than the Grimaldi family, who is richer and less miserable than the Stryker family. I wonder if it’s like that anywhere else. Norway? Côte d’Ivoire? Trinidad and Tobago?
Nash
It occurred to me that I knew parts of Nash no one else did. I didn’t know what to think of that except to exorcise it from my head.
I cut off Ida Marie’s complaints about being assigned the North Carolina location, “Giving up sets you up for failure. It’s like saying you want something, but not hard enough to work for it.”
“Being assigned the Haling Cove branch set us up for failure.” Ida Marie perched a fist on each hip. “You know it only happened because we’re on Mary-Kate’s team. They’re not going to let Chantilly take over a project that actually matters to Prescott Hotels. She doesn’t have the experience.”