I never wasted my time explaining myself to anyone.
Ten out of ten times, people have already made up their minds about you. Time is too valuable to waste it on people devoted to misunderstanding you.
Delilah Lowell, however, was the exception. We had gotten off to a rocky start. I told her to fuck off, mistaking her for an over-talkative intern. She’d told me my insults didn’t faze her, and she owned a dog more threatening than me. (Had I known the dog was Rosco, I probably would have laughed in her face as I slammed my door in it.)
Four years later, she and Ma were the two people who had the privilege of knowing my phone number. Everyone else, including Reed, had my email address.
“Nash.” Delilah placed a hand on my forearm after I stepped out of the elevator onto the fifth floor. “That scowl on your face screams impending lawsuit. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t.”
Her hair stuck out in multiple directions. She carried her rat in one hand and dug through her orange Birkin with the other. I was ninety percent sure she’d been having phone sex with her husband before I’d forced her to follow me down here.
Two spruce-colored eyes narrowed, looking for any signs of trouble on my face before she added, “I’m already swamped overseeing the contracts on the Singapore location.” Her free hand continued rifling through her bag, stopping to grab my arm again when I turned to leave. “I’d like to be able to spend time with my husband sometime this century.”
I turned back to her, removed her hand from my arm, and deepened the scowl. “First, I’m not scowling. Second, I have nothing planned. Third, last I checked, overseeing the contracts on the Singapore location is your job. If you dislike your job so much, perhaps you should find another line of work. I’d be happy to hire someone to write you a letter of rec.”
Her attention had fled, returning to her bag. “I never said I dislike my job.” She stopped digging when she found what she’d been looking for. “And the you’re-not-the-boss-of-me routine? Seriously? We’re above that.”
“It’s a routine because it’s true. I am the boss of you,” I enunciated each word and buttoned up my suit. “Feels nice to have lowly minions.”
Finally, she pulled out a stack of papers, wrinkled at the edges and stained in brown by—I hoped—coffee in the center. Anyone who fell for Delilah’s manicured fingers and freshly-steamed power suits possessed stupidity I wanted no part of.
She was as likely to be put together as I was to fuck without a condom. (Re: a once in a lifetime mistake that, thankfully, did not end with a crying newborn I was bound to emotionally destroy.)
I relieved her of the papers and skimmed them. A list. Bullet points, a litany of action verbs, and thumbnail pictures, but my eyes honed on Emery’s. She posed like someone taking a mug shot.
“And this is?” When Delilah opened her mouth, I added, “Give me the CliffNotes version.”
“A list of everyone on the design team. They’re all on the younger side, but we do that for longevity. Chantilly—the redhead—is in charge of the team while Mary-Kate is on maternity leave.
“Cayden is second in command, a senior design associate. He’s British and tactless but good at his job. Extremely efficient. He set up the office and furniture in the penthouse while we were at a meeting with the mayor the other day.
“Ida Marie, the lanky blonde, is a junior associate and my favorite of the bunch. Sweet and dull as Marmaduke. Every time I see her, I have to resist the urge to pet her head. You would hate her.
“Hannah and Emery are interns. You know how Emery looks, and Hannah is the one with brown hair and nothing good to say.” She pulled a sheet from the bottom of this stack. “This list is the most important. It’s full of things you cannot say to your employees without getting a lawsuit slapped onto my workload.”
Dragging my eyes from Emery’s mug shot, I spoke, “I know how to avoid a lawsuit, Delilah.”
She arched a brow. “Do you?”
I swiped the second paper from her and scanned it. “Do not swear at employees. Do not bully employees. Do not make employees cry.” Staring up at her, I double-checked to see if she was serious. “This is Soviet Union bullshit. I have no control over their emotions.”
“Just follow the list.” Rosco barked twice and leaned forward to nip my shoulder. I side-stepped the rat. Delilah pulled him back, plopped him into her thirty-thousand-dollar bag until everything but his head vanished, and continued, “I’ll see you tonight for dinner. I hate eating alone, and King doesn’t fly in until Wednesday.”
“Can’t. I’m volunteering at the soup kitchen.”
Like melted ice cream, she softened—first her eyes, then her posture. I waited for her to pool onto the floor in a puddle I could step in. At the very least, we’d be done with this conversation.
Her voice dipped lower as if she intended on spilling national secrets. “You’re a good person, Nash. When I first met you, I wanted to quit, then I realized you are the best person I know.”
“I’m not. Perhaps you should still quit.”
“You didn’t see the resignation letter on your desk?”
“That’s what that was? I shredded it along with your raise.”
She turned to leave but pivoted and exhaled, her voice a little too loud for comfort, but telling the one person who could stand me (besides my mom) to shut up seemed like a bad idea.
“I had my resignation letter written. Four years ago.” Delilah pulled her coat tighter around her. “Then, I saw you at that Italian place on eighth. You walked in with a homeless woman. They wouldn’t serve her, so you walked out. By the time they’d brought me and King dessert, you had taken the woman to get a haircut, new clothes, and makeup, and you returned to the restaurant, bought her a meal, and tipped everyone a thousand bucks except the asshole who wouldn’t seat her.”
She swiped beneath her lashes even though she hadn’t shed a tear and added, “You gave her her dignity back, because you are a good person, whether you want to believe it or not. Sometimes, I wish you’d give yourself a break.”
I almost appreciated her speech.
Almost.
Then she had to ruin it with, “You blame yourself for your Dad’s—”
“Delilah,” I warned. Sharp.
It fell under the do-not-fucking-go-there column of our friendship.
“Fine.” She threw her hands up, causing her purse to swing. Rosco yelped. “Never talk about it. Live life an insufferable jerk, and die in bed with only your arsenal of paid dates to keep you company. None of it will change the fact that I know your secret.”
In one second, she’d gone from pissing me off to enabling the part of me that sought destruction at all costs. I was on a warpath, ready to annihilate my lone friend just so my secret could die with me.
And then she opened her mouth, and I relaxed as she finished with, “Deep down, you’re a good person.”
She’d had enough of me, pivoting without another word and poking the elevator button with the same vigor you’d use to stab someone attacking you.
And that was our friendship in a nutshell. She stood up to me. I let her. At the end of the day, I didn’t budge, but at least I had the company of someone who gave a shit without trying to get at my dick.
We never even parted with hugs or handshakes. Delilah knew my boundaries. Skin-to-skin contact was one of them. I could touch someone, but I’d be damned if I let anyone touch me.
I tossed the lists she’d given me into the trashcan next to the elevator and continued my path down the hall, stopping short of the door to the conference room. From my vantage point, I could spy without anyone on the design team seeing me.
My eyes honed in on Emery, Durga’s messages on my mind.
Like dirt.
Like less than dirt.
Emery sat on the couch, her eyes trained on the television, on the part where Ariel undergoes the fish version of plastic surgery to please her man and then loses her ability to talk in the process, but hey, it’s not like the woman had anything valuable to say.
(Note to self: If Reed ever has a daughter, she cannot watch princess movies unless it involves an essay dismantling them.)
Emery wore a black hoodie, unzipped except at the bottom, where she’d fastened the zipper without bothering to pull it up; a shirt that read eccedentesiast, which for all I knew could be an S.T.D. warning; and black Chucks that looked like they’d been bought used from a pigéage facility.
Meanwhile, Cayden dressed in a three-piece suit, outfit completed by a striped pocket square tucked in a double-point fold. The other girls wore dresses and heels, their hair actually brushed and faces congealed by makeup.
“Oh, come on!” Emery’s zipper unfastened as she threw both arms in the air, nearly hitting the blonde sitting on the couch beside her. She turned to the woman, eyebrows pointed at the ceiling, “Tell me this pisses you off, too, Ida Marie.”
Wide-eyed and bearing remarkable resemblance to an Asian tarsier, Ida Marie stuttered, “Um… what?”
“Ignore her,” Hannah remarked from one of the desks, not bothering to glance up from the computer screen. She sounded harsh without the Carolinian drawl to soften her vowels. “She’s been doing this for the past thirty minutes.”
“Past hour,” Chantilly corrected from the other desk. Her tiny scarlet dress inched up her thigh as she leaned forward and squinted at her screen.
An F5 tornado couldn’t faze Emery as she gestured to the television, this time almost hitting Cayden on her left. I recognized him from our Redondo Beach project last year. He had a keen eye, sharp wit, and a British accent that landed him more ass than a stripper pole.
Emery stood and turned to Cayden and Ida Marie. “This chick basically changes how she looks for a guy, then she washes up on shore, and dudebro prince sees a hot naked chick and wants to smash? Are y’all for real?” Her Southern accent strengthened the more worked up she got. Wide-eyed and jaw unhinged, she looked manic, a second from being escorted out in cuffs by security. “This is worse than The Titanic!”
“What’s wrong with The Titanic?” Ida Marie crossed her arms and inched away from Emery. “It’s romantic.”
“It would have been romantic if Rose had shared her raft.”
“What about Snow White?”
“She’s fourteen, Ida Marie. Fourteen!” Emery shook her head, then swiped the drawstring of her hoodie aside when it swung at her face. “Snow White trusts a twenty-something dude she’s alone in a forest with because he sings to her? Sings. And the Queen gets jealous of how pretty a fourteen-year-old girl is and decides to poison her. Unbelievable. She didn’t need seven dwarves. She needed a knife and two body bags.”
“You are disturbingly violent.”
Her chin tilted up. “Thank you.”
Chantilly lifted her wrist and glanced at her watch. “It’s two past nine. He should be here by now.”
True, but I wasn’t in a rush to end this amusing display. In another life, I might have liked Emery. Unfortunately for her, liars and murderers appealed to me as much as making out with Able Small Dick Cartwright did. As in, I’d rather take my chances with a Guillotine.
“Who should be here right now?”
Chantilly ignored Emery’s question and gestured to her shirt. “What are you wearing?”
“I’ve been here for an hour. If you had a problem with what I’m wearing, you should have told me while I had time to change.”
“This is an office of business. I shouldn’t have to tell you it’s inappropriate to wear jeans and Converse to a meeting. Delilah Lowell may have gotten you this job, but I don’t play favorites in my department.”
“This is a half-finished construction site,” she corrected. Her eyes dipped to Chantilly’s open-toed Louboutin pumps. “There’s still a closed-toed shoes policy.”
She reminded me of an active minefield. Volatile. Dangerous. A liability to herself. Because when a mine exploded, it’d take her down with it.
“So…” Ida Marie began, her voice trailing off as the silence persisted. “What do you think about Mulan?”
Emery scoffed and finally took a seat on the couch again. “She’s sixteen, and he’s, like, ten years older than her and her boss.”
Our age gap, I noticed.
She spoke as if the very idea disgusted her.
It didn’t matter.
Touching her once was a mistake.
Touching her again would be sinful.
