For someone who thrived on confrontation, I could list avoidance under the “skills” column of my resume.
The construction worker glared at me beneath the sun’s harsh rays. “Again?”
I swiped the hair out my face, wishing I could flick some guilt off with it. “Last time. I swear.”
I’d said that the last four times I asked him to move it.
“A little to the left.”
“Maybe slightly lower.”
“Ohh… that’s too low. Higher?”
“To the right.”
Ninety percent sure the Prescott Hotels sign currently sat where it had started.
“Like this?” He shifted the hunk of metal higher above the entrance.
“Yes. We’re good.”
His relief slithered across his body. He took the opportunity to dismiss me with his back. Loitering by the double doors, I wished for a cigarette habit or something to keep me outside and away from the office, where the feeding saga continued in full force.
Nash brought me decadent dishes every day, and I declined every day.
My willpower resembled a starving puppy’s, jaw snapping open at the slightest whiff of food.
The sun brought spots to my eyes. Two delivery men jostled me out of their way. A giant chrome refrigerator sat on a trolley between them, Nash’s persistency written all over it.
What. The. Fuck.
My eyes fluttered with rapid blinks. I pinched my forearm—twice—to assure myself that I hadn’t hallucinated a damn fridge. Not just any fridge. One of those smart ones with a tablet built into the door.
Turning to the construction worker, I rubbed at my eyes and squinted at him. “Did you see that?”
He dipped his head down as if that would spare him my attention. “See what?”
“Never mind.”
Palming my phone, I pulled up the Eastridge United app.
Durga: What’s the number for a good shrink? I think my boss needs psychiatric help.
Benkinersophobia: Funny. I feel the same way about one of my employees.
Durga: Fire them. Let me work for you instead.
Benkinersophobia: Consider this your job offer—forty hours a week, easy access clothing only. I’ll allow kneepads given the labor requirements.
His next text came right after.
Benkinersophobia: Really, though, you good?
Durga: I will be.
Durga: I missed you this weekend.
Benkinersophobia: I spent the weekend with family. Usually, I can message you fine, but my mom’s hiding something from me. I spent the past few days trying to figure it out.
Durga: Did you?
Benkinersophobia: No, but I will. I always get what I want. You should know this by now.
Durga: You sound like my boss.
Benkinersophobia: Fuck your boss.
I already did.
Benkinersophobia: (The curse not the verb. Don’t actually fuck your boss.)
Too late.
My fingers flew across the keyboard until a shadow darkened the screen. Two shiny chestnut loafers entered my vision. I trailed them to their owner.
Not again.
That same déjà vu tickled my head, begging me to listen to it.
You know Brandon from somewhere. Figure it out. This is important, Emery.
Still nothing.
“I’m not interested.” Rough heartbeats ate their way up my throat. Pocketing my phone, I quirked a brow and played it cool. “Can’t take a hint, Mr. Vu?”
“Mr. Vu is my father.”
“Mr. Vu is also you. Great conversation. Let’s never do it again.” I feigned left and swerved right, feeling like the next Odell Beckham when Brandon fell for the juke.
“Miss Winthrop, we have to talk.” His fingers curled around my wrist, releasing when I jerked it away. “This is important. You’re not in trouble.”
“No shit.” I swiveled and snapped my glare to him. “I’m well aware I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t break any laws. I don’t care about whatever three-lettered government agency you came from. It means nothing to me. You mean nothing to me.” A bruise would form around my wrist, but I refused to cradle it. “You’re looking at the wrong Winthrop, and newsflash, I haven’t seen my dad in years. I have work to do. Have a shitty day. I know I will.”
The metal door handle cooled my palm, but I still ran thirty degrees hotter inside. I pivoted and staggered back when my eyes caught and held Nash’s through the door’s reflection. His narrowed eyes flicked from me to Brandon and back to me.
Two fingers toyed with the cuff on one hand, like he was gearing for a fight. Being his victim appealed less to me than a conversation with the S.E.C.’s lapdog, so I swung the glass door open and shouldered past him.
“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
fuckinghope. 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
damnrich, 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.”
“Every project matters to Prescott Hotels,” I argued, except doubt trickled in.
This all started to feel like fate—as if so many events clicked into place to land me this job.
Mary-Kate’s Tinder one-night stand led to a baby.
That baby led to her maternity leave.
The maternity leave led to Chantilly’s promotion as the interim head of the design team.
Nash’s need to dominate North Carolina led to a branch opening in Haling Cove.
Chantilly’s inexperience led to the team being assigned to Haling Cove because Ida Marie had been right—Nash did treat the North Carolina Prescott Hotels as throwaways.
A gazillion events led to me needing a job.
Something Reed did for Delilah led to Delilah owing Reed a favor.
That favor led to Prescott Hotels hiring me.
Someone retiring on Chantilly’s team led to me being assigned to Haling Cove.
Being assigned to Haling Cove led me to that elevator and my work with Nash.
How many moving pieces was that?
Eleven.
More, actually, if you broke down my dive into poverty. What more could Fate throw at me? Hell, what was it trying to tell me?
Ida Marie stretched her arms above her head instead of answering and nodded to Hannah and Cayden as they entered with Chantilly. The three of them eyed the fridge before Cayden walked up and studied the contents.
“Neat.” He pulled out some cold cuts and a can of soda. “It’s the good stuff. Perhaps the king has a heart after all.”
Ten years ago, maybe. It’s long gone now—buried so deep, he has forgotten it ever existed.
“You just ate!” Hannah joined Cayden and grabbed an apple juice. “Whoa. These are, like, ten dollars a pop at the juice bar. Nash bought this? For us?”
Chantilly and Ida Marie followed suit, riffling through the fridge. Meanwhile, I sat with my hands tucked under my thighs, knowing if I allowed myself to indulge, Nash would probably walk in ten seconds later to witness the moment of weakness given my luck.
I avoided the heavy stares from my coworkers when my stomach conjured a growl that resembled two dogs fighting over a bone. “What? We don’t have time for food.”
By the time Nash stepped into the room, everyone had settled in and begun their afternoon sketches. He eyed the Coke can in Cayden’s hand, the yogurt in Chantilly’s, the string cheese in Ida Marie’s, and the organic juice pouch in Hannah’s.
Then he clocked my empty palms, ran his hand through his hair twice—which implied he thought I was an idiot—and stalked to the refrigerator. Swinging the door open with the grace of a drunk sumo wrestler, he skimmed each row as if to double-check they had been stocked and eyed my empty hands once more.
His fingers hovered over the fridge, almost curled around the handle. My face flushed at the memory of them inside me, then hardened at the reminder he’d left. Civility should have been a foreign concept, but it felt weird to hate him over the way he spoke to me in the soup kitchen.
Not because he didn’t deserve it—he so did—but because I had touted forgiveness and moving on as a lesson to Ben. If I didn’t lead by example, I would be a liar. I could do that to Reed, Virginia, and Nash, but I couldn’t lie to Ben.
The stare-down with Nash lasted nearly a minute. The questions simmering inside Ida Marie and Chantilly lashed at me, but I didn’t dare look away. I would deal with the consequences later.
“Have you eaten?” Nash spoke as if no one else was in the room. His eyes dipped to my stomach like they would give him some answers.
“No.”
I didn’t elaborate.
Didn’t waver.
Didn’t tell him that it had been fourteen hours since food last touched my lips.
Didn’t tell him I used his app to talk to Ben.
Didn’t tell him I couldn’t stand the idea of his dad’s death on my dad’s hands.
Didn’t tell him it gave him no right to be cruel to me.
Instead, we communicated with our eyes.
Mine said, “I’m not built to lose.”
His said, “I’m only built to win.”
Another minute.
Two.
Chantilly approached Nash on the third.
He ignored her, speared one last glare at me, and left.
I released a breath with him gone.
Victory felt as hollow as an aluminum baseball bat.
Cold.
Hard.
Never permanent.
