“What magician?” Kevin asked, shattering the perfection of the moment.
Will groaned and threw his hands up in the air. “You know! The Magician. The guy who has been magically making things disappear.”
Kevin’s deep, booming laughter filled the room. “I’d bet a month’s salary that you’ve spent every bit as much time coming up with the best way to set all of that up as you have actually working on the story.”
“And you would win that bet.” Will nodded, undeterred. “It was perfect. Seriously, how did you not get it right away? Should I have worked ‘magically’ into the setup a little more?”
“I don’t know that you could have worked it in more than you did.” He sat back down in his chair. “So, walk me through it.”
Will sat in the chair next to him. “We protect his identity and he’s ready to talk.”
“Money?”
“He just wants to go away.”
Kevin leaned back in the chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “I bet he does. So, what? We put him on a plane and send him to Tahiti?”
“Papua New Guinea, but yeah . . . you get the idea. We get his story, and he’s on a plane before we run it. That’s the deal. He won’t negotiate.”
“And then we’re left to clean up the mess, and we’re left with the burden of proof, and it’s as if our source no longer exists.”
Will smiled. “Simple, right?”
“Simple was when my job was to get a ball through a basket. Or, actually, simple was before I hired you. We used to talk about the joy of the game, and the thrill of competition. And then I hired this researcher—”
“To research, presumably . . .”
“Who seems to think we should be covering hard-hitting news.”
“Only part of the time,” Will replied with a shrug.
Kevin shook his head and then buried it in his hands. It was from that posture that he muttered, “I trust you. You know that. I’ve got your back on this. But I also need to make sure you understand that if you’re wrong, I won’t have any choice but to fire you. You know that, right?”
“I do.”
“All right then.” Kevin sighed. “Set it up. Let’s talk to the Magician.”
“I knew it!” Will exclaimed as he pushed his rolling office chair back from the table and pumped his fist in the air. “You like it. I knew you would. I really think every reference we make, we need to call him the Magician. We might actually want to talk to legal and see if we can get a trademark on that—”
“Will?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Don’t make me every bit as likely to fire you for being right as for being wrong.”
Will nodded. “Got it.”
Kevin put his hands on the table as he stood. “Okay, I’m heading home.”
Will glanced at his watch and then slapped his forehead. “Oh, man. Yeah, me too.”
Just as he began to stand from his chair, Kevin put his hand on Will’s shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. “I don’t think so. I want a full preliminary report on my desk before I get here in the morning. Timeline, expenses, backup sources—”
“Okay. No problem. I’ll get in here early and get it done. But it’s Cadie’s birthday, Kev. She’s making dinner, and—”
“She’s making her own birthday dinner?”
Will shrugged. “It’s also our anniversary. She wanted to. I’m already late, so—”
“Sorry, man.” Kevin’s firm grip became a kind pat. “And please tell Cadie I’m really sorry. But I think you’re going to have to make it up to her later. It’s not just your career on the line here. You’ve got an entire program—an entire network—counting on you. If we miss a single step, it will be disastrous.”
Will sighed deeply and nodded. “I know. You’re right.”
“But seriously, tell Cadie happy birthday from Larinda and me. Maybe you can both take some time off and get away for a little while once we’re finished with . . . The Magic Show?” They both scrunched up their noses and shook their heads. “Well, whatever. You’ll make it up to her. And if this all goes down as quickly as you seem to think it’s going to, you should have some free time in a day or two. Three at the most.”
“Sure thing,” Will said, though all he was thinking was, It would be difficult to make up for missing a birthday dinner. A birthday dinner and an anniversary? That’s where we’re going to need some magic.
“And tell her I miss the days of having time to get her Over the Hill cakes. Of course that’s your fault, Whitaker.” He grabbed the door handle and grumbled, “This job used to be simple . . .” as he walked out of the conference room.
3
A Day or Two Later. Three at the Most . . .
I just wasn’t sure how much longer I could avoid him. Thankfully, he was busy and I was busy—Will on The Field, me on The Bench—so it wasn’t as if we kept running into each other. Quite the opposite. I hadn’t been in the same room with him since the afternoon of my birthday. But I hated the feeling of knowing he might peek around the corner at any moment. Worse, I knew he could peek around the corner and think that everything was okay between us.
I used to love waiting for him to peek around the corner. It was like this glorious anguish, knowing that he was just about fifty yards away, doing his thing, and that he could possibly be in need of something administrative at any moment. Knowing that at any moment he could pop his head into my office and sternly say, “McCaffrey. Lunch. Let’s go.” He could never remain stern for more than a second or two before an enormous smile would break out on his face, and I would grab my purse and kiss him in the doorway. Whoever was walking by would whistle or clear their throat and then he would throw his arm over my shoulder and we would escape to our own little world for an hour or so.
For so long, for years, I couldn’t imagine ever growing tired of that.
But for a day or two, maybe three, I had lived in absolute dread that I would hear his voice. “McCaffrey. Lunch. Let’s go.” And how would I respond? I had no idea. All I knew for sure was that I wouldn’t grab my purse and kiss him in the doorway. I couldn’t allow myself to act as if we were still us.
I was absolutely dreading that, and so ready to just end things. I mean, I was dreading that too, of course. But I was ready for it to be over. I was ready to stop waiting for the moment when he thought everything was normal, and I had to tell him it wasn’t.
But it would be really difficult to end things without talking to him.
Apart from a couple of texts, we’d exchanged no communication with each other since he called me to cancel our plans—if you don’t count interoffice memos, which were also shared by sixty of our co-workers.
“Maybe he’s breaking up with me!” I suddenly exclaimed in a hushed tone to my best friend, Darby, as we stood at the copier.
“What?” she asked as she shut the copy room door behind us. “Not possible.”
“Why is it not possible? Why wouldn’t he? That would totally explain it. That would explain why he’s been avoiding me, and why he ditched me on my birthday, and why he hasn’t bothered to call. That’s it, Darby. He’s dumping me.”
She pulled the stack of budget reports from the copier output tray and began sorting. “Nope. No way. Will wouldn’t do that.”
“He wouldn’t break up with me? How can you say that for sure? Something’s been going on with him for a very long time, and maybe he’s finally realizing that he doesn’t love me like he used to.” My breath caught in my chest as I heard the words that I’d been turning over and over in my head for a year. I cleared my throat and attempted to force all of my insecurities to the back of my mind, where they’d grown quite comfortable and invested in beachfront property. “But, um . . . you really don’t think he’d break up with me?”
She sighed and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I meant he wouldn’t break up with you like that,” she clarified. “He wouldn’t just avoid you. You know he wouldn’t. After all
you guys have been through, after all this time? No way.”
I nodded and acknowledged to myself that I knew she was right. Maybe the spark was gone, and maybe I was no longer certain that I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life—which was a good thing, when you think about it, since he’d never given me any real indication that he’d thought about our relationship past the dating stage. But Will Whitaker was still a good guy.
And of course, I wouldn’t break up with him like that, either. Which was why I was desperately hoping we weren’t on such completely different channels that he really did think everything was okay. The idea that he was preparing to break up with me was actually easier to swallow.
“He’s got to know things aren’t good anymore. Right?” I asked Darby—though I’m not sure why I thought she’d have any more of an idea about that than I did.
“I don’t know,” she replied with a shrug. “You’ve always said Will isn’t the most intuitive of men.”
My face scrunched up. “That’s true. But this? This one is pretty obvious, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But do you remember when you guys had that whole awkward sex talk last year?”
“Oh, good grief. It wasn’t an ‘awkward sex talk.’ It was an awkward talk. Period.” I grabbed half of her sorted papers and began 3-hole punching. “Besides, I thought we agreed never to speak of that again.”
“I’m just saying, he wasn’t exactly picking up the clues that day. That one seemed pretty obvious too. You even pulled out your womanly charms.”
I laughed, though when I thought back on that night, I realized I hadn’t gotten to the “someday we’ll look back on this and chuckle” stage, nor could I imagine that I ever would. All I really felt was embarrassment and regret. In so many ways, that conversation had been the beginning of the end for me, but I didn’t blame him for that. At least not entirely.
“My womanly charms? You make it sound like I tried to seduce him.”
She continued calmly sorting. “Well, I mean, you kind of—”
“I did not!” I exclaimed. She giggled at my reaction as I took a deep breath and then repeated, much more quietly, “I did not. Did I use the intimation of sex in an ill-conceived attempt to make a statement and get my point across? Yes, I did. I’m not proud of it. But I most certainly did not try to seduce him. Nothing about any of it was actually about sex. It was about commitment. Taking the next steps.” I shrugged and added, with great emphasis, “Marriage.”
Darby nodded and smiled. “And how if the two of you didn’t take those next steps and get married, you’d never have sex. Like I said. An awkward sex talk.”
Embarrassment washed over me anew. There was no point in continuing the debate. Ultimately it was about marriage and not just sex, but I couldn’t honestly deny the fact that sex had, regrettably, made its way into the conversation. I wished I could undo it. I wished I had never steered us down that path.
Actually, I just wished I could go back in time and coach myself to not get my hopes up that night. It was all in the expectations.
Of course it would be really nice if someone else could go back in time and coach Will to not drop clues that he was ready to commit to spending his life with me if that wasn’t his intent at all. It had all begun so well—a romantic dinner in SoHo, a leisurely walk through an art gallery, time on a park bench spent talking and laughing and people-watching at a level you can only find in Manhattan. He’d designed the evening just for me, and it was perfect.
And then I’d ruined it by getting the idea in my head that he was going to propose.
When it finally became clear that he had no intention of asking me to marry him that night, I’d become the type of woman I couldn’t stand in romantic films: manipulative and catty to try to force his hand. But I didn’t get what I wanted that night. He didn’t ask me to marry him. In fact, that was the night I began losing my last shred of certainty that he ever would.
And he had probably walked away fairly certain that he was in a relationship with a crazy woman.
I shook off memories of that horrible conversation and forced myself back to the present. “Do you really think he’s happy with how things are, Darby? Really?”
Yet another shrug, this time accompanied by a dramatic sigh. Darby could always be counted on for a dramatic sigh when it was exactly what was needed in order to sum up the complex emotions of the moment.
“I really don’t know, Cadie. Happy? Yeah . . . I don’t know. But he does seem fairly content. Don’t you think?”
“I do. And that’s the problem. It’s like we’ve both lost sight of the idea of more.”
Darby took our stacks of reports and spreadsheets and expertly sorted them into their appropriate file folders, as we had so many times throughout our years working in the ASN accounting office. It was a boring, statistical dance we had long ago perfected.
“So how long are you going to avoid him?” she finally asked.
“Avoid him? I’m not avoiding him. That’s the point. I really think he’s avoiding me. I don’t think he’s left The Field in three days—”
“Just like you haven’t left The Bench?”
“And we haven’t talked since he called to stand me up on my birthday.”
She chuckled. “Okay, Cadie. That’s not fair. You don’t call someone to stand them up. You just . . . stand them up.”
“Whose side are you on?” I asked indignantly.
The smile remained on her face as she said, “Yours. Always yours.”
“You better be,” I muttered with a smirk.
Thirty seconds later I was opening the door to exit the copy room, only to find Will standing just outside, preparing to open the door and come in.
“Hey,” I greeted him—a calm exterior betraying the fluster within. Well, crap.
“Boy, have I missed you,” he said softly as he leaned down and wrapped his arms around my waist.
His hug pulled me upward onto my tiptoes, and I instinctively threw my arms around his neck. Okay, Cadie . . . what are you doing? Don’t hug him back! Yep. My brain knew that I wasn’t making anything any easier by embracing him as if nothing was any different, but for whatever reason, my arms didn’t seem to be listening to my brain.
Old habits die hard. That was all there was to it. It didn’t have anything to do with missing him, or being glad that he missed me. And it certainly didn’t have anything to do with an unexplainable sense of relief coming from feeling wanted by him for the first time in far too long. Right? It was just a hug from my longtime boyfriend. It was instinct.
“Excuse me,” Darby muttered from behind me, mercifully ending the introspective moment—and ending the embrace.
“Oh, hey, Darb,” Will said, releasing me and scooting himself out of her way, and pulling me with him. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem.” She studied me for a moment—no doubt trying to read my mind and determine if I wanted her to stick around or leave us alone. I’m sure my flushed cheeks and silence weren’t the easiest clues to interpret. “Well, okay, um . . .” She was stretching for time, but I wasn’t giving her any cues at all as to what I wanted. Probably because I had no idea what I wanted.
“So has it been a busy day over here?” Will asked, seemingly oblivious to the silent conversation my best friend and I were attempting—and butchering.
“It has,” Darby spoke up. “In fact, I’d say it’s been a very busy several days. You know, really since Cadie’s birthday. And, I mean, obviously you’ve been super busy too . . .”
“Um, Darby,” I hastily interjected. “If you want to go disperse the reports, I’ll be there in just a minute.”
“Yep. Got it.” She nodded and scurried away, relieved to finally receive a clear message from me.
And then we were alone, and I wasn’t sure which was worse—hoping Darby didn’t say anything I didn’t want her to, or hoping I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t.
Of course, I had no idea what I shouldn’t sa
y. Or what I should, for that matter. It was one thing to be absolutely resolute that it was time for Will and me to end our relationship, and another thing altogether to finally get around to doing it. But I wasn’t going to do it at work, so I needed to hold on to that tiny little shred of salvation.
“So, what’s up?” I asked him nonchalantly. Probably a little bit too nonchalantly.
He laughed gently. “Well, a lot, actually. There’s a lot happening on The Field. In fact, I’ve got to get back over there, but—”
“Oh, are you needing a budget report? Darby has them, but I can—”
He grabbed my hand as I began rushing away from him, and I was stopped in my tracks.
“Cadie, stop,” he commanded gently.
I turned back to face him again, so afraid that all of my resolve was going to give way to thoughts of happier times and memories of being madly in love. I was in such a precarious situation, and I knew it. The look in his eyes, the sound of his laughter, the feel of his hand touching mine . . . it all had the potential to either push me further over the edge toward life without him or pull me closer back toward what was safe and familiar. Back toward what had once been very nearly everything.
Back toward what was no longer enough.
I sighed and diverted my eyes. “I need to get back to work, Will.”
His one hand holding mine made its way up my arm and rested on my shoulder. “Hey, are you mad at me?”
Maybe he was more intuitive than I gave him credit for. Sure, it had taken him three days—or more accurately, maybe about a year—to realize something was bothering me, but he’d gotten there.
I sighed again. “Not mad, no.” I took a quick breath, still determined not to break up with him at work—especially not standing outside the copy room. Four years deserved better. The commissary? I briefly pondered before shaking off the thought. I couldn’t deny that with this minor opening of the entryway, it was somewhat tempting to just go ahead and kick the door wide open. No. I couldn’t. But it would have been foolish to not at least give him a completely unveiled, unmistakable indication that all was not well in the world of Cadie and Will. I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.
Wooing Cadie McCaffrey Page 3
