by R. S. Elliot
"Super weird," I agreed. My voice sounded tight and too high in my own ears, like I was straining it. I resisted the urge to tuck my hair behind my ears or smooth the hem of my dress. I had bigger problems right now than whether Aiden Carrier still thought I was pretty. "I haven’t seen you in almost—"
"Six years? Seven? I’ve lost count. And the last time we spoke you were still in school, I think."
He was right. I clearly remembered that tense call near the Christmas holiday, when it had been so obvious that we had so much we were desperate to tell each other but had nothing to talk about. We had forced a friendship over the phone for a while at first, pretending to be dispassionately interested in the comings and goings of each other’s daily life and even encouraging each other to get out there and start dating again, because we thought it was what we were supposed to do. But all it had done was make me miserable and remind me how much I missed him every day of my life, and it had made me feel like a liar for putting forth a perfect version of my life so he wouldn’t worry about me any more than he already did. Our conversations had just petered out over time, but I think we were both relieved to be free of them. I know I was. I didn’t really start to heal until after they were over. But now, my old battle scars were aching and itching all over again.
"I think so, yeah. So, um. How have you been?"
Aiden chuckled. It was the same warm, teasing sound that had brought me comfort when I was crying or gotten me hot under the collar even when I really had homework to do. Now, it brought a little color to my face.
"I yank you out of a restaurant and into my car with no warning and you ask how I’ve been? You sure have gotten a whole lot more easy-going."
This brought a smile to my lips, and I interlaced my fingers together since I didn’t know what else to do with my hands. I remembered that my purse was still at Gino’s and that I would have to show my face there again eventually to pick it up, but at least I still had my cell phone slipped into my apron pocket. Maybe I could call a friend and send them in to pick it up for me or something.
"I’m not sure what else to ask."
"In that case, I’ve been well. Busy, very busy. But that’s how I like it. What about you?"
"I’ve been…" I thought about it. All the answers that came to mind were lackluster, and the truth wasn’t very pretty. Miserable? Bored out of my mind at work? Broke? Wondering if I would ever find love or die a spinster? Double-broke? "Pretty alright. I mean, you saw most of it back there. Working, you know. Making it happen."
"At Gino’s," he said, glancing over to me for a fraction of a second. It was almost a question, and I could tell he wanted to ask more. Why a grimy restaurant? What about law school? Had I transferred to some cushy law school in New York for graduate studies? Did I fail the bar? Where did I go wrong?
"I’m taking some time off school. Just enjoying the city, working. Resting. Seeing friends." It was a stretch of the truth, but it wasn’t exactly a lie. It was the best I could come up with under the circumstances.
"Oh, that’s good. Rest is good. Or so I hear."
I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a joke or not. Had Aiden’s sense of humor changed so much in a few years? He certainly seemed to be more serious than the guy I knew, the one who was cracking jokes and making light of things all the time. What had happened to him while I was out of his life?
Internally, I caught myself. Those weren’t appropriate questions for me to be asking about someone who had every right to change and grow, and I wasn’t back "in" Aiden’s life by any stretch of the imagination. Fate had thrown us together in a bad situation, and he had put himself on the line to help me out. He had done a favor for an old friend, that was all. It didn’t mean we would ever see each other again.
"What about you? Are you visiting New York for business or pleasure or—"
"Oh no, I live in Manhattan," he said, as though it were the simplest thing imaginable. In my work, people didn’t just live in Manhattan unless they were being subsidized by stupidly generous parents or sharing a studio with four other people. Rent in Manhattan was so high it bypassed painful, shot beyond ludicrous, and landed somewhere in the realm of cruel dystopian satire. If Aiden really did live full time in Manhattan and also had money to spare for cars and clothes, he wasn’t just wealthy. He was filthy, all-out, tickets to the Met Gala and mansions in other countries rich.
What the hell had happened to him when I wasn’t looking? Luck, obviously, and all the good fortune hard work could earn you.
"What do you do in Manhattan?" I asked because it was the most polite way I could think of investigating this glaring reality.
"A little bit of everything. I run a full-service sports marketing company."
"Oh, so like, a startup?"
I asked because I was curious, desperate to put the puzzle pieces of his life together. Working for a startup could make sense if they had a huge grant endowment they were burning through and generous investors willing to funnel money into someone’s passion project. But I could tell from the way he smirked sidelong at me that I was way off base.
"Not exactly. Our company employs a few hundred people, and we’re growing. We’ve been around for about five years now, and there’s almost no part of the business side of sports that we aren’t involved in. Mergers, team management, marketing, agency—you name it, we do it."
I felt a bit of the color drain from my face. If I was hearing this right, Aiden wasn’t anyone’s employee, and he wasn’t a hungry entrepreneur running a shoestring operation with two employees out of a co-working space. He was a CEO. An honest to God, skyscrapers and board meetings CEO.
My head spun, and I felt a little bit drunk. Aiden had always been resourceful and ambitious, and most of all, dedicated to whatever passion he fell in love with. But this was a level of success I had never even dreamed about him attaining. Hell, I had never even dreamed about myself attaining this level of success.
"Wow," I managed. "Good for you."
"Thank you," he said in the voice of someone who was used to graciously accepting messy, starstruck compliments. It was the more mature version of the voice he had used to thank people who came up to congratulate him after a game well played on the field. "It’s been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but I’m proud of where we are now."
I could imagine so. I would be proud of anything that gave me the kind of lifestyle Aiden seemed to be living, and I felt even more ashamed of my abandoned classes and my half-finished transcript and my string of shitty retail and waitressing jobs. No one wanted to hire someone with a track record of not following through on things, and no one wanted to hire a dropout to sling coffee and carry omelets when there were people with master's degrees and kids to feed who were hungry for the job. It hadn’t been easy.
"That’s amazing. I’m happy for you."
It was a strange thing to say considering I knew almost nothing about his life, but it seemed appropriate under the circumstances. Was he happy with where he was? I assumed so. How was his life outside of work, was it full of friends or loved ones or women eager to go on dates with someone so rich and powerful? It was possible he was already married, I guessed. My ex and I had considered getting married before things had started hurtling downhill, so it was possible. I didn’t see a wedding ring on his finger, but I knew that some men didn’t wear them, and if he was engaged, he was even less likely to have any jewelry to show for it.
"Thank you. So where to?"
"Huh?"
"Where am I taking you? I assume you don’t want me to just drive you around in circles all night, although if you’re too shaken up to get out of the car I’m happy to do it. Do you live around here?"
"Oh! I live in Brooklyn."
"Would you like me to take you there?"
I was taken aback by his matter-of-factness, his total willingness to take me wherever I needed to go despite how far out of his path it may be. That I remembered from our time together as teens, and it made my he
art swell with a dangerous old emotion.
Keep things in perspective, Mia, I thought.
"You can just drop me off near a subway station, it’s alright."
"It’s no trouble to take you home. Seriously. It would make me feel better to know you got to your front door safely."
"Okay but...Brooklyn is way out of town."
"No, it’s not. Long Island is way out of town. You’re fine, really. Here." He produced his phone, a gleaming supercomputer that looked so new I didn’t know if it was even available to the general population yet. "Punch in your address. If you can direct me there, I’ll take you."
"You’re sure about this?" I asked, pulling up the maps app. I worked delicately, terrified that I would drop the phone or get the pristine screen grimy.
"I don’t exactly have much else going on tonight. Catching up with an old friend and helping her out seems like a much better use of my time."
My chest swelled with a mixture of emotions, delight that he wanted to spend more time with me and a stinging sensation at just being an old friend and nothing more. I felt so mixed-up. I didn’t know what I wanted, or what I wanted him to want.
"Okay," I said with a definitive nod. "I would really appreciate that. I don’t really feel like being alone on a dark subway platform right now."
"I figured as much. Where do I turn?"
We rode the next ten or so minutes in comfortable silence, broken every so often with me reading out the turn-by-turn directions or pointing at exits as they appeared. The further we got from the center of Manhattan, the less crowded the roads became, although no street was ever truly empty in the city that never sleeps.
Aiden waited until we were halfway across the Brooklyn bridge to ask the question I had hoped he wouldn’t ask, and the one that I knew was unavoidable.
"So, what happened with Stanford?"
I swallowed hard against the shame rising in my throat. Maybe I could lie. Tell him that my dad got sick, so I moved back into the state to help him around the house, or tell him that I was suddenly disillusioned with law and overtaken with an urge to move to New York and become an actress while waitressing to pay rent. But he deserved more than that, and I had never been able to lie to him before.
"It got too expensive, and I got nervous about paying back all those loans. I met someone and I got distracted, and I thought it sounded romantic to move to New York together. Turns out it’s just expensive, especially when things don’t work out with the guy."
Aiden nodded slowly, his face an unreadable mask. I desperately wished to know what he was thinking.
"When did the two of you break up?"
"Pretty recently." I huffed a bitter laugh. "So recently that I’m still looking for a roommate to take his spot, actually."
"Ouch."
"Yeah. But I’ll figure it out."
"And Gino’s is…?"
"Temporary. Or I guess it was. Now it’s probably not a viable option anymore."
He gave another one of those mysterious nods, turning down one of the long, cramped roads between row houses that would lead him to my street.
"Law never panned out, then?"
"I wouldn’t say that. I’d like to go back to it someday. God knows I’ve read enough about it. But people don’t really want a paralegal who wasn’t focused enough to finish college. It makes you look like a liability."
"That’s unfortunate," he murmured, and then pulled the car slowly to a stop as directed in front of my home. I glanced up at the ugly brown building with its tiny recessed windows and shrubby single tree out front and felt my heart sink. The world outside Aiden’s car seemed even more depressing and drab now that I had spent almost an hour inside it.
"Well. This is it. Thanks for all your help. It was, um…" I swallowed hard, trying not to look as nervous as I felt. Where were all these emotions coming from? I needed a double pour of wine and to sleep this night off, that’s what I needed. "Nice to see you again."
"You too," Aiden said, turning to face me. His eyes held me in place, transfixed as always. I couldn’t have left the car even if I wanted to. "Can I ask you something?"
My heart was battering away at my ribs, and my breathing came in shallow flutters. When I spoke, my voice was soft.
"Of course."
"Do you want a job?"
My heart stuttered, and I was sure that it must have screeched to a halt for a full second. Of all the thousands of ways this conversation and car ride could have gone, this hadn’t even crossed my mind. Was he serious? Oh my God, he was serious.
"Sorry, did I mishear you? Did you just ask me if I wanted—?"
"A job at Carrier, yes. I control pretty much everything that happens in that building. I could get you a position if you wanted it, no problem. It was my fault you lost your job. It only seems right."
My face felt flushed, with what emotion I wasn’t sure. Excitement? Embarrassment? Did I even want to take him up on his offer? Part of me wanted to desperately, yes. But I had never been very good at accepting help. In high school, I preferred to work through the same math problem over and over again instead of just going to tutoring and having someone else help me understand it. It wasn’t a trait I was proud of, and it had resulted in plenty of frustrated friends and wasted hours, but it was a hard one to shake. I didn’t want anything to do with kindness that felt like it emanated from pity. But of course, Aiden already knew that.
"Don’t think of it as charity," he said, watching me with those unwavering eyes. "It’s more like a networking opportunity."
"Networking?" I repeated, laughing beside myself. "Picking me up out of a greasy spoon isn’t exactly your traditional job fair or industry cocktail hour."
"See, you’re already thinking outside the box. Exactly the kind of person I want on my team."
"Aiden, I don’t know the first thing about sports, you know that. I can barely tell which team scores when I watch football with friends."
"I remember," he said with a chuckle. "But you were always such a supportive little cheerleader anyway."
Once again, I felt dragged into the tide of the past, and it flowed into me and threatened to drown me in my own emotions. I remembered rushing into Aiden’s arms after triumphant football games and sitting with him on the hood of his car sharing a milkshake under the stars while he confessed his anxieties about upcoming championships to me. There had been nothing I loved more than being Aiden’s cheerleader and shoulder to cry on, and I had felt endlessly supported by his strength and thoughtfulness.
Now, in the darkness of his strange, sleek car, I swallowed hard. His eyes flickered down to my mouth and then he seemed to remember where he was, and he eased back into his seat a few inches. His face presented a pleasantly neutral expression, passionless and friendly.
"It’s only an offer. You don’t have to take me up on it, but I want you to know it’s no imposition to me at all. I would be happy to help an old friend out. Especially when I probably just got her fired."
"That’s true," I mused, biting my nails absently. Aiden used to gently take my hand out of my mouth by the wrist when I did this to remind me I was trying to kick a bad habit, and even though his eyes flickered to my hand, he didn’t move. He just watched me deliberate.
I didn’t feel exactly comfortable with this whole arrangement, especially since I didn’t like accepting anything good into my life unless I felt like I had earned it fair and square. I was sure there were other people better qualified than me who would love to work for someone as successful as Aiden. But I needed money, badly. Rent would be due soon, and I had nothing to show for my roommate search except a whole lot of frustration. I would be stupid not to agree to this.
"What sort of job openings would you have, hypothetically?"
"Hypothetically, anything you wanted. But we have a few secretarial openings right now that might be a good fit for you. Basic data entry and telephone answering stuff, but with a lot of different schedules and tasks to balance. Good for someone
with an analytical mind and quick problem-solving skills."
His compliments brought a silly little smile to my face that I tried to swallow. If I was going to work in the same building as Aiden, I would have to get my feelings for him under control. It was probably just residual butterflies from my teen years anyway. How could I possibly have genuine feelings for someone I hadn’t seen in so many years? We had both changed so much. He might not even like the person I had grown into or vice versa. If I accepted this offer, it had to be because it was in my best financial interest, not because of...well, any other sort of interests.
"It might be a good way to get a little bit more job experience on your resume if nothing else," he continued. "I guarantee you’ll be making more than you were making at Gino’s and if you decide it’s not for you and start looking for work elsewhere, no hard feelings."
I chewed on the inside of my mouth, thinking it over. I wanted to weigh my options, but it was glaringly clear that I didn’t have any options, not unless I wanted to dive headfirst back into the weeks of trawling Craigslist and Indeed for shitty low-paying jobs. This was a gift-wrapped miracle landing in my lap, and I would be a fool to hand it back to Aiden unwrapped.
"Alright," I said. "That could work out really well for me."
"That’s great."
"And you’re sure I’m not just going to get underfoot over there and slow down your staff?"
"Not if you’re willing to work hard, but you’ve never had a problem with that. The company’s in a boom right now. We need all the help we can get."
"Great. Then I’m happy to do my best."
"Perfect. Why don’t you come by next Monday and we’ll get you situated? Take the weekend to rest. I’m so sorry that bastard put his hands on you, you must be furious."
"I am, but I’ll be alright. Thanks again for standing up for me. It made everything a whole lot easier."
I put my hand on the door handle, hesitating slightly. I didn’t know how to thank him for the job, or what was appropriate between us now. A hug seemed like a huge breach of the social contract, even though I wasn’t sure what the fine print on our relationship was now. How did people interact with their exes? Hell, how did people work alongside them?
