by Holley Trent
“I don’t remember doing that.”
He shrugged and straightened up from the doorway. “Maybe your father sent them in.”
He left before Everley could think of a response.
That sounded like something her father would do, though.
She groaned.
* * *
The next day, Raleigh’s sweater was somewhat milder, at least in hue. It was black with silver tinsel woven into the neckline and speckled with crystal stars. It was the kind of sweater Everley’s mother might have worn, but somehow, Raleigh managed to pull off the blue-blooded-housewife look.
“Ballet or Roller Derby,” he asked her.
She shook her head. “Neither.”
“What?” He glowered at the card, muttered, “Shit,” and vanished.
He returned ten minutes later. “All right. Nickerson got her wires crossed. That means you must be the Beanie Baby collector.”
Everley could feel every ounce of blood drain from her face. “I... I was ten!” she stammered, searching for her fucking card. She should have looked, because apparently her father was trying to shame her into irrelevance. Seeing as how that was the opposite of his master plan, she didn’t understand why.
Raleigh clucked his tongue—whether from scorn or pity, she didn’t know—made a note on his card, and left.
On Wednesday, Everley had actually looked at the day’s card before Raleigh appeared in her doorway. She wondered if perhaps she should have been more motivated to get that PTO. It was too late for her to do anything about it, though. She’d missed the previous two days’ cards.
“Named after a grandparent,” Everley said.
Raleigh wrote it down.
“Which are you?” She tapped her card with the end of her candy cane. She wasn’t fond of hard candy as a general rule, but she’d been using them to stir her coffee. There was a bowl of the damned things at the end of every hall. Joey had joked that they were there to offset the company’s collective Seasonal Affective Disorder.
“Failed out of karate class.”
“How is that even possible? Don’t they just keep you at the same level until you master it?”
“Yes, until the studio owner realizes that he can use you to pass messages to your father.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Do you know who my father is?”
“Yes?” She didn’t know anyone who didn’t.
“Then you’re not getting it.” He dragged a hand down his face and let out a breath. “Randolph McKean. Senior senator from Ohio. Judiciary committee member. Arguably one of the most powerful string-pullers in government?”
Oh.
She scuffed the heel of her boot against the plastic carpet protector under her rolling chair with frustration. She hated feeling so slow on the uptake, especially knowing full well that she wasn’t. Anxiety was a cruel beast. It messed up head wiring and confused longstanding logic. She just wanted to feel good again, but couldn’t. Not until she acted, but she couldn’t act.
That was another funny thing about anxiety. It stopped people who knew exactly what they needed from having the faith to implement the changes they needed to thrive.
“I...suppose people will go to extremes for access,” she said. “So, the karate teacher wouldn’t test you?”
“Unless my father got back to him. To this day, my father thinks I got tossed out of the studio because I’m an uncoordinated ne’er-do-well, and I didn’t see fit to correct him.”
Raleigh left.
Everley stared at the empty doorway for a minute, unmoored.
Randolph McKean was absolutely a big deal. He sat on important committees. He was brash and unapologetic when he was wrong. People either loved him or loved to hate him, and Everley hadn’t ever thought how Raleigh’s upbringing and worldview might have been affected by the relationship. She’d known about their public feuds, which was part of the reason she’d been curious about him in the first place. He was someone who could understand what it meant to be a family’s black sheep.
But no one had ever tried to use her as a bargaining chip to get to her father.
“Damn,” she whispered, adding a second candy cane to her mug. “Explains why he doesn’t do family holidays, I guess.”
She wished she could go to Stacia’s, too.
Anywhere but “home,” really, because at home, her parents were going to finish plotting the course of her life without knowing how far off-track Everley already was.
I’m...so done.
She let out a panicked titter and stared unseeing at the Outward Reaction full-size Bruce Engle cardboard cutout Joey had decided to store in her office.
If Bruce had been there, he might have said, “Let’s both mess things up, love,” but he wasn’t there. He was in South Africa being brave and adult and probably moving on with his life, and she was in her office wondering how to fail gently.
Wondering how not to make a scene, because that was how women were trained to be.
She wished it were easier to just not give a shit.
She wished she were more like Raleigh.
She barely managed to suppress the panicked laughter bubbling in her chest as she opened her desk drawer and located her employment contract. “I can wish, or I can do. I don’t need to fail gently. Clean breaks heal faster, don’t they?”
She sounded more convinced than she felt, but there was no cure for that.
Page seven, paragraph four.
There was nothing stopping her.
She could just go, and nowhere in that document did it say that her father had to know she’d put in notice.
In fact, no one needed to know except the head of HR.
“I could just go.”
She could do her two weeks. Pack her things. Disappear from the Shannon dynasty.
She didn’t feel brave, but she didn’t have to be.
It was okay to be scared. Fear meant change, and she desperately needed it. Bruce was chasing his change. So could she.
“Tomorrow, then.” She cracked a tired smile and slid the contract into her bag. It seemed as good a day as any. Her therapist would be so proud.
* * *
On Thursday, Everley had her back to the door when Raleigh arrived. Being so startled by the sound of his voice, she nearly dropped the glass figurine she’d lifted from the top of her file cabinet.
“I’m not even going to try to guess,” he said.
She hadn’t looked at the card. She’d stepped into her office that morning and decided that her tchotchkes would look better in her living room. It was a slow day at the company, anyway. They wouldn’t start cranking again until holidays had passed and most editors and agents were back in their offices.
She peered at day four’s facts and rolled her eyes again.
Why her father was intent on embarrassing her, she didn’t know.
“I’m guessing the ‘enjoys charity work’ one is supposed to be me, though he certainly wouldn’t know anything about it. My mother probably helped him with that one. His idea of charity is writing a check to his golf club.”
Raleigh blinked at her.
She groaned. “Sorry. I’m rambling and I know it’s more information than you want or need. I’m just...getting twitchy about holidays. Have to do the usual command performance for the family. In all the years since I moved out of their house, I’ve never come up with a convincing excuse to just not be there.”
“Tell the truth.”
“The truth isn’t tactful.”
“No one said it had to be.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I understand perfectly. It’s easier to complain.”
“That’s not fair.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not.” He left.
Everley didn�
��t know if Raleigh arrived or not the next day. She’d been out of her office for most of her work hours, dealing with human resources, explaining that she couldn’t be talked out of it.
Explaining that it was time.
Explaining that it didn’t really matter, anyway, because none of them wanted her there.
She promised them two weeks, which was long enough to train whoever would take over her roster. They’d promised not to publicize the opening, if they needed to, until after she left. For the sake of a quiet transition, they’d promised not to announce her departure from the company yet.
She didn’t know what she was doing, but it didn’t matter. What she did know was that in four days, only one person—a surprising one, at that—had come by her office to ask about those damned cards filled with facts meant to make her sound cute and interesting because she was going to be their boss one day.
She didn’t want to be their boss, and she was going to prove it and try not to be ashamed that she’d refused such a “gift.”
Some gifts weren’t worth their costs.
* * *
She’d left her phone somewhere. There was something conducive to phone gazing about waiting on a subway platform, and Everley didn’t have hers.
It must have been on her desk. She’d been in such a hurry to leave the office after finishing her round of meetings that she must have forgotten. At the very least, she’d have three or four minutes to wrestle her thoughts. The trains never ran on time. She knew better. Ten minutes, probably. She’d stand there near the edge in pinching shoes for ten minutes with people bumping her shoulders without saying excuse me and having the busker playing increasingly louder because no one was providing patronage. Her shoulders hurt and that drummer had added two new buckets to his makeshift kit since the last time she’d seen him.
She shifted all her weight to her left foot and closed her eyes. What choice did she have but to think? The problem wasn’t going to resolve on its own.
She’d quit because she had to, and when she’d had to, but her plans for the interim were specious. Obviously, she’d do what she could for Lisa, but “best friend with cash” wasn’t a job title. When her parents asked her why she’d thrown away her promise, she wouldn’t be able to explain well that it hadn’t been her promise in the first place.
She’d never before let herself think that she’d be allowed a “next,” so she didn’t have the right words to defend herself for finally breaking free enough to take a deep breath.
“Shit. First you try to poach my authors. Now you’re poaching my style?”
She forced heavy eyelids open and tried to make sense of the voice because it didn’t belong in that place.
Raleigh stood in a heavy black wool coat with his workbag slung across his body. The small sliver of his sweater she could see hinted that it was the most garish of reds, much like her own. She’d grabbed it off the mannequin in her favorite Euro-style store thinking it’d cheer her up, but all it’d managed to do was make her think about where she was supposed to be on Christmas day and why she didn’t want to be there. They just wouldn’t get it. Publishing wasn’t her dream, and dreams were what made human beings reach for new heights.
Her tears hit the concrete and spread into uneven circles. She watched, detached, without quite understanding that she was the one leaking and not the station’s roof for a change.
Raleigh tilted her chin up and muttered the rudest of swears, but it didn’t quite seem directed to her. Just the situation in general.
“Christ,” he said. “The last woman I made cry was my mother, but she was faking it to get me to cooperate with my father.”
She swiped away the newest tears, sniffed hard, and put her back to him. “Allergies. Rodent population down here swells this time of year.”
“Sure. I was teasing about the sweater, Everley. I’m sorry if the joke didn’t land.”
“You wear it better, anyway. I look like I’m trying too hard.”
And maybe she was.
Trying to make herself feel better.
Trying to get people who disliked her for all the wrong reasons to at least tolerate her existence.
Trying to get people to understand.
She was exhausted.
He edged around her. Their toes met. Her stylish stilettos. His polished brogues.
“I may have been unkind about the other part, too,” he said.
“I don’t want your authors. I just wanted to help.”
“Why?”
“I know it looks bad,” she admitted. “I know it looks like... I’m trying to put my thumbprint into something you’ve made. I realize now how it comes across, and...” She forced her gaze upward, feeling every muscle in her stiff neck coil and pop as she angled her head. She couldn’t remember ever standing so close to him before. Close as lovers, even. His open coat had wrapped around back of her leg. Once, she’d wanted that. She’d wanted him, but then there was Bruce who was loving and kind and he’d wanted her back.
He was gone, though, and it didn’t matter what she wanted.
Nothing mattered until she could pick her head up and march on her own path.
She just needed a little time.
Chapter Sixteen
She was a million miles away. If she’d noticed she hadn’t completed her thought, she didn’t seem particularly motivated to follow up on it.
He was good at making people talk, though. He had a handful of authors on his roster who couldn’t string words together except on paper and he always managed to get some decent-sounding syllables out of them, too.
“I’m feeling generous today,” he said. “I won that PTO plus a gift basket full of Athena swag because I’m the only one who got the bonus square right.”
“Bonus square?” she asked in a nearly inaudible voice. “What was it?”
“It asked what’s on the art print next to the door in your office.”
She scrunched her nose. “I...don’t even know what that is. It came with the office.”
“Doesn’t matter. I got it right.” He rubbed his gloved hands together. “So, because you’re indirectly responsible for my good fortune, I insist that you let me buy you lunch after we’re both back in the office after the holiday.”
Perhaps Christmas miracles were multiplying because the train showed up. It was stuffed to the gills with people in big coats carrying far too many bags, but Raleigh pushed her in anyway because the Express wasn’t running and there wasn’t a better option. That was why he was on that platform in the first place. He usually preferred to go straight home rather than the long way around, but that was better than walking thirty blocks.
Everley grabbed the pole, seemingly oblivious of her surroundings—a second after the train lurched to a start. That sort of distractedness couldn’t be faked. Everley Shannon was no wilting flower. She was the epitome of forward practicality, but at that moment, she hadn’t remembered that trains moved.
Something was wrong.
Stacia had been right about the weariness on Everley’s face, but now there was nothing behind her eyes at all except more moisture.
Perhaps it was her family. He’d been too brutal in suggesting that she suck it up and speak her mind. Generally, he had little patience for people who skirted inevitable interpersonal conflicts.
But it was different for her. She didn’t have older brothers go to bat, even if begrudgingly, for her. And maybe she didn’t have those same aggressive self-protective instincts for when to cut people off who were no longer deserving of her energy.
He felt sorry for her, if she didn’t.
“Anywhere except the restaurant downstairs,” he nudged, hoping to normalize her energy level. The city was a dangerous place for people who weren’t paying attention. “There’s only so much egg drop soup I can eat.”
“Uh. Dinner,” she said.<
br />
“Hmm?”
She closed her eyes and gave her head a hard shake.
She was quiet for so long that he had to assume she’d retreated into her own brain again. He didn’t know her well enough, but if she were anything at all like he’d been at twenty, or even thirty, that space wasn’t always a good place to be.
He reached for her cuff, intending to stir her from her silence, but the train’s speakers relayed the stop and roused her before he could.
“Dinner instead. I...my schedule at work. It’s weird lately, so...maybe dinner tonight.” Her lips twitched at one corner. Perhaps that was meant to be a smile, but it wouldn’t have convinced anyone. “I’m a cheap date. Easily amused.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for it.”
“Because of my last name?”
“If we’re going to be honest, yes.”
She let out a long gust of breath full of weariness and probably frustration, and tilted her gaze toward the overhead advertising.
“Unlike my father,” he murmured, “lying doesn’t come easily for me. Would you have me lie?”
“I prefer the honesty.”
“And yet you’re dating Bruce?”
Her posture righted then, and her suddenly steely gaze leveled on him. “I’m not...dating anyone right now. And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He turned his head just enough to hide his grimace from her. Of course, she didn’t know about him and Bruce. Flawed character though he was, Bruce likely wasn’t the sort who’d kiss and tell. Raleigh couldn’t explain his insights without revealing his own imperfections. His only option, curious as he was about what had transpired in their evidently fleeting relationship, was to back off of the subject.
“Bruce has a certain reputation for...inconstancy, is all.”
Her features softened after a moment and she expended another of those labored breaths. “In some ways, I suppose.”
“What ways?”
“I’d still like the dinner.”
That was a “mind your business” deflection. Stacia used them all the time, and so he knew not to press the issue. It wouldn’t only be bad manners, but cruel.
