The Job Proposal

by Wendy Chen

  The Job Proposal

  Wendy Chen

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Wendy Chen

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition June 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-310-6

  for A, my real life hero

  Chapter 1

  Kate stayed perfectly still in her bed until she heard the telltale sound of the front door closing tightly behind her latest overnight guest before emerging from under her covers.

  There was little better in life than being able to belt out your favorite song in the middle of a hot shower—especially after a particularly satisfying evening. She especially loved singing “Seasons of Love” from RENT because it reminded her of her high school glee club days in Michigan, when she only dreamt about living in New York City.

  Big city life on the East Coast had always held appeal. But High School Kate, whose only friend was a fellow math team nerd, could never have imagined the casual dating lifestyle would suit her so well. She shuddered at the prospect of ever having to endure the kind of romantic angst she’d seen her friends go through. She remembered precisely when it happened, when she had that epiphanal moment that set her on a course toward romantic freedom. During their junior year at Columbia, one of her friends had sat on the couch, which had seen too many beer stains and who knows what else, bawling into a hand towel because they’d run out of tissues. “He didn’t caaaaalllll,” she’d wailed. “We had s-s-s-s-uch a g-g-g—ood tiiiiime.” She’d gone on to worse after that, even after she’d calmed down. “I feel so cheap,” she’d said. And just like that, Kate swore that no man would ever have that kind of power over her.

  There was freedom in being able to enjoy the company of men on their own terms, Kate found. There was no pressure to impress, but all the reason to flirt and just have fun. The key, Kate found, was not to lower expectations, per se, but to keep her expectations to where they mattered most—in the bedroom. And indeed, she had high expectations in that realm. Last night’s companion fulfilled them nicely, and now she could get on with her day without checking her phone every five minutes to see if he’d texted.

  “You’ve got quite a voice there.” Kate jolted her eyes open and stood up straighter, trying not to show too much surprise and annoyance at the intrusion. If she had wanted company, she certainly would not have feigned sleep during the entire time he was leaving a note on her bedside table. It was kind of sweet that he would write a note to say good-bye, and it was certainly more than she expected. Of course, if she’d thought the note mattered, she might have read it. “What song is that?” he asked.

  Oh my God. She knew he was young, but she didn’t know he lived under a rock. “An old Broadway show tune.” She turned off the shower. “Hand me that towel, will you?” He obliged and turned his gaze away from her. Kate smiled. It was cute that he was embarrassed. There was a time in her life when she would have been embarrassed, too. “Don’t feel like you need to stick around,” she said, not unkindly. “You don’t need to worry about my morning after.”

  “I got us breakfast!” he said excitedly. “I left you a note so you wouldn’t think I’d just left.” Kate followed him out to her little dining table, still wearing only a towel. “I got muffins, some oatmeal—I wasn’t sure what you’d want. Cappuccino and mocha and just straight-up coffee, too.”

  “This is so unexpected.” He gave her a shy smile that made her think if she were a different kind of girl, she’d be grinning back at him, thinking this attraction was going somewhere. She picked at a muffin and sipped at the cap so his feelings didn’t get hurt.

  “You’re sweet,” she said and meant it. He was sweet last night at the bar, too, catching her eye while he played guitar and sang cover songs. On his break, he sent over a drink and a cheesy poem written on a napkin—songwriter he clearly was not. A few years ago, she might have skipped the sex and anxiously awaited a phone call, to be asked to dinner, for flowers to be delivered at the office if the date went well. But she knew his type: the charmer who liked the thrill of the chase.

  It always began with the usual optimistic anticipation—Will he call? He seemed interested, didn’t he? And the heady excitement that came with new attraction and romance. Then, right around the ninety-day mark, things would start to go awry, with that awkward “are we exclusive” conversation. (The more awkward the conversation, the louder the warning bells!) The next stage was around six months, when future vacations or holidays would need to be planned. Lots of guys made exits around then. Kate quickly learned it was a lot more fun to take a rule from their playbook and always keep the relationship fresh and new rather than deal with the inevitable discovery that it wasn’t true love.

  “I’ve got to get in to work today, though, so I don’t want to keep you …”

  “Work? It’s Sunday.”

  “I’m working on a big deal—”

  “OK, OK, I’ll just have breakfast while you get dressed. I’ll walk you to work.”

  The poor kid. Maybe he really was a good guy. That meant he was going to get his heart broken badly one day if he hadn’t already. She covered his hand with hers.

  “Listen, Jake. The thing is, my fiancé will be getting home soon.” She was surprised at how easily the words rolled off her tongue. The end justified the means.

  Jake bolted up from his chair as if someone had appeared with a shotgun aimed right at him. “Your fiancé? You have a fiancé?”

  She swallowed the guilt she felt at seeing Jake’s stricken face. It was really better this way, better than trying to explain that he would come to regret getting mixed up with her. She was bound to disappoint him somewhere down the line, and it was better to send him off now, with the fresh memory of a great night together. And now he’d have a good story for his buddies—how he’d slept with an almost-married woman.

  “Hey, hey, don’t freak out! It’s not like that,” Kate said, feigning defensiveness. “We have an open relationship. We just don’t rub it in each other’s face, that’s all. Common courtesy.”

  Jake looked at her like she was some kind of crazy. But at least that was better than looking like he wanted to date her. This wasn’t supposed to be this awkward. She’d pegged him as the “that was great, I’ll see you around” mumbling type who headed for the door as quickly as he could. The first time that happened, she’d sat in her bed alone for hours, not quite knowing what to do. Then she’d come to realize that life was much simpler when you maintained control over your emotions and knew what to expect—and Jake would come to realize that, too.

  No strings, no drama, no broken hearts.

  After Jake left, Kate texted her girls.

  This engagement thing really comes in handy.

  It had been about two months since she announced her engagement. At first, she thought she was just helping out a friend, telling him that she would marry him if his green card didn’t work out and his visa expired at the end of the year.

  But Kate was starting to enjoy being engaged. She’d found it tiresome to hear her coworkers’ same old comments about what they thought her life was like.

  �
��New year, new guy?” was popular during holiday parties.

  “A free-spirited, single girl like you just wouldn’t understand trying to balance work and family” was the more common theme. Kate literally bit her tongue when her boss said to her, all too regularly, some variation of “Mondays must be hard for you after a weekend of partying.”

  With an idiot boss who often made business decisions based on personal impressions, Kate needed to adjust her reputation at work. She couldn’t control what was said, but she could offer less ammunition for anyone to question her dedication to her work. Even though she’d made vice president by working her tail off during her early days at the firm, as a thirty-five-year-old woman who was ten years out of B-school, she felt like she needed to present herself as someone more stable, someone who could handle more responsibility. Once she told her colleagues about her betrothal, she swore her reputation at the firm immediately went up a couple of notches.

  The problem was the next step. Several of her peers from B-school were senior vice presidents now, at least the men and women who didn’t take a baby break. And when her mother sent her an Elle magazine article about movers and shakers under age forty, there was no personal note to accompany it. But Kate could take the hint nonetheless.

  In her view, Kate was doing a small favor for Alberto and using a little white lie to give her professional reputation a boost. The added benefit of a fiancé to scare off would-be suitors was just a bonus.

  Kate yawned. It was 8 a.m. already. She really had slept in. She hurried to pull on her running tank and shorts and adjusted her socks and sneakers while she waited for the elevator. The look on Jake’s face as he rushed out of her apartment was assurance that he had hightailed it back to his Queens walk-up and there would be no risk of bumping into him. She felt bad enough already; there was no reason to rub it in that she was actively avoiding him.

  Kate loved her neighborhood, so much more than the uptown dorms of Columbia, where she had gotten her undergraduate degree. She had lived on the Lower West Side of Manhattan ever since she went to NYU for grad school. And today, like almost every other day, she headed straight toward the waterfront for her morning jog. Sometimes Kate still couldn’t quite believe she lived in New York City, that she lived successfully and comfortably, actually, a life she had only seen in the movies while growing up. Oh yes, Kate thought as she turned to look at the towering skyline, from scrawny Katie Wallace to Kate on Wall Street, this girl from Michigan was doing pretty well for herself.

  After a few miles, Kate headed home for her shower, running into the hot blond who lived a few floors below her. He seemed just her type—good-looking, tall, athletic build—but she only gave him a cursory hello as he was leaving. Kate had few rules about men, and she meant to keep them. “Rule Number One,” Kate sighed to the empty elevator. “Never sleep with your neighbor.” It could get too complicated too quickly.

  By 10 a.m., Kate was in her office, dressed in a pencil skirt and tank blouse. Her hair was down, the only nod to a more casual appearance than she would normally have during the week. She was the only one in the office, as was common for a Sunday when her colleagues were spending time with their families or recovering from partying. She would spend a few hours here, getting organized for the week ahead. Senior VP titles weren’t given to people who were lazy.

  Chapter 2

  It had been weeks since Kate posted a change in her relationship status on Facebook. Four weeks and two days, in fact, since Adam saw that stupid little red heart pop up next to her name on his news feed. He had pinged her then, a private message to stand out from the clutter on her wall from other incredulous friends. Like all the others, he wanted to know if this was for real. But unlike the others, who seemed to just find amusement at Kate’s ability to fall in love—or at least lust—all the time, Adam knew that once she fell for real, she would fall fast and hard. Could this be it and he missed it?

  He looked at his message to her and sighed.

  Engaged? For real?

  He had wanted to keep his inquiry casual, nothing to betray the sense of—what?—the sense of loss that he felt when he saw her status change? Loss wasn’t the word. He missed her, he supposed. Or maybe he just missed knowing that she was single, that she was always single, even when he was in relationships himself.

  There was still no reply from her, so Adam poked around her profile page, scrolling through the various postings. It looked like she hadn’t been on Facebook since she posted that damned relationship update, so he didn’t feel quite so bad. He looked through her photos, including one that someone else had posted of her in high school, a group shot of the glee club she had been in. He was a bit surprised that she hadn’t untagged herself—she just looked so different now. She was his best friend in high school—his only friend, really—and it never occurred to him that the waist-length braid she wore every day or the baggy clothes she wore over her skinny frame were anything but normal. She was just Katie. But then he looked at a recent photo of her at some party, with her strawberry blond hair hanging in waves, wearing a strapless mini dress. She still had the same megawatt smile, one that didn’t show itself all that often in high school, particularly when she complained that her mouth and teeth were too big. Her eyes were the same, too—hazel with sparkle when she laughed. He imagined they still gave away nothing about her emotions and her thoughts when she chose not to. Adam toggled between the two pictures and swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. He honestly wasn’t sure which photo he liked best.

  He sometimes still felt badly about how they lost touch. He had assumed that after high school they would just drift apart like friends often do, especially since he would be at Stanford and she at Columbia. How much farther apart could they have gone? He hadn’t expected to hear from her quite so often that first fall semester. His roommate kept asking if Kate was his girlfriend, as if he had ever thought of their relationship as anything but platonic. Once, when Adam actually did have a girl he liked in his dorm room, he practically hung up on Kate when she called. But even that hadn’t been enough to brush her off. She announced that she was going to come visit him for a weekend since she had found a cheap last-minute airfare.

  Adam had gotten so annoyed with Kate that weekend, how she wouldn’t stop trailing him like a lost puppy. He was finally, finally finding a group of friends that he had things in common with, ones who actually thought it was cool that he’d built a computer himself and were envious that he’d been able to skip the introductory Computer Science class that other freshmen took. He’d dragged Kate to a party, partly to avoid having to just talk to her, and partly because he thought they’d have fun. But she sat in a corner nursing a plastic cup of beer until he felt badly enough to leave early with her.

  On the walk back to his dorm, he’d been a little drunk and more than a little annoyed, and they had finally had it out. What’s your problem? he had said to her. You have to stop needing me so much. Stop calling me all the time. Get your own life. He couldn’t really remember her reaction or what she’d said, only that she hadn’t cried, thank goodness. She had been pretty quiet and had just continued to walk next to him back to his dorm. The next morning they acted like nothing had happened while he drove her to the airport and made idle chitchat about plans for Thanksgiving.

  She didn’t call him after that visit, not even during holiday breaks when they were both back in Michigan. He didn’t see her again until after junior year, when they ran into each other in Ann Arbor during the summer. He almost hadn’t recognized her when she’d called out his name at the mall. It wasn’t just that she had cut her hair, it was that her entire demeanor had been different—she had been almost exuberant as she chattered excitedly about how great it was to see him and how he should come out to a club near the university, where she was meeting up with some friends that night.

  Kate’s friends turned out to be some U of M students that she’d met during her temp job at the university,
but he never would have guessed that she had just met them a week ago by how they laughed at her stories, by how she confidently ordered rounds of drinks, by how she barely stepped off the dance floor. He still recognized the old Katie when she spoke to him and when she sang along to the music, but this girl had sparkled.

  Adam had returned to Palo Alto soon after that night, to go back to his internship at Apple. They barely saw each other in person again, except during the odd holiday when they both happened to be visiting their parents. Those visits became less and less frequent for both of them as they spent more time on their respective coasts building their careers. Now their friendship mostly consisted of the occasional Facebook post or email.

  Adam sighed. He wondered if it was time for him to leave the Bay Area. He had gone from undergrad to grad school, from one tech start-up to another for the past fifteen years. He’d worked his tail off—and had been lucky—almost every time. He had loved it for a long time. But maybe it was time to do something new, something that was about more than the business pitch and making money. And if he was being truthful with himself, he wouldn’t mind a little distance from Claudia, his fiancée … ex-fiancée … who made him feel a sense of overwhelming guilt every time he saw her, or their house, or any one of their mutual friends. And after being together for the past five years, pretty much all his friends were mutual friends.

  Chapter 3

  Sunday evenings were often spent with the girls—Cassandra, Suzanne, Mia, and Kate. Kate had met all three when they were at NYU, she in business school while the others were undergrads in a Finance class that she was a teaching assistant for. It wasn’t all that common for a graduate student to hang out with undergrads, and the four always had very different personalities, but somehow they complemented and balanced one another.