by Wendy Chen
“I had some urgent medical problems that kept me out of the office.”
Her boss stared.
“I’m fully recovered now, thank you for asking. But in light of recent events, I have decided to resign from my position here.”
His eyes bulged and Kate swore she could see his pupils dilate. The door swung shut behind her, and Kate realized he’d pushed that infamous button on his desk that shut his office door, the button that she’d heard associates speak about but had never experienced for herself. She stood confidently, more sure of herself than she had been in a long time. “I’m prepared to give a few weeks’ notice, to tie up any loose ends with clients so that they will still have a seamless, positive experience with the firm.”
“You can’t give notice.”
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t give notice when you’re fired. And you’ll leave here without any professional references. I’ll tell your clients you’ve had a nervous breakdown. Or better yet, you left to become a housewife.”
Kate was rendered speechless. Even she had underestimated her boss’s outright lack of any professional demeanor. She smiled. “So does being fired mean I collect unemployment?”
“Get out.”
“Wrongful termination. You should sue,” Cass said over Starbucks. “I used to date a lawyer—trust me, you could win.”
Kate texted Cass to meet her as soon as she turned in her security badge and clicked her stiletto heels out of the lobby for the last time. As expected, her friend was indignant over her “resignation.” It felt good to have such close friends who always had her back, and even through her sadness, it felt right to have told Adam to go back to his. Kate shook her head. “I don’t need those two more weeks of pay, I’ve got plenty saved up to carry me through until I figure things out.”
“What are you going to do?” Cass softened.
“It’s a little scary, I’ll admit. I’ve always worked. Even through college I had multiple part-time jobs. I’ve never even taken more than a week off for vacation. Maybe I’ll take one of those continuing education classes you’re always raving about.” Kate took the pins out of her hair and shook out her chignon. Her lipstick had long since come off on her coffee cup lid and she didn’t bother to reapply. “One thing’s for sure—I’m not going to tell Linda. She’ll be hounding me day and night about it, spewing stats about how short-term unemployment turns into long-term unemployment, yada yada yada.”
“Does she know about … what happened?”
“That I was having a baby and then I wasn’t, and that it’s been the saddest experience that I don’t think I’ll recover from for a long time if ever?” It felt good to be able to half joke about it already, to know that Cass was a close enough friend that she wouldn’t take Kate’s words the wrong way. “It’s a major turning point for me, maybe I’ll tell her one day. Once I figure out how it’s changed my life, not just that it did.”
“You don’t have to have everything in your life completely figured out before you let someone into it.”
“Something tells me we aren’t talking about my mother anymore.”
“Your last texts to me were ‘I sent Adam away’ and ‘I quit my job.’ I’m just making sure you’re not going completely off the deep end.”
“You know I’m not good at this relationship thing. Adam deserves better than that. Than me.”
“You just hadn’t found the right guy yet.”
“Is this where you try to convince me that Adam is The One?” Kate tried to joke. “Who are you, Suzanne?”
Cass paused and just stared at Kate for a moment. Then she smiled. “There’s no convincing you of anything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Cass shrugged cryptically and raised her coffee in a toast. “Here’s to your newfound free time … to do lots of thinking.”
Kate walked home slowly, savoring the crisp fall air, thankful that she wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere. What would she do with all her time? Catch up on her DVR? Take an exercise or yoga class that never seemed to fit into her schedule before? One thing she really didn’t feel like doing was partying or socializing beyond her closest friends. She knew she needed time to herself, to process the loss of her would-be baby, to figure out how she was going to reprioritize her life.
Her apartment was quiet when she entered, eerily quiet and a little too dark now that Adam wasn’t around. There was no trace of him, except for maybe the bowl of fruit on her counter that wouldn’t have been there if she’d done the food shopping. She thought maybe he would have left her a note, but then again, they had already said their good-byes, hadn’t they? She went to her bedroom to change into some jeans and a sweater, and that was when she saw it. Right on her pillow where she was sure to look. A Harlequin romance novel.
The couple on the cover looked much more updated than the ones she remembered from her youth. But there was no mistaking this was a story about a man and a woman finding true love. The kind of story she relished as a teenager and then somehow forgot about as she saw real-life love—and all its false starts and stops. Her favorite ones were when the main characters would resolutely deny their attraction to each other, only to find they were meant to be together after all. Her heart swelled involuntarily at the possibility that Adam was trying to win her back with this gesture.
Kate flipped through the book, hoping a note would drop out before she saw the inside front cover. “Hope you find your Happily Ever After. –A”
And with those six words, Kate knew he really was gone.
Just as she had asked.
Chapter 28
“Your friend moved out pretty quickly, yeah? Didn’t have a lot of stuff, just like when he moved in.” The front desk concierge in her building lobby handed Kate her dry cleaning—the last batch she would need to have done for a long while now that she didn’t need to don her shark uniform. Normally she didn’t mind the small talk, but did she need to be reminded of how quickly Adam left? That had been a week after they’d said good-bye, since she’d quit her job. Had he seized the freedom as soon as she offered it and taken the first flight back to California?
Another week had gone by, then another. She’d read the novel, plus a few more, watched two seasons of How I Met Your Mother, caught up on Downton Abbey, and tried three different exercise classes at the gym, including a spinning class that left her legs feeling like jelly for an entire day. She’d signed up for a cooking class—and then dropped it when she realized it was full of smug couples on the path to domestic bliss.
She had barely even seen the girls. She didn’t know how to respond to their sympathetic gazes. It was even worse than when she fielded their concerned questions about her engagement to Alberto, which now seemed like a ridiculous lifetime ago. She didn’t want them to worry about her. She had chosen this—she had chosen to quit, she had chosen to be alone while she figured out what was next for her. And yet her friends sensed that she didn’t have that same confidence as she had when she so single-mindedly decided to take her career into her own control with her fake engagement.
And she couldn’t admit out loud that she missed Adam. She’d taken to walking all over Manhattan, sometimes taking the subway a few stops and then just … walking. Everything reminded her of him, even passing by places they’d never even been together. It was as if she was seeing the city through new eyes, through his eyes that wondered if New York was a good place to live. Would he really have left Palo Alto and moved here permanently to be with her and their baby? Would he have lived downtown? Or would he have wanted views overlooking Central Park in the super family-friendly Upper West Side? He would have lived downtown, of course, because that was where she and the baby would have been, and as responsible as he was, he would have chosen to be close by.
Now he was free to fall in love with some California girl and have babies with golden, sun-kissed hair. To live in an even more perfect version of the house she
’d seen him with Claudia in.
Sometimes when she ran in the morning, she turned her music off to see if she could hear his footsteps behind her.
Now he could find someone who actually wanted a running partner.
It was during her morning runs when Kate realized how much she missed her work, too. Not the boss, obviously. She still felt remarkably free from being under his irrational scrutiny. But she missed her clients, she missed doing work for them, and she kind of missed her colleagues. too, and wondered if they could have been better acquainted if not for the boss’s ways. Kate missed the work so much she even decided to volunteer her time at her local library branch, to do a seminar on how to take the first steps toward personal finance management. Maybe they were not the uber-wealthy clientele she had been used to, but it felt good to talk about how to gain financial freedom to those who really wanted it and needed it. And when she stayed an hour later than planned to answer questions, Kate felt like she’d made a difference to a few families at least, who maybe would have a few less arguments over where the paychecks were going.
During one of her long walks, Kate roamed the East Village, near her old stomping grounds at NYU, and then over to Cooper Union. She couldn’t help going there, knowing he’d taught there. The whole city made her think of him anyway.
There were several groups of students milling around the sidewalk, laughing together, looking at each other’s smartphones. Kate missed her student days in a way, when she felt so much excitement, so much possibility for an unknown future. Even as she’d told herself that the last several years had been filled with fun and unpredictable romantic adventures, this baby that wasn’t was the first time in a long time that she had really looked forward to something, instead of focusing solely on the here and now.
It started to rain a little, big, fat droplets here and there, enough to send a few students scattering. Kate couldn’t help but continue to watch them, to stand on this campus that wasn’t hers. She hoped that the girl talking about stop motion video would go on to be a bigwig at some place like Viacom one day. Or the quiet one on the edges of her group would find her voice in a corporate boardroom. She could see how Adam had been inspired by teaching, being surrounded by so much natural, youthful energy. Would she have found the renewed energy in motherhood?
The rain started coming down harder, that bitterly cold fall rain that pelted through sweaters. Classes must have let out, as throngs of students began exiting the building and opening their umbrellas. Kate, of course, didn’t have one of her own, so she took the mildly chaotic opportunity to duck into the building and out of the rain. She couldn’t help roaming the halls a bit and was surprised when no one stopped her. She smiled to herself as she caught her reflection in a glass window display. Her damp hair fell across her shoulders, and her cheeks were pink from the chill. She certainly didn’t pass for a student anymore, but she didn’t look like she ought to be working in a corner office tower either. She peeked into emptying classrooms, wondering if Adam had taught in any of them.
And then in one of them, there was no mistaking the posture she’d come to know so well. His back was turned to her as he spoke with a student. His hands were in the pockets of his grey slacks and his shoulders strained against the blue button-down as if he couldn’t wait to get out of his dress shirt. Kate felt a chill up her spine and leaned against the hallway wall, out of sight should Adam turn around. He’s still here.
She ran her fingers through her hair and waited for the student to leave. She was surprised he was here, though she shouldn’t have been, she realized now. Of course Adam would finish out the semester of teaching and stay for the duration of whatever commitment he’d made to the school. It was silly that she should feel her heart pounding so rapidly in her throat. On some level, she must have known she might run into him here, right? And she’d been practically looking for him everywhere she went in the city these days. During her runs, she thought about what she would say to him when she was ready—she’d been practicing.
The student left and Kate held her breath, willing herself to calm down. My goodness, this was just Adam. She closed her eyes and forced an image of high school Adam, bony and skinny, with glasses and crooked teeth, who carried exactly five blank sheets of loose-leaf paper every day because that was all he ever needed. She wouldn’t feel nervous to talk to that guy. With her eyes still closed, she took a deep breath and turned through the doorway.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Adam perched on top of a desk, one ankle over his knee, flipping through a textbook. His pose was so much like the Adam she knew in school, and she realized she was nervous to talk to that geeky kid. She was in love with the best friend she had then, and she was in love with the man he’d become.
Adam looked up and any pleasure or shock at seeing her was quickly schooled behind an emotionless mask. She didn’t blame him—she could be coming her to pick a fight with him for all he knew.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Kate managed to keep her voice normal, even though all she wanted to do was throw herself at him and ask him to forgive her for being so stupid.
Adam cleared his throat and crossed past her to shut the door. “Nobody will bother us in here. I reserved the room for office hours.” He pulled a chair out for her and then another one for himself to sit directly across from her. He smiled. “You look great. Relaxed.”
“I’ve been great. It’s been … good … for me, this break I’m taking.”
He held her gaze as if looking to be sure she was telling the truth, and all Kate wanted was to lose herself in his blue eyes. How had she not seen how loving he was, how much she wanted to be a better person, a more caring person for him? How could she have kept pushing him away all this time? “You’re staring at me like I have two heads,” he smiled again.
“I’m staring at you like I’m seeing you for the first time.” She longed to touch him, but didn’t trust herself to get out anything she needed to say if she did. She reached out and touched his cuff, tracing her fingertip over the button. He didn’t move, as if this was something they did every day.
“Do you like what you see?” He was trying to keep it light, to give her time to say whatever it was she’d come looking for him to say.
“I think we’re worth a shot,” she whispered. “More than a shot.”
He took her fingers then, stilling them from the path along his cuff and brought them to his lips. “And?”
“I want to be with you. And only you. I haven’t figured out everything … anything … about what my life is going to be like, but I want to see where it goes with you. I want you to stay here. In New York. For me.” Kate started crying then—joy, relief, she wasn’t sure which she felt more at finally having these words out loud, ones she’d been thinking even when she didn’t want to admit them. “You’re my best friend, you’re… my partner …”
Adam’s eyes filled as he smiled and pulled her into his arms. “And?” he said cheerfully.
“And what? That’s not enough?” Kate couldn’t help but laugh as well, at this man who knew her better than anyone else, who gave her what she needed—time, space—and waited patiently for her to see for herself what he had known all along.
“And …?” he smiled at her.
“You’re great in bed.” She smiled back at him. “Will you kiss me now, or do I have to do everything?”
And boy, did he kiss her.
When he finally stopped, when the room around her had stopped spinning, when she could open her eyes and finally, finally feel like she could see clearly for the first time in years, he stood her on her feet and stepped back. Without another word, he turned away from her to get something from his bag. When he turned back, he held out a ring that looked like the one she’d bought for herself from a street vendor, only this one sparkled like none she’d ever seen. And this one came in a box that said Harry Winston. Kate could do nothing but stare at Adam, at this man she thought she knew so well, b
ut who could still surprise her beyond her wildest dreams. The man who fulfilled dreams she didn’t know she had.
“This,” he gestured around the room, “may not be the most scenic, picturesque place, and there aren’t any flash mobs or singers involved, but Kate, you know I’m about more than the romance. I’m about more than a grand gesture.” He got down on one knee then and looked up at her. “It has always been you, Kate. I love you. Will you marry me?”
Epilogue
Six Months Later
It was one of those spring days that had dawned chilly and brisk for Kate’s morning run, but became that perfect blend of warmth and sunshine for her evening ceremony. Adam had won their debate about the venue—Kate couldn’t imagine planning an outdoor wedding when there was no way she could control the weather. But she had to admit that the Pond at Central Park was perfect for their small gathering. And at least they had agreed upon that. Only closest friends and family were with them—Cass, Suzanne, and Mia sat in the front row next to Kate’s parents. Adam’s entire family, including all his brothers, their wives, and children took up nearly the entire groom’s side in a rare show of support.
As she walked down the aisle, Kate exchanged a smile with Jane, who had quickly become a close friend, and the only person aside from Adam who knew her secret. It wasn’t something she meant to keep from her girls very long, but after Kate had been caught sneaking off to the ladies’ room one too many times, Jane had asked her point-blank if she was pregnant. Kate had been embarrassed to admit it at first, since she’d just started working for Jane three months ago and hadn’t thought she’d get pregnant so quickly. But nothing could have dampered Kate’s joy and relief after her first ultrasound showed a tiny little jelly bean of a baby with a strong heartbeat. Jane had been nothing but happy for Kate since she guessed her news, even going as far to say that mothers made some of the best employees since they knew how to multitask and use their time more efficiently than anyone else.
