Chapter 11
Present
I rack my brain, trying to remember whether during our dinner Erik ever mentioned taking acting classes. I want to say no, and let’s be honest, it would seem a tiny bit out of character. And yet, if I didn’t know what he did, I could almost buy it. I could almost believe, from the way he’s blinking confusedly at me, that he has no idea what I’m talking about.
Nice try.
“Come on, Erik.”
His brow furrows. He’s still crouching in front of me. “What clients?”
“You can drop it.”
“What clients?”
“We both know that—”
“What. Clients.”
I press my lips together. “Milton.”
He shakes his head, like the name tells him nothing. If I had a knife handy I’d probably stab him. Through the muscles, right into his heart. “The rec center in New Jersey.”
It takes a second, but I can see a glimmer of recognition. “The pitch? The one you were at Faye’s for?”
“Yup.”
“You signed that client, didn’t you?”
I clench my jaw. Hard. “Fuck you, Erik.”
He huffs impatiently. “Sadie, I’m really lost here, so if you don’t give me a little context—”
“I almost signed that client. However, when they got a pitch that was almost identical to mine, they decided to go with ProBld. Ring a bell?”
It doesn’t. Well, I am positive it must. But the acting talent is making a sudden comeback, and Erik really does look like he’s completely, utterly confused. His eyes narrow, and I can almost see him try to sift through his memories.
I sigh. “This is . . . just really exhausting, Erik. Gianna told me everything. I know that ProBld tried to buy GreenFrame. I don’t know if you went out with me planning to hurt the company, or you took the opportunity once you were presented with it, but I do know that you used what I told you at dinner to give a pitch very similar to mine, because the client—your client—admitted it to us.”
“I didn’t.”
“Right. Sure.”
“I really didn’t.”
“Of course.” I roll my eyes.
“No, I’m serious. Are you telling me that the reason you stopped talking to me is that we coincidentally ended up getting one of your clients?”
“Two pitches that similar are not a coincidence—”
“They must be. I didn’t even know we had that client until right now.”
“How could you not know what projects are going in the firm you own?”
“Because I am not a junior employee.” I can tell from his tone that he’s starting to get frustrated with me. Which is fine because I’ve been frustrated with him for weeks. “I have a leadership position and manage people who manage people who manage more people. We’re not GreenFrame, Sadie. I oversee different teams and spend my days in pretty fucking boring meetings with patent attorneys and surveyors and quality assurance managers. Unless it’s a high-priority deal or an extremely lucrative project, I might not even be debriefed until it’s well on its way. My job is making big-picture decisions and giving guidelines so that—”
He stops and physically recoils. One second he’s leaning toward me, the next his back is straight and he’s pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He stays like that for long seconds, eyes closed, and then explodes in a low, heartfelt:
“Fuck.”
It’s my turn to be confused. “What?”
“Fuck.”
“What . . . Why are you doing that?”
He looks at me, not one ounce of his previous exasperation in his expression. “You’re right.”
“About?”
“It was me. It was my fault you didn’t get the client. But not for the reason you think.”
“What?”
“The day after we . . .” He runs a tired hand down his face. “That morning I had a meeting with one of the engineering managers I supervise. He told me that he was refining a pitch for a project that had specifically asked for sustainability features. He didn’t go into detail and I didn’t ask, but since it’s not our forte he wanted to know if I had any resources. I sent him an academic article.” His throat bobs. “It was the one you wrote.”
I’m dizzy. I’m sitting down, but I think I might fall over. “My article? My peer-reviewed article on frameworks for sustainable engineering?”
He nods slowly. Helplessly. “I also sent your thesis out in a company-wide email and highly encouraged all team leaders to read it. Though that was a few days later, after I’d read it myself.”
“My thesis?” I must have misheard him. Surely I’m in the thick of a cerebrovascular event. “My doctoral dissertation?”
He nods, looking apologetic. I . . . I don’t think I’m even mad anymore. Or maybe I am, but it’s diluted in the total, utter shock of hearing that . . . “How did you get my thesis? And my paper?”
“The paper was on Google Scholar. For the thesis . . .” He presses his lips together. “I had a librarian from Caltech send me a download link.”
“You had a librarian send you a download link,” I repeat slowly. I’m inhabiting a parallel dimension. Where atoms are made of chaos. “When?”
“The morning after. When I got to my office.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to read it.”
“But . . . why?”
He looks at me like I’m a bit slow. “Because you wrote it.”
Maybe I am a bit slow. “So you were trying to . . . figure out GreenFrame’s pitch based on my published work?”
“No.” His tone drops some of the guilt and is back to three parts firm, one part indignant. “I wanted to read what you wrote because I’m interested in the topic, because at dinner it was very obvious that you’re a better engineer than most people at ProBld—including myself—and because about five minutes into my workday I realized that if I wasn’t going to stop thinking about you, I might as well be productive about it. And as I read, I realized that your work is above good, and sharing it with everyone else seemed like a no-brainer. I didn’t think that I was handing your pitch to my entire company, and . . . Fuck. I just didn’t think.” He rubs the back of his hand against his mouth. “It was my fault. It wasn’t on purpose, but I take full responsibility. I’m going to talk with my engineering manager and with the client and . . . I’ll figure this out. We’ll find you a way to make sure you get the credit you deserve.”
I stare at him, stupefied. This is . . . He’s not supposed to be saying any of this. He’s supposed to . . . I don’t know. Double down. Defend his own shitty actions. Make me loathe him even more.
“For the future, we can probably work out an agreement. Something about not pursuing your potential clients. I don’t know, but I’ll talk it through with Gianna.”
Excuse me? “I doubt your partners will ever agree to that.”
“They will when I explain the situation to them,” he says, like it’s a decided matter.
“Sure, because you’re one of them.” My anger is back. Good. Perfect. “Another lie from you, by the way.”
This time, he . . . Is he blushing? “I didn’t lie.”
“You just omitted. Nice loophole.”
“That’s not it. I . . .” For the first time since I met him, this self-possessed, severe man seems vaguely embarrassed, and I . . . I can’t look away. “I wasn’t sure whether you knew. Most people I meet seem to know already—yes, I know how that sounds. And then over dinner you told me about how different working for a firm was from academic life. How much you missed your friends. I figured me bragging about how I graduated and got to make that transition with my friends could wait a couple of days.”
“That sounds really . . .” Believable, actually. Kind of thoughtful, if in an oddly misplaced way? “Sketchy.”
He lets out a laugh. Like I’m being ridiculous. “Sketchy.”
“I just—” I throw up my hands. “Why are we even doing this, Erik? It’s obvious that you had some ulterior motive for asking me out. You even tried to offer me a job!”
“Of course I did, Sadie. I’d do it again. I will right now. Do you want to come work for me? Because that offer stands and—”
“Stop.” I raise my palm, put it between us like the most useless wall in the world. “Please, just . . . stop this.”
“Okay.” Erik takes a long, deep breath. When he talks, his voice is calm. “Okay. This is what happened, and interrupt me if I’m wrong: you thought, based on what you were told by someone you trusted, that I slept with you to steal a client and get back at Gianna for not selling, which maybe sounds a little far-fetched, but . . . I get it. It’s where the clues pointed. Is that correct?”
I nod, silent. There is a prickly, heavy pressure behind my eyes.
“Okay,” he continues patiently. “That’s your side of what happened. But I’m asking you to consider mine. Which is that even though I absolutely fucked up by sending your work to my team, I didn’t know about the consequences of it until about five minutes ago. Because I called you, but you never picked up. And when I came upstairs to talk to you, Gianna said that she was sure you didn’t want to see me. And I like to think that I’m not the kind of asshole who would keep calling a woman who asked him not to, so I stopped. But I also wasn’t exactly able to quit thinking about you, which had me desperately looking for the reason you pulled back, to the point that I’ve been replaying what happened between us that night every day—every . . . single . . . day—for the past three weeks.”
“Erik—”
“I’m not exaggerating.” This would be so much easier if his tone were accusatory. But no. He has to sound reasonable and logical and earnest and sincere and I want to scream. “I tore apart every minute, every second of every interaction, and after slicing all of it into pieces, the only conclusion that I could reach was that whatever I did wrong must have happened after you asked me to take you to my place, which only really left what we did there.”
“That’s not—”
“And I’ve been scared, scared like never before, that I’d hurt you.” He lifts his hand. Curves it around my cheek. “That I’d left you in some—any kind of pain. That I couldn’t make amends. Which, let me tell you, is no fun when you know in your lizard brain that you’re about five minutes from falling in love with someone.” He closes his eyes. “Maybe past. Can’t really tell.”
They make the floor shift and shake, Erik’s words. They make it fall hard and fast from under my feet, they flood my brain with a blinding flash of light, and they . . . wait.
Wait.
“The power’s back,” I say with a gasp, realizing that the elevator is working again. Erik must have noticed, too, but he doesn’t look surprised, nor does he make a move to shift away from me. He keeps holding my eyes, like he’s waiting for an answer from me, for an acknowledgment of what he’s said, but I can’t, won’t give it to him. I turn away from the hand on my face and grab my bag, slipping out of the corner where I wedged myself.
“Sadie.” When the doors open on the first floor, I dart out of the car. Erik is right behind me. “Sadie, can you—”
“Erik!” someone calls from the other side of the lobby, the voice echoing across the marble. There is a small group of people chatting with two men in maintenance uniforms. “You okay?” I’m almost positive (from hate-researching ProBld after our falling-out) that he’s another one of the partners. A late-working bunch, clearly.
“Yeah,” Erik says without moving in their direction.
“Were you stuck in the elevator?”
“In the smaller one.” There is an impatient edge to Erik’s tone. It shifts to something much softer when he turns to me and says, “Sadie, let’s—”
“Was it just the two of you?” the man calls. “Actually, maintenance is trying to make sure that no one from ProBld is still stuck. Can you come here for a second?”
Erik’s “Sure, I’ll be right there” could cut diamonds.
I turn to leave, but his hand closes around my biceps, and I feel his grip travel through every single nerve ending I possess. “Stay here, okay? I just need five minutes to talk to you. Can I have five minutes? Please?” He holds my eyes until I nod.
But once he turns his back to me, I don’t hesitate for even a second. I rub the spot where he just touched me until I can’t feel him anymore, and then I slip out into the warm night air.