Eleven
“FOUR WEEKS!” WAS all I could say on the drive back to Jack’s house. “There are four weeks until Thanksgiving!”
“Technically,” Jack pointed out, “it’s three and a half.”
I ignored him. “I can’t spend four weeks doing things I like to do, much less pretending to be your girlfriend.”
“Thanks for that.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s her dying wish,” Jack pointed out.
“She’s not dying,” I said.
“She’s probably not dying.”
“We’re all probably not dying. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow.”
“I’m not thrilled about this, either. But it kind of simplifies things. It gives us a clear end point. Four weeks, and we’re done. I go back to North Dakota, you go … wherever it is you go.”
“Korea, thank you.” Even just at the idea of it, I felt a flash of relief. The timing was good, actually. The Seoul assignment started up in early December.
“This could have lingered on and on. This is objectively better. It’s like ripping off the bandage.”
“Ripping off the bandage,” I corrected, “for four weeks.”
“Three and a half. Let’s talk to your boss.”
“I already know what Glenn’s going to say. He’s going to say I can’t deny her this request. That it’s not that big of a deal. That the remote teams can handle everything—especially if we’re in an isolated location like the ranch. He’s going to call it ‘practically a paid vacation’ and demand to know why, exactly, it’s unacceptable to have to lounge around at the country residence of a world-famous movie star. He’ll say there are worse fates than being trapped in a remote location with a beautiful man.”
If Jack noticed me calling him “beautiful,” he played it cool. “And what will you say?”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t know.”
“He’s not wrong, you know. The ranch is great. There’s an orchard, and a hammock, and a wilderness area near the oxbow lake. We can hunt fossils on the banks of the Brazos, and ride the retired circus horse, and go fishing. It would be like a paid vacation.”
“I don’t like vacations,” I said.
“It really wouldn’t be like work, is what I mean.”
“I like work. I prefer work.”
“You could relax.”
“I never relax.”
“I just mean there are worse things than being trapped there with me.”
“I’m sure you’re delightful, it’s just—”
“That sounded sarcastic.”
“Look—”
“I know it’s a strange ask.”
“It’s not strange, it’s impossible.”
“You saw her back there. That’s my mom, Hannah.”
It was so strange to hear my name come out of Jack Stapleton’s mouth, it threw me off for a second. I tried to regroup. He clearly thought if he asked sweetly enough, I’d just do this for him. Or maybe if he paid me enough money. This was a guy who probably got everything he wanted. If he didn’t understand why this couldn’t happen, I didn’t know how to explain it. I finally settled on, “I don’t know you.”
“I’m not so bad.”
“I just can’t.”
“Are you saying no?”
Did anyone ever say no to Jack Stapleton? “Yes. I’m saying no.”
Jack frowned at that, like it was a really novel concept.
He looked so bewildered, in fact, that as I studied his profile, I questioned myself.
I was saying no, wasn’t I?
I mean, four weeks! That was a long time to never come up for air. There would be no way to do any of my usual work stuff in that scenario. I’d just have to wear girlfriend clothes and do girlfriend things and be … trapped behind that facade. I couldn’t be that passive. I’d been stuck in limbo for so long. I needed to work, and I needed to do my job, and then I needed to be done and get out of here. With each coping mechanism this situation took away, I was dying a little more.
I could feel my shark gills gasping.
I needed to make my world bigger, not smaller. I needed to go far away, not get further trapped in this same spot. I needed to resuscitate my real life, not double down on a fake one.
Time to shut this conversation down.
“We can talk to Glenn,” I said, “but it’s still a no.”
“IT’S A YES,” Glenn said, even after I vociferously, passionately, and very articulately objected to Connie Stapleton’s wishes.
We met in the security HQ in Jack’s garage. The whole team showed up—including Robby now—except for Taylor.
Who I hadn’t seen since I’d watched her smooching my ex-boyfriend. And who I would happily never see again, if I could swing it.
But that was something to obsess over later.
Right now I was busy fighting a losing battle.
It wasn’t that my opinion didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter more than anybody else’s.
“Think of it like a paid vacation,” Glenn said.
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“I don’t see that there’s a decision to be made here,” Amadi said. “She took the job. The situation has evolved. But that doesn’t change our responsibility toward the principal.”
“I didn’t take the job on purpose,” I said.
“That’s a lot of negativity right there,” Doghouse said.
“I signed up to protect him, not live with him,” I said.
Kelly was positively offended by my hesitation. “Do you know how many people would sell their souls to live in that gorgeous ranch house for a month with Jack Stapleton? It was featured in House Beautiful.”
“What am I supposed to do for four weeks if I have to stay in character twenty-four seven?”
“Umm…” Kelly said. “Enjoy it?”
I argued and argued, but I couldn’t convince them how suffocating this would be for me. Everybody, without exception, thought it sounded fun.
The consensus really did solidify pretty fast: I was being ridiculous. I needed to appreciate my good fortune. And suck it up. And stop whining.
In the face of all that unanimousness, there really wasn’t much I could say.
Glenn was loving it, too. “This is your chance to show me your stuff for London,” he said.
But it wasn’t funny. This was my life. “What stuff?” I demanded. “Nothing about this will show anybody any stuff! It’s just forced seclusion with—”
“The Sexiest Man Alive,” Kelly finished.
Glenn thought it was all endlessly funny. “Strategy, flexibility, innovation,” he said then, to answer my question. “Plus, maybe most crucial: that all-important leadership quality of being willing to take one for the team.”
“Fine,” I said. But I let myself pout a little.
“Be nice to poor Jack,” Glenn finally said. “He can’t help it that he’s handsome.”
AFTER FINALLY LOSING the argument spectacularly in a vote of everybody-else-to-one, I decided to step out for some air.
I needed a minute.
And that’s when, out in the circular drive, I ran into Taylor—arriving late.
She slowed to a stop when she saw me. Now that I knew the situation, her body language was unmistakable: The downcast eyes of guilt. The tight shoulders of shame. The shallow breaths of betrayal.
How had I missed it before?
I’d been blinded by warmth and trust and affection. By the idea of what a friend should be.
It’s so easy to see what you expect to see.
I narrowed my eyes into a glare, but it was too dark for her to notice.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Uh. Coming to work?”
“You’re late.”
“Yeah. Traffic.”
“Is that a lie?”
“A lie? No. There was traffic.”
I could hear it in her voice now. She knew something was up.
“Everybody’s inside,” I said, tipping my head toward the garage. “In the surveillance room. The room where we monitor all the surveillance footage.”
She frowned. She could tell I was trying to say something more than I’d said. “Except you,” she said, like that might be a clue.
Dead end. “I’m taking a break.” I gave her another shot. “But I have spent a lot of time in that surveillance room. Surveilling things.”
“Well, yeah. You’re the primary, so—”
“It’s amazing what those cameras can catch. Things you would never—in a million years, if you lived your whole life over and over again—expect to see.”
And then she knew.
I saw it the second the comprehension hit her. The little zap of shock in her eyes.
“Do you mean…” she said.
“You.” I confirmed with a nod. “And Robby.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“That … that—”
“That’s what happened in Madrid?”
She hesitated. Which was fascinating. Because there was no weaseling out of anything now. Finally, she said, “Yeah.” Then, as if she could redeem herself, “But by accident!”
I knew it already, of course. And I thought seeing it would be the worst of it.
But I was wrong.
The confirmation was the worst of it.
“So, all those times I called you and cried over my broken heart … you were dating the person who broke it?”
Taylor looked down. “At first, we weren’t really dating.”
“Just sleeping together.”
“But not on purpose. Not entirely.”
There wasn’t a point in even talking about it. I just wanted her to know that I knew. Then we could all be in agreement that she was a terrible person.
But then she said, “Technically, you were broken up.”
I frowned. “What?”
“We didn’t cheat on you, is what I’m saying. Technically.”
I refused to dignify that with a response.
“I’m sorry. I really am sorry. It just happened. We didn’t know how to tell you.”
“It just happened?”
“You know how it is on assignment.”
“Yes, I definitely do. Specifically with Robby.”
“We weren’t trying to hurt you.”
Again with the “we.” We, we, we. “Do you not understand the … the…” I couldn’t think of words that captured it. Finally, I went with, “the emotional atrocity you just committed?”
“We’re not talking about war crimes.”
“You looted our friendship. You firebombed the trust I had in you. You nuked my faith in humanity. You’re the Enola Gay of best friends.”
Maybe I was overstating it a bit. But I didn’t back down, even after it occurred to me that this conversation was not that different from how we talked when we were laughing. The one big difference, now, of course, being the white-hot hatred.
I had a real question, though. “Do you not understand what you did,” I asked, “or are you pretending not to?” I stared her down, waiting. “I’ll hate you forever, either way,” I went on. “But in one case, I’ll hate you for being stupid, and in the other, I’ll hate you for being selfish.”
Taylor looked down.
“Never mind. I know the answer. It’s ‘selfish.’ Nobody’s that stupid. Not even you.” I thought it might feel good to say something mean. But it didn’t.
“Look—”
“I hope he’s worth it,” I said. “You just forfeited our entire friendship. You just gave up every movie night, every margarita Friday, every goofy GIF exchange, every sleepover, every Galentine’s Day, every fantasy road trip, every hug, and every atom of admiration, warmth, and affection you could ever have had with me. Right? You gave up borrowing my jeans with the rainbow pockets. You gave up book recommendations, and homemade birthday cards, and late-night tacos. And you gave up the best next-door neighbor ever, too, because I’m definitely moving out.”
I could feel my voice shaking.
I was trying to make her feel bad, listing everything she’d just lost.
But of course, I had lost it all, too.
“And you knew,” I went on. “You knew he was terrible. You knew what he did to me—how he abandoned me right after I lost my mom.” I took a long, trembling breath. “That’s what kills me. You gave it all up—every nourishing thing we had … not just for a man, but for a bad man.”
“I’m sorry,” Taylor said.
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” Taylor said, her voice trembling now, too.
“He’s going to leave you,” I said. “He’s left every woman he’s ever been with. Did you know that? He’s always the dumper—never the dumpee. And then you’ll come to me and beg me to forgive you, but I won’t. You want to know why? Because I can’t. Because certain broken things can never be repaired.”
I was ready for that to be my exit line. I was ready to abandon her there in the driveway with only the echo of those words remaining. I started to walk away.
But she called after me, “You’re wrong.”
I turned back.
“He’s not going to leave me. He dumped all those other women because he hadn’t found the right one.”
Wow. The hubris. “You think you’re the one?”
“I know for sure that you weren’t.”
Oof.
And here, right here, is the trouble with being close to other people. The better they know you, the better they can hurt you.
“He never loved you,” she said then, “because you wouldn’t let him.”
How dare she side with him? “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Ask him sometime. He tried.”
It didn’t surprise me that Robby tried to make himself out to be the victim. But it did surprise me that Taylor would believe him.
She must have really needed to see me as the problem.
Then she shrugged and fixed her eyes on mine. “You’re so sure it’s all Robby’s fault.”
“Yeah! And you should be, too!”
“But you won’t see your part in it.”
How was this happening? She was supposed to stand up for me. She was supposed to feel outraged and wronged on my behalf. That’s what best friends were for.
“How can you do this?” I asked, my voice sinking. “You were my best friend.”
But Taylor shook her head. “I was never your best friend. I was your work friend. And the fact that you don’t know the difference? That’s your whole problem right there.”