I hate it, but I also don’t.
“Now what’s all this about an emergency meeting?” she says, her sweater still flashing as she settles into a seat beside me. “Are you rethinking my idea to have a holiday party for us? I could whip something up by this afternoon. One of those nut-covered cheese ball things, and—”
“No.” I hear Kristen’s door open down the hall and my whole body clenches with nerves at the thought of seeing her again. That furrow in her brow and that look in her eyes when she’d pulled away from our kiss—shock, confusion, and, my worst fear, regret. I felt like my whole body and brain had shut down at that look.
When she comes in she blinks in surprise at Carol, and that’s when I realize I doubled down on my screwup by sending that e-mail, since clearly Kristen was expecting this meeting to be me and her alone, and she probably also thinks the problem I referred to is what happened between us. I can almost hear Ben scolding me. You are terrible with women, he’d say, in that friendly, warm tone he has, the one that comes so easy to him. What he’d really mean is: You are terrible with people in general, and he’d be right.
“Good morning,” she says, more to Carol than to me, and for a couple minutes it’s a lot of oohing and aahing over the sweater, cheerful exchanges about holiday plans.
I clear my throat in that way I have. Carol rolls her eyes but Kristen’s snap to mine immediately, and I don’t have a chance to arrange my insides against what happens when our gazes lock. I held her last night. Given the news I have to deliver, it should be the last thing on my mind.
“You remember the Dreyer job we closed three weeks ago?” I say, proud of myself for getting it out, getting back on firmer ground.
“Sure,” Kristen says. “He’s going to Dubai. Two years, and turning over his desalination patent.”
“He’s not.”
She blinks, startled. “He’s—he has to. He signed the contract.”
I shake my head. “He says he’ll pay the penalty. He doesn’t want to uproot his wife. They’ve got a grandkid coming.”
Her eyes soften briefly before she looks down at her clasped hands. It only takes a couple of seconds, but I can feel it, when she registers what this means. We did the Dreyer job on behalf of GreenCorp, an environmental solutions firm. Getting Dreyer was a condition of them signing us for an exclusive recruiting contract. We lose Dreyer, we lose GreenCorp.
And GreenCorp is a huge part of our operating budget for next year.
Carol’s sweater blinks obnoxiously in my periphery. We lose GreenCorp, we’ll probably lose Carol, too. I think she knows, because she reaches into her sleeve and turns off the sweater.
“Okay,” Kristen says. “Okay. It’s only the fifteenth. You can get there Monday, spend the day. Change his mind.”
“Can’t. He’s off the grid until Thursday afternoon.” A hunting trip with his brother, he’d said, and I don’t think he’s lying, but I do think he’s relieved he won’t have to deal with me.
She nods, looks down at her tablet. “Friday, then. That’s still three days before Christmas. You’ll have time to get home to your—”
“I’m not going home.”
It’s so annoying that she’s said it. I don’t even really have a home back in west Texas. My family situation is a shambles, and maybe she doesn’t know why, but she knows that it is. Last year she’d FaceTimed me on Christmas Eve with a flimsy excuse about needing a software code for her phone, her face flushed with the pleasure of being with her family, and maybe with an eggnog buzz. We both knew she’d been checking up on me, alone in my condo. See you next week? I remember her saying, her eyes on me steady and a little sad. I miss you, I’d wanted to say, but of course I hadn’t.
She clears her throat. “Right, yes. I’m sorry.”
“Kris.” At the sound of my voice, she raises her eyes to me. “You know I can’t do this on my own.”
For a long second, we look at each other. In all the years we’ve worked together, we’ve come to know each other’s weaknesses, and mine has always been the human stuff. I can talk all day about where a recruit’s tech will land, give them stats about equipment they’ll have, but I’m garbage at selling places, experiences, people, and obviously this is where the Dreyer job has fallen apart. When Ben and I worked as a team, he’d always handle that side of things, and he was unstoppable. Now it’s Kristen who works these angles, and she’s even better than Ben was. Thorough and detail-oriented, but never robotic or distant. Approachable but not overfamiliar, genuinely excited but not frenetic in her energy. And so, so warm.
I fist a hand against the table. Don’t think about how warm she is.
“What if we set up a call?” she asks weakly. I don’t even have to say anything. Carol turns her head toward Kristen and raises her hand slightly, like she’s about to check her temperature. She thinks better of it and looks back at me with a question in her eyes. As many times as the three of us have sat together in this room, I’m sure Carol is thrown—not just at Kristen’s passivity, but at the cool awkwardness between us. Kristen does not want to go anywhere with me, and my stomach twists in dread.
It’s never been this way. Kris and I, we work as a team.
“A call isn’t going to do it,” I say grimly, and I realize that Carol might also be thrown by my somber delivery. I’m not a cheerful guy, but this problem—it’s exactly the kind of challenge that usually gets me focused, energized.
It’s doing neither for me right now.
“I’m supposed to go to Michigan on—” Kristen says. She raises a hand to her forehead, her full lips compressed and turned down at the corners, and my chest feels tight. Looking at her face like that, I don’t give a damn about the job, the firm. I’ll pay Carol out of my savings, find her a new job. GreenCorp can get fucked, so long as Kristen has what she wants.
“But I guess I’ll push it,” she says, just as I’m about to open my mouth. “Carol, can we do some travel rearranging?”
She turns the sweater back on. “My favorite! How long do y’all need?”
“A day,” I say firmly, even though I don’t know if a day will do it. Ben once spent six days in rural Oregon to get someone to sign off on some 3-D printing tech our old boss was pissing his pants over. “I don’t care what you do with my tickets, but Kristen needs to be on her way to Michigan Friday night.”
“Jasper,” Kristen says. “I can—”
“No,” I say, and my voice sounds so flat. “We’ll do it quickly. Treat it like a hiccup, and it will be one. A minor inconvenience.”
I see the flash of hurt in her eyes. Carol looks back and forth between us, twinkle lights glinting off her glasses. I am terrible with people. It’s only by some strange, inexplicable miracle that it’s taken me this long to be terrible with Kris.
She stands from her chair, clutching her laptop to her chest. On instinct, I stand too, and now the sense memory of last night is even fresher. My hands clench in my pockets.
“Absolutely,” she says, her voice curt, her eyes not meeting mine. “A minor inconvenience.”
This time, she leaves the conference room first.
Chapter Four
KRISTEN
December 22
The first fight—the only real fight—Jasper and I ever had was about a kiss.
But not one between us.
It was over two years ago, not long after he’d first come to me about leaving our old company to join him and Ben in the venture that would eventually become our current firm. Ben had been away for an extended leave, but was working a metallurgist recruit our boss wanted badly enough to let Ben and Jasper out of the non-compete that was keeping them from starting their own firm. If Ben could close the deal, Jasper could do what he’d been working toward since the day I’d first met him—go out on his own.
But then, Ben kissed the recruit.
“She’s a distraction,” Jasper had said to me that summer day in my office, pacing in front of my desk, his jaw tight.
; “He did the right thing,” I’d told him calmly. “He’s got feelings for her, and he told you he can’t work with her. He’s following the rules.”
“He’s forgetting about the job,” he’d said, a little angrily, and I’d felt a jarring sense of discontinuity, a sinking, embarrassing sense of disappointment in myself. The night before, Jasper and I had ordered tacos from our favorite place and stayed at the office until ten, going over a contract while an Astros game streamed on my computer screen. It had been the most fun I’d had in months, and when I’d gone home, flushed with the pleasure of being around him—the tie-loosened, talkative Jasper it seemed no one else ever got to see but me—I’d thought, Maybe I could ask him out sometime. Maybe me and Jasper, we could make it work.
But seeing him like that—not even acknowledging that Ben, his best friend since their college days, had found someone he liked enough to jeopardize such a big job—had felt like a glass of cold water to the face, a reminder of how ridiculous it would be to break my professional boundaries for a man who so clearly didn’t care about relationships. When I’d found out, not long after, that Jasper had nearly sabotaged things between Ben and Kit to get the deal, I’d told him to forget about the new firm, that I’d be staying put. I’d stood in his office with my hands on my hips and told him I’d never been so disappointed with someone in my life, and I hadn’t even been exaggerating.
Of course we patched it up, eventually. He’d apologized to Ben, had apologized to me, and he’d done it sincerely, with genuine remorse in his voice and in his eyes. But for a while, it had strained things between us. Or at least, it had for me. It was my feelings for him—my feelings outside of friendship or collegiality—that had made me so completely disappointed, and I’d known it was unfair to him, unfair to our work together. I’d tried, after that, to keep a better distance. To keep work at work, to enjoy our friendship but not expect more from it. I’d even dated a little, though pretty unsuccessfully, and Jasper and I had gotten back into a good routine.
But I don’t have much hope for that routine as I prep for our trip.
Because I kissed him.
How do you reestablish a routine after that?
Through e-mail we agree to meet at the airport, an early indicator of how awkward it will be, since our buildings are barely a half mile from each other and we normally would’ve shared a car. By the time I get to the gate I’m flustered and feeling sorry for myself—the security line long and irritating, but also full of reminders of where I was meant to be flying today. I see a young woman carrying a tote bag full of wrapped gifts and feel a pang of envy; I see a family—the parents harried-looking but the kids, wearing matching snowman sweatshirts, giddy and energetic—and think about Kelly and Malik and the kids.
Jasper’s sitting in the spot he always prefers at a gate—end of a row, facing a window. He never works right before a flight, at least not in any of the obvious ways. He puts his phone away in the front pocket of his bag and reads a book, usually a paperback he’s bought from one of the airport shops. “You’re overpaying,” I always tease. “Go to the bookstore next time.” And he always smiles and says, “Too much choice at the bookstore.”
I wish he had a paperback right now, so I’d know how to open this conversation, our first face-to-face since last week. Instead I sit beside him and settle for a neutral “Good morning,” and for a long minute I think the only thing he’ll say back is his quiet repetition of the same. But finally, he speaks.
“I know we need to talk about it,” he says. He keeps his eyes ahead, staring out into the predawn dark, the white body of plane huge and stark. “I’ve been thinking about how to talk about it.”
Despite the fact that I’ve never had to talk to Jasper about something like this between us, I know, from all the years I’ve worked with him and been his friend, what this means. It’s how he approaches any problem he has to solve—a quiet retreating while he works it out, understands all he can. A forceful returning once he has the answer, an unyielding commitment to seeing it through.
But since he doesn’t say anything else, I guess he still doesn’t have an answer.
“Jasper.”
He drops his eyes from the window, looks over at me.
“I am so sorry. I know the kiss was awkward, and—”
“That’s not the word I’d use for it,” he says, his voice sharp.
I swallow. “It’s not?”
“No. It was the best kiss of my life.”
“Oh.” Oh. It’s the only thing I can say, think. My brain feels like it’s been put through one of the wind turbines of that plane out there. The best kiss of his life.
He clears his throat. “But I know the rules here. I know why we have them, and I know they’re important to you.”
“I’m the one who broke them.” It’s the thing he doesn’t seem to have worked out. He’s acting like the kiss was all his, and I don’t like it. I don’t like the way it takes away my agency, makes us unequal. I open my mouth to protest, thinking of Kelly’s words to me—that Jasper and I are partners, not boss and employee—but Jasper speaks before I can.
“I can’t lose this,” he says, staring down at where his hands rest loosely clasped in his lap. “I don’t know what I’d do.”
He’s said it so seriously, with such feeling, and for a split second I let it echo through me, some ringing holiday bell of hope. But then I remember. Jasper’s this, the this he can’t lose—it’s the job. It’s always going to be the job. He’d done as much as tell me so himself, back when we’d had that fight about Ben.
“Good morning to everyone in the boarding area,” comes a too-loud, slightly crackly voice over the gate speakers, and both Jasper and I raise our heads. “We’ll now start boarding at Gate A6 for Flight 2124 to Boston, starting with first class and business class—”
“That’s us,” Jasper says, shifting his hand to his bag.
“That’s you,” I tell him, relieved. I need some space after that exchange, that reminder.
His brow furrows in confusion.
“Carol said, remember? There was only one business class seat on this flight. I told her to give me coach.”
“I”—he blinks down at his ticket—“I don’t remember that. I would remember that.”
He looks so confused, and frankly, I get it. He would remember that. When it comes to the business, he remembers every detail.
“It’s no big deal.” It’s under four hours to Boston, and it’s not like I don’t have work—or my incredibly painful interpersonal issues with my colleague—to distract me.
“You’ll take my seat.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Kris,” he says, swiping a hand across his face. The gesture is so vulnerable, so unlike him. I have such an aching feeling of longing that I have to look away. “I don’t want to argue.”
“So don’t,” I say, too sharply. “You’re six foot four, Jasper. I’m not taking your legroom.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be. You’ll be cranky and uncomfortable. Just get on the plane. Take a nap. I’ll see you when we land.”
He stands, and I think maybe he’s relented, but instead of heading to the boarding lane he walks to the ticket counter. The woman not swiping passes looks up at him and after a stunned blink, she smiles. I resist the urge to snort knowingly. She’s going to do her best, even in spite of the fact that she’s wearing a jingle bell necklace and elf hat, but Jasper is probably not going to notice. His mind is so one-track, all the time. If he went up to that counter to try to get a second business-class seat, then that’s literally all he’s thinking about. I once saw a waitress undo two buttons of her shirt while he asked her about the dinner special and his eyes didn’t stray once while he ordered the rockfish. I still remember the exact, slightly befuddled way he’d said, “What?” when he looked back at me after she’d walked away.
She makes a few keystrokes on her computer and they exchange a few words, Jasper turning t
o nod his head my way at one point. Ugh. Now we seem like those people. Like we’re so important, we just have to be in business class. I pretend to be interested in my phone.
“Here.”
A ticket appears in front of me. I look up at Jasper. “There’s no way.”
Forget that the ticket agent thought he was handsome; even a face like Jasper’s doesn’t make a new business-class seat appear on a full flight three days before Christmas.
“I switched our tickets.”
“Jasper, I said I didn’t—”
“I can’t be comfortable,” he says bluntly, still holding out the ticket. “I can’t be comfortable if you’re not. Just take it, please.”
When I look up at him, I hear that holiday bell again. All the years I’ve known him and I’ve never seen emotion like this on his face, something so desperate and yearning. I know, I know I shouldn’t hear it, but I do.
I reach out a hand and take the ticket.
But I don’t look at him when I walk away.
Chapter Five
JASPER
I know it’s over before we even knock on the door.
When Kristen and I met Gil Dreyer six weeks ago, we did it at his office, a nondescript building ninety minutes outside of Boston. The space where Gil did his work was as rumpled and unexpected as the man himself. No one would expect the most advanced desalination tech the world has seen in years to come out of that lab, and no one would expect that a man with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and absolutely zero employment history in advanced scientific fields would be the one to develop it. It hadn’t been an easy sell, getting him to GreenCorp, but in that cramped, messy, dated office, we’d had an advantage.
But there’s no advantage in driving up the winding gravel driveway leading to the Dreyer home, which is, in fact, more like a rustic, snow-covered country compound. We lucked out in missing a heavy fall a couple of days ago, so the roads were mostly clear, flanked by dirty, packed drifts, but out here the snow is mostly bright white and smooth.
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