My mouth is still dry as I step around the door frame into Candace's office. She gestures for me to close the door, and as I reach back to do it I see Quinn and Carson deep in conversation and Ellie Kate biting her lip and bending over her desk. I shut the door with a loud click.
Candace doesn't speak until I've crossed the room and am standing beside one of her two white leather Barcelona guest chairs.
She gestures toward them. "Sit, please."
I don't want to, but I comply.
She opens her mouth to speak and seems to choose her words carefully. "I…took some preliminary notes on Emory's thoughts about the choices we presented him on Wednesday." (We didn't present him anything, I'm thinking, but feel it wise to keep my mouth shut.) "I think we should bring in Douglass to get an estimate on reconfiguring those bookshelves on the west wall, and I think a more modern line in the draperies will make the space less heavy." She pauses. "I'd like you to contact Drummond's and run some scenarios through for price estimates. And I'll need you to get some new measurements on those east windows. Also, I've picked out a few options for re-covering the existing sofa and replacing the case pieces. Please call the Donghia rep and see if these fabrics are in stock."
She hands me a thin manila file folder as I stare at her in numb silence. She's taking over my project? She's completely taking over my project, no discussion, no apologies for what I walked in on Wednesday night.
Not that I expect—or deserve—an apology after my Facebook post. Any leverage I'd gained from catching her cheating on her third husband with my client went out the window when I exposed said cheating on my Facebook wall. I open and close my mouth convulsively and then manage a minuscule nod.
"I—" I think about protesting, but I'm not sure what to say. This is Candace Greenlee, my boss and one of the city's most respected designers—and someone who has the power to make or break my career. It doesn't matter that I brought in nearly $800,000 in revenues last year. It doesn't matter that my coworkers think I'm in line for an eventual partnership. It doesn't even matter that Brewster wanted to hire me, not her.
"I…okay," I stutter, wondering why she's asking me to make these calls and not Brice.
"Can you also print that cocktail table and console for the file?"
She's treating me like an assistant, I realize, and I stare at her dumbly for a moment as that sinks in. Not only is she lifting my project from me without so much as batting an eyelash, she's forcing me to do her dirty work. These things she's asking me to do, they're not my job.
It hits me like a moving van loaded with Emory Brewster's designer castoff furniture. She knows about the Facebook status. She knows, and this is her way of letting me know she knows.
She's not going to fire me, but Candace Greenlee is going to make my work life a living hell.
* * *
That night I'm sitting in Carrie's living room, sipping at a cup of green tea as she nurses a beer. It might be a while before I have the stomach for alcohol.
"What if you just call Brewster yourself, and pretend like nothing ever happened?" Carrie says.
"You mean finish the presentation I intended to give two days ago?" I ask, and she nods. "I've thought about that, but Candace has already ordered a new sofa fabric and gotten him to sign off on her plans. It's nothing like my original design. If I go in and confuse the issue, we might lose his business altogether."
"Not if he's hittin' it with Candace," David speaks up, and I glower at him.
"Helpful." I sigh, long and loud. "I'm just going to focus on my other projects for now. I've got plenty of work on my plate. I'll figure out how to nudge my way back in to Brewster's account eventually. And I'll land a project and a client that's even better than Brewster."
"There you go," Carrie says. "That's a good attitude." She pauses. "Why do you think she didn't just fire you, if she's so clearly pissed about the Facebook post?"
I stand and pace the room as I answer her. I've thought about little else all afternoon. "Candace is all about appearances," I say. "If she fires me for the post, it's like an admission of guilt. If she keeps me on, though, she can play it off. Like, surely she wouldn't keep working with me if I ratted her out for cheating with my client? And by taking over Brewster's account, it gives my little 'joke' of a post even less credibility. All she has to do is act like he was never my client in the first place."
"That makes sense, I guess. Puts you in a bit of a hard place though."
I snort. "You think?" I sink back onto Carrie's slipcovered sofa after snagging a cookie from a plate on the coffee table. In the six years I've known Carrie, I've only been here a couple of times when there wasn't the smell of something fresh baked emanating from her kitchen. "I'm such an idiot."
"Have you heard any more from Jeremy?" she asks to change the subject, and I frown.
"Yeah, he texted earlier. I told him to come by and get his stuff this weekend."
I've been collecting Jeremy's things from around my house for the past two days, to burn off nervous energy. After seven years together, this isn't easy to do. There are touches of him in every room—his running clothes in my laundry hamper, his spare suits in my closet, his magazines on my kitchen counter, his toothbrush, hairbrush, and sinus pills in my medicine cabinet. Even Simon, who's technically his dog. Since he works long hours and travels a lot, Jeremy started leaving Simon at my place during the week several years ago. Now Simon lives with me most of the time.
I'm not sure what to do about that, honestly. I love Simon. He feels like my dog now. I wonder idly if I have any legal claim over him.
There's much less of my stuff at Jeremy's place, and what's there I'm not all that concerned about. We've never spent much time at his condo… To me it feels cold, too slick, and he hasn't let me put my spin on it no matter how many times I've offered or tried. My design input is seen in precisely two items—his metal Navy barstools and the striped, grommet curtains I hung to frame the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He wouldn't let me touch the bedroom—I think his exact words were, "I don't want you putting a million pillows on the bed that I have to throw off every night. You've got your own house for that froufrou stuff. This is a man's room."
The comments induced an eye roll from me at the time, but now I wonder how I didn't see them as a giant red flag. And I was planning to share my life with this man? He doesn't know the meaning of the word "share."
I shake my head and take a huge bite of oatmeal raisin gooey goodness. "Mmm, Carr. These are amazing. I think you've outdone yourself."
David leans forward and grabs another cookie from the plate.
"Aren't they? Maybe you can design Carr's bakery one of these days."
She smiles and leans over to kiss him on the cheek. "And you'll lend your restaurant expertise to help me get it off the ground."
I raise an eyebrow, smiling at their sweet interaction and trying not to feel jealous. Why didn't I ever see how real this was or at least how false what Jeremy and I had was in comparison? Carrie and David are deep on a level Jerm and I never even saw, let alone touched.
"Sounds like you have this all planned out," I say, staring at her curiously and feeling another little pinprick of jealousy that David knows this, and I don't. I feel ashamed of myself for the thought. "But you love your job."
"I'm not saying I'm going to do this next week," Carrie says. "But a girl can dream."
That night, as I'm getting into bed and contemplating a weekend ahead of me with no plans and no boyfriend—my first weekend without wedding planning to do, something I'm trying not to dwell on too much, especially since I still have to tell my parents (unless they saw it on Facebook)—Carrie's words replay themselves in my head again and again.
"A girl can dream."
CHAPTER FIVE
Rebuilding Year
I pull up Facebook, click on my own profile, and spend a few minutes scrolling down my wall making a paranoid check for comments that hint at my stupidity from earlier in
the week.
The thing about the internet is that once you put something out there, it's there. You can't take it back. The split second someone else sees it, it's part of you, and it lives forever. I try to remember what life was like before social media, before prospective employers checked your Twitter feed along with your résumé and before your high school frenemies competed on Facebook to make sure their version of the good life looks better than yours. What life was like when you could actually leave your past and your stupid mistakes behind, when they didn't literally "follow" you on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.
I think about how hard I've worked in the past few years to build my reputation and portfolio, how quickly and easily I was able to shoot myself down. Fifteen years ago, this type of thing wasn't even possible. I'd have had to take out a newspaper ad to make even a tenth of the impression I made online with a few keystrokes.
"Well, Dawson. You've just got to rebuild," I say out loud. I wiggle to reposition myself on the couch, where I've been sitting with my computer on my lap and my legs propped on the coffee table, Simon curled into a warm ball beside me. I swing my legs around and tuck my feet underneath me, and Simon opens one eye and gives me a sleepy, bothered look, as if to chastise me for interrupting his nap.
I open a new document and type these words at the top:
Jen's Comeback Plan:
1. Rebuild reputation by meeting with every client
2. Work on portfolio/add last year's projects
3. Clean up Facebook and Twitter, only keep real friends
4. Attend networking groups
5. Take lead back on Brewster job
6. Add five clients within next quarter
I tap my fingers against the keyboard, wracking my brain to come up with more ways to turn my mistake around. Maybe it's good that I screwed up. I've had so much luck building business in the last couple of years that maybe I was due a setback, to keep me on my toes and keep me from getting complacent.
I've worked too hard to give up even a fraction of it. My mind turns to Jeremy, to the wedding I'm supposed to be planning—the wedding that was supposed to complete this picture, this idealized blend of life and love and career and family I realize I've been striving for. I feel a twinge, remembering his words Thursday morning. "We were complacent, but we weren't happy."
Oh, but we looked happy. On paper, we were perfect.
I wonder if maybe that wasn't what kept me with him for so long. He completed my picture.
Inspired suddenly, I look back at my list and add:
7. Find someone to be truly happy with
The rest of my conversation with Jeremy comes flooding back, and I remember his other, more puzzling words. "In seven years, I don't know the first damn thing about you."
Well, that's just silly. My life is an open book. Too open, clearly. That's how I got myself in this mess in the first place. I have to work much, much harder to protect what I've built and manage my image. And I have to watch my back. Candace's sleek blonde head makes an unwelcome appearance in my thoughts.
* * *
At around two, I'm in the kitchen loading dishes into the dishwasher when I hear Simon take off to the front of the house, his tags jingling wildly. I shut the water off and walk toward the kitchen doorway, drying my hands on a green-and-white striped towel. A key turns in the lock, and then there's Jeremy, walking inside as if nothing's out of the ordinary, Simon dancing and leaping around his feet like he's just won the doggie lottery.
I emerge from the kitchen and frown at him, and he frowns back.
"I didn't think you were here," he says.
"I dropped my car for an oil change and walked back," I reply. I needed the exercise, and I really needed the oil change. My car was overdue because Jeremy had been promising he'd take it for months.
He raises an eyebrow, and I feel a tiny twinge of satisfaction. I can do this without him. I've leaned on him too much in the last seven years—I can see that now.
He bends down and scoops Simon up in his arms, and my satisfaction quickly turns to worry. "Um, you're not planning to take him with you, are you?"
His cheeks turn a darker color, and I can practically see his defenses rise. "Why wouldn't I?" he blusters. "He's my dog."
"He's lived with me for the last four years, Jeremy. He's our dog." I pause. "He's certainly not Brianna's dog." I'm instantly pissed at myself for saying that. I didn't want this to happen today. If I'd known what time Jeremy was planning to come by, I'd have stayed with the car and left his boxes right inside the front door. But then again, then he would've taken Simon.
When I look up at him, Jeremy is staring at me with an odd expression in his eyes. "What makes you… How did you…know about Brianna?"
I cock my head to the right, bewildered, as I stare back at him. Is he on drugs along with the sex and lies? "What the hell are you talking about? You told me about Brianna yourself. Why else are you here today, picking up all this?" I gesture with my hands toward the hallway, which is lined with five or six boxes of Jeremy's things, a fishing pole he'd kept in my back shed stretched across the top.
"No, I mean how did you know Brianna's moving—"
He stops mid-sentence as understanding lights his eyes. Too late.
"She's moving in with you?" I screech. I feel the color drain from my face, and then I get control of myself and move past him into the hallway. "You are such a jackass, Jerm," I say in a low voice, bending down and snatching up the first box I come to, knocking the fishing pole to the hallway floor with a loud clatter. He immediately sets down Simon and rushes over, picking up the expensive, top-of-the-line pole he's hardly ever used and examining it gingerly to make sure it isn't scratched. I feel like poking him in the ass with it.
I march past him and into the living room, struggling briefly to get the front door open. Then I cart the box straight down the front porch steps and dump it on the sidewalk beside his six-month-old Land Rover. As I head back for another one, I see him standing on the front porch, still holding the fishing pole and scratching his head.
"Be reasonable, Jen," he says as I march past him. This time I prop the door open before stomping down the hallway for the second box. He remains on the front porch as I make another trip to the sidewalk, but it's not until I'm back inside the house that he starts in again. The last thing Jeremy ever wants is to cause a scene.
I'm reserved too, but out of the two of us, I definitely have more fire. Whenever I start to get riled up, Jeremy tends to agree with whatever I'm saying just so he doesn't have to argue. It's probably the thing that infuriates me most about him. And today I don't feel like playing his game.
"What am I doing that's unreasonable, Jeremy?" My voice has escalated about four notches in timbre, and I enjoy the slight look of panic on his face. I should have done this more often, this whole "saying what I want to" thing. I catered to his whims way too much. "You're moving out of my life, I'm speeding along the process." I'm half bent over, about to pick up another box, when I straighten and turn toward him. "In fact, do you mind giving me a hand here?"
He looks confused again, or like he's deep in thought, for several seconds. And then he snaps out of it, shakes his head slightly, and rushes into the hallway behind me. I pick up a box, he picks up a box, and neither of us says anything else as he follows me outside. He begins loading the boxes into his car as I make two rapid trips inside for the last two. The last one is filled with his books and weighs about two tons. It's a good thing I'm used to moving furniture and carting around heavy objects at project installations, because at this point I just want him out of my house as fast as humanly possible.
I transfer the last box into his arms instead of setting it on the sidewalk, since it's so heavy I'd rather not bend down with it. As our arms and hands brush, an aching quiver rushes down my body, and I realize this might be the last time he'll ever touch me. Despite everything, this knowledge sends shockwaves of pain through me, pain I've refused to let myself feel up
to this point.
I do love him, I realize. I love Jeremy, even though I want nothing more right now than to get him out of my life. The warring emotions are about to overtake me, so I spin on my heel and walk quickly back up the walkway and into the house. I shut the door without saying good-bye.
I'm back in the kitchen when I hear the door open again, and I quickly wipe my cheeks with the dish towel, anger overtaking my other emotions. I rush into the living room doorway.
"What?" I snap. "What else do you want?"
He looks tired, older somehow. As I watch in horror, he picks up Simon's leash from the bowl on the console table just inside the front door. He makes clicking noises with his tongue, but Simon is already running into the room, spotting his leash and jumping around excitedly, ready for his walk. Jeremy bends down and clicks the leash into place.
As he rises he says, "He is my dog, Jen."
I'm so frozen with fury that I can't even speak. He continues standing there, just staring at me, and after a few seconds my anger mixes with confusion. He looks as if he simultaneously wants to and doesn't want to say something, his mouth opening and then closing again at least twice.
Finally he reaches back, pulls open the door, and leads Simon through it. As he leaves for good he looks back toward me, his eyes sweeping down my body to where I'm still holding the towel, twisting it between my fingers. My mouth is open in silent protest.
"Good-bye," he says in a quiet voice, his eyes on the towel. He closes the door, and then he's gone.
"Simon," I say out loud after the door is closed, my voice cracking. I rush to the door and pull it open again, to at least get one last doggie kiss, a proper good-bye, but Jeremy's already firing up his massive vehicle with a roar and then pulling away from the curb.
Tears drop from my eyes onto the towel, and I glance down at my hands. That's when it hits me. The ring. He wanted to ask me for the ring.
I cry for the rest of the afternoon.
How to Look Happy (Unlucky in Love Book 3) Page 4