by Holley Trent
“Can I be honest?” she whispered. “I need to be honest.”
He moved around to the side of her desk and, nodding, crouched near her. “Honesty would be refreshing. I’ve grown used to the opposite.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s what you get when you grow up in the household of a politician. You learn very early how people bend the truth and how manipulation is a slippery slope. They start by making small compromises to their ethics or relying too heavily on obfuscation. That changes. Outright lying is fine as long as it’s for the so-called greater good and no one gets hurt, and then eventually, people become so dead inside that they don’t care if people get hurt. They think it’s the cost of doing business, but people’s well-being isn’t supposed to be a business.”
“Not everyone is like that,” she said breathily, reeling at the magnitude of what he’d said. It must have been miserable to go through life wondering when the people one had connected with would turn on him, use him.
He’d probably thought that about her from the day she’d started there, and how could he not have?
He nudged her hand away from the fleck of shellac and squeezed it gently until her compulsion to pick at polish died. “No,” he murmured. “Not everyone is like that, but figuring out who the exceptions might be is hard as hell.”
Somehow, she managed to suppress a grimace. It was hard not to take things he said personally. One night of intimacy didn’t erase five years of war.
“I went to my parents’ place after Hanukah,” she murmured. “Of course, I got chewed out about that. The problem with being raised in a household with two religions is that you have to be on call more often than you have the heart to be. It was important to my father, though, and because I wasn’t there, my mother was upset.”
“Where were you?”
“In my apartment, doing nothing. Watching TV.”
“You didn’t call?”
She gave a jerky shrug. “It was easier to just not show up. How’s that saying go? That’s it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than seek permission?”
“Yes.”
“I did pack a bag and head to the island the day before Christmas Eve. They started screaming at me the moment I stepped through the door. Made my grandma cry, which always breaks my heart because she’s eighty-nine and no one wants to be that kid. Everyone was there, Raleigh. Whole fucking family came out of the woodworks. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins I’ve never even met before.”
He cringed. “Sounds like a typical McKean family gathering. There are scores of us.”
“I felt like there were scores under that roof. I bailed out after Christmas dinner. Gave my grandma a kiss on the cheek and left while my father was outside having his cigar. Had a fantastic lecture from him last night.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sounded like he meant it, and somehow that pity made her feel even worse. She hated being such a chicken shit. She hated that she’d been groomed to be conciliatory and to avoid conflict and yet was expected to be some kind of flesh-eating shark the moment she stepped into the offices of Athena. The two things weren’t complementary, and her father had to know that.
He probably just didn’t care.
She could imagine what sort of lecture she’d be getting after Friday when he stumbled upon the news brief that Everley Shannon had left the company.
Pulling the burger bag horizontal, she raked out a few fries and shoved them into her mouth. She didn’t want to say anything else, but wished she could. She’d bare her soul to him—scrape it out and start fresh. He could have been the astringent she needed, but she wouldn’t burden him with her issues. Not when he’d stepped into that room voluntarily, finally. He had no bingo card to fill out, no motives that she could think of.
She didn’t want him to go away.
“Anyhow,” she said with a bit more sunshine in her voice.
Raleigh straightened up right when one of the foreign rights agents passed by the door. She didn’t peek in, though. No one ever did because if they didn’t make eye contact, they wouldn’t have to speak to her.
“How was your visit to Richmond?” she asked.
“Wonderful. And quirky. Stacia’s parents showed up. I’d never met them before and I guess she wasn’t expecting them. They weren’t there long, though. They’d booked a cruise out of Newark and were using Stacia’s place as a lily pad for a couple of days before they were scheduled to embark. Two-week transatlantic. Stacia’s brother and his fiancée are going along.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t be caught dead on a boat with my family.”
“Me neither.”
Raleigh let out a little grunt, set the wrapped burger in front of her and left.
He had to have been thinking that it didn’t matter if she liked her family or not. They were still going to give her the sort of future he would likely never be afforded. He wasn’t going to flex his connections to get a job. He was too civilized for that.
So was she. She wanted to tell him. She wanted that pall of tension between them gone so she could find out if there was something between them besides anger and lust. They seemed like two loose ends that could possibly connect but they never would if they were going to keep approaching from the wrong angles.
But maybe those bad angles were important. Maybe the conflict mattered, because if they’d met under any other circumstances, she could have been forgettable. The raw truths of them would have never been peeled back.
That rawness was what she adored about Raleigh. No performance necessary, because to him, it didn’t matter either way. He was going to call a spade a spade.
Telling him she wasn’t meant to be that usurper wasn’t going to work.
She’d have to show him. And then maybe, one day, they could try a new angle.
* * *
On Friday, Everley packed up the few remnants of personality from her office, turned off the light, and shut the door behind her. Fortunately, human resources had decided not to physically escort her out of the building, though they did promise to sue her into oblivion if they later learned she used privileged information from the company in future endeavors. There was no way that would become an issue because she had no desire to work anywhere near the realm of publishing ever again. It just wasn’t her vibe.
She turned in her badge and had made it all the way down to street level before anyone else noticed.
“Flats today?” Raleigh asked. He caught her bag’s slipping strap and set it back on her shoulder.
“Flats?”
He pointed to her shoes.
“Oh.” She looked down at the boring brown things. She’d woken up a bundle of nerves at it being her last day at the company, but was in a reasonable enough frame of mind to know that people didn’t make great escapes in high heels. “Figured I’d give my arches a break.”
“Is that something women do?”
“I can’t speak for all women.” They crossed over to the northbound subway. “Are you going the right way?” she asked him.
He grimaced. “No. I usually head two blocks east but that station is shut down again. Flooded and I think they’re going to do something about that big fissure in the platform, too.”
“Gotta love New York.”
“That’s what I said before I moved here. The gleam is sort of wearing off, but I don’t think there’s anywhere else I’d rather be right now.”
“Oh.” She wanted to be anywhere but there, and was seriously considering pulling a Bruce—falling off the grid and reemerging better than before.
She hoped he was better, anyway. She hadn’t heard from him. Apparently she hadn’t meant as much to him as she’d thought. She was trying not to beat herself up about it. He hadn’t promised her anything, nor her him.
Raleigh hooked her elbow as they descended the stai
rs into the station. A kind gesture—a surprising one, too. She didn’t know what it meant that she’d stopped expecting decency from people.
“When I first moved to New York,” he said over the din of two people arguing from opposite sides of a busted subway turnstile, “I moved into an apartment sight unseen with three roommates I hadn’t met before. I literally got off the plane and hopped on a train to Harlem carrying a trunk, a suitcase, a duffel bag, and backpack.”
Alarmed, Everley sucked in some air. “How crowded was that train?”
“Not very. It was three in the morning. Inbound flight kept getting delayed. Still, it was quite an adventure. I must have looked like a feral raccoon trying to watch over all my shit, you know? I knew there was no way I could go home and get more of it. I moved when my parents were out of town. They had no idea.”
The train was just approaching the platform as they stepped off the staircase. Good timing, because the station was loud and she wanted to hear the rest of his story without straining.
Being rush hour, there were no seats, but they managed to squeeze through the crowd and found a couple of standing places that weren’t too questionably hygienic. Also, they’d be able to get out without shoving people black-and-blue.
The train lurched to a start. “Why’d you do that?” she asked him. “Move out that way, I mean.”
“Because my father was about to start campaigning again and I wanted to be gone before he did. I was twenty-three. Had been out of college for a year, but took some time to consider my options. Economy was shit. My parents left me alone for the most part as long as I was doing something. I got out of my mother’s hair every day by volunteering at a school. She thought it was my old school, and I didn’t correct her on that. They had money. They didn’t need extra hands. So, I hung out at one that was perpetually understaffed and underfunded. Did a little of everything. Directing traffic in the carpool line in the mornings. Helping with field days. Following up on truant students and driving them in. Troubleshooting why computers wouldn’t turn on. Cleaning up the occasional puddle of vomit.”
“Jack of all trades?” The thought of Raleigh toting a mop and a box of absorbent granules put a massive grin on her face.
“Faked it a lot, but they didn’t care. When the school year ended, I knew I was going to have to make some hard decisions.”
“So you decided to leave.”
“Yes. Basically, I flipped a coin. Heads, New York. Tails, Chicago. New York won, so I tapped into my college’s alumni network to see who had a room and who had job leads.”
“What’d you do?”
“The very first job I got in publishing was in fact-checking.”
If Everley had the room to clutch her pearls, she would have. Fact-checking to publicity wasn’t exactly a logical progression. Fact-checking to proofreading and copyediting, maybe, if he had a strong grasp on language mechanics.
He laughed and she suspected that her confusion was playing clearly on her face.
“I have a degree in history. I worked for a small imprint that only did nonfiction.”
“Ah. Did you plan to stay?”
“Honestly, I didn’t have a plan beyond the first couple of years. I was going to give some additional thought to law school, but as much as I liked the idea of studying law, I didn’t like the idea of practicing it. Especially not given my family affiliations.”
“I could see where that would be messy.” She was shocked that at twenty-three he’d demonstrated such intuition about what would happen, and he’d been successful in his scheme. He was essentially hiding in plain sight. His job may have been to amplify voices, but he kept his muted. He was behind the scenes and he seemed to like it. Meanwhile, she hadn’t been able to predict that telling her father “Yes” would cause a revolt. She’d worked for years in quiet hostilities, hoping things would change and that people would give her a chance, but she knew that would never happen as long as she was on that upward trajectory. No one liked that “friend today, boss tomorrow” dynamic, and they’d all steered clear of her.
She would have done the same.
“How did you get into publicity?” she asked.
“Imprint I was at was closing, and I had two choices. I was offered a content editing job at a different imprint, but at the same time, I saw that Athena was hiring a junior publicist. The pay was about the same, but I suspected I’d eventually earn more in a different department. I didn’t like the idea of jumping to a different company, but staying at the old one meant I’d have to edit books I was categorically opposed to. They acquired books by a lot of televangelists and nationalists, and I honestly didn’t want my name attached to content written by people who questioned my right to have basic liberties like being left the fuck alone. Higher-ups didn’t understand why I didn’t want the job, and I had to ask them point-blank if they knew I was queer. You should have seen the looks on their faces.”
It likely would have mirrored Everley’s on the day Raleigh had mentioned being caught on his knees, though her surprise was likely for an entirely different reason. She’d been shocked by his candor, and perhaps her imagination had started churning a bit too fast. She still couldn’t picture Raleigh submitting to anyone, no matter how hard she tried, and she’d definitely been trying. The thought of Raleigh in flagrante delicto was one of her favorite things.
Or perhaps the thought of Raleigh just...existing.
She wished she didn’t like him so much. She would probably be happier if she didn’t. She might never see him again, and she would always wonder “What if?”
Would they have eventually been friends if she stayed?
Or more?
Maybe all she needed was time, but she never had time.
Bruce had left when she’d fallen for him, too.
She really knew how to pick ’em.
“That’s your stop,” Raleigh said.
She hadn’t even noticed that the train doors had opened. It was a busy spot and people were pouring out of the car. She held tight to the grip bar, though, and tracked her gaze up to his.
“Doors are going to close. You’ll have to catch the train back in the other direction.”
She gripped it tighter. “I...don’t want to go home.” It was too quiet there.
He set his lips in a grim line and turned to watch the doors.
The train shuddered to a start again. For a long while, he stared out the window, and she stared at him. She was going to own her neediness. She was tired of pretending she was fine when the truth was that she needed people around her.
Twenty minutes later, he grabbed her elbow again and eased her through the crush.
They started walking east and she wondered which sweater he’d wear on Monday. For years, she’d played a guessing game with herself and see if she was right when he walked past her office door each day. Her favorite was a teal green one that played so well with his coloring. He didn’t wear it as much as the blacks and grays, though. She could certainly understand that. She did the same.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did you have lunch?”
“I think I did.”
“You think?”
“Today was busy. I had a sandwich from the corner store. I remember now.” A cold sandwich, stale chips, and also a slice of birthday cake she’d gotten from the break room. It was the first piece of celebration cake she’d allowed herself since her first year at Athena. The cold reception she’d received from her peers had informed her that the cake wasn’t for her and that she didn’t deserve it. She’d abstained, but on her last day, she figured she was owed a little sugar.
“I see. Charlie was going in and out of your office a lot. I didn’t ask him why.”
Raleigh’s assistant would be replacing her. He hadn’t told Raleigh yet. He’d simply been adding more to his workl
oad while trying to line up an applicant pool for whomever would be replacing him. It wasn’t an ideal circumstance. Raleigh would certainly be pissed, come Monday, at the disruption to his routine, but he was called the “Hardest Working Person at Athena” for a reason. He always got shit done whether he had support or not.
“Charlie’s curious about the authors on my roster. They’re not like yours,” was all she could say.
And his apartment building wasn’t like hers. Where hers was newer construction and fully modernized, Raleigh’s had probably been erected sometime around Hamilton’s fateful night in Weehawken. Perhaps not that old, but the elevator was ancient and the stairs had actual tilework and not just industrial carpet.
“Go on ahead of me,” he said, indicating the staircase. “The steps are pretty steep. This way, if you fall backwards, I’ll break your landing.”
“And who’ll break yours?”
“I’ve got a hard head. I’ll be fine.” He smirked.
She’d never found smirks sexy before him.
She suppressed a sigh.
Girl, you are pitiful.
“How many flights?” she asked, bracing herself.
“All of them.”
“Ugh.”
“Too cheap to leave.”
“I get it.”
Somehow, she managed to get to the fifth floor without stopping to catch her breath or massage her cramping calves. “Is the elevator really so untrustworthy?”
“You tell me.” He gestured her into the apartment and engaged all the locks once she was in. “I’ve lived here for ten years and I’ve been stuck in it twenty-three times. I kept the maintenance slips for all the reports I put in.”
She set her heavy bag down by the door and took the place in. What she could see of it, anyway. They were in a corridor that extended both ways. The left route was short, ending at a door. Across from them was a set of glass double doors and through it was a dining room. She imagined that down the hall to the right was a kitchen and bathroom.