Although he did think the guy was a jerk, the kind to keep tugging up his shirt sleeves so his Rolex was on constant display.
“I’m fine,” Zack said. If he hadn’t forgotten his notebook at his hotel—his apartment was sublet to a visiting professor for another two weeks—he would’ve had a question to fall back on when his mind wandered. At the moment, it had wandered to Antarctica and was shivering with the penguins. Ten minutes earlier, it had been flying past Jupiter.
Better than California.
“Sylly’s already hired you?” Tom—no, Tim—asked.
Zack speared another eyeball. He’d called Liam. April hadn’t been fired yet, but only because Trixie’s emergency appendectomy had postponed the meeting. The day after tomorrow, she’d be finished. Zack’s report wouldn’t save her—too little, too late.
“Fly in late last night?” Tim—no, Tom—asked.
Zack looked up. He liked Tim. Tim was in his late thirties with black curly hair and a nose that leaned about fifteen degrees to the left, like a dented sundial. “No, I’ve been here since last Friday.” It was almost a week later. He’d walked out on April and flown to New York and there was no chance on God’s green earth she would ever move here to be with him. He’d had another undeserved shot at happiness and blown it.
The second grape caught in his throat. He inhaled sharply, feeling his air supply cut off, wondering if three men who had devoted their fragile, brief mortal lives to acquiring wealth would know the Heimlich maneuver.
He wasn’t sure he cared whether they had.
As he clutched his throat, stars flashing before his eyes, he silently cursed the staff in the kitchen who couldn’t be bothered to slice a grape in half. He was going to die without ever seeing April again because of a lazy sous chef. She’d assume he’d died happy, fraternizing with his beloved capitalists on the streets of New York City, never suspecting he loved her and had just decided she should know it, even if she laughed in his face again. Which she almost certainly would.
But the grape dislodged itself, and he covered his mouth with a napkin and waited for his pulse to return to a steady pace.
“You all right?” Tim asked.
Zack nodded, wiping away a tear. “Choking.”
“I’ll say,” Tony said.
Zack put his napkin down. He didn’t like Tony and didn’t expect the man would become more lovable with repeated exposure. Did a guy like that have a woman who loved him? He didn’t wear a ring, just the status-telegraphing timepiece. Zack couldn’t imagine Tony giggling in bed with a cute, funny girl he adored, who adored him. He couldn’t imagine Tony having the kind of genuine friendship and happiness he had with April.
Had had.
Zack signaled for the waiter, giving Tom and Tim an apologetic shrug. “It’s good we had this meeting,” he said, pulling a few bills from his wallet. “I realize now this isn’t going to be a good fit. I think I should go. Not waste any more of your time.”
Tony rolled his eyes but Tom and Tim argued politely for a minute before wishing him well and shaking hands goodbye.
Within two minutes, he was around the corner, breaking into a run.
Chapter 31
AT 8:46 A.M. THE following Friday morning, April walked into the conference room off the lobby with her laptop, a portfolio case, and a swarm of butterflies in her stomach. She’d slept four hours out of the eight she’d been in bed the night before and had bags under her eyes so large they wouldn’t fit under an airplane seat. The chill in the room made her shiver. She found the thermostat and cranked it up ten degrees. She wanted her audience to be comfortable. Cold women were unhappy women. Liam wouldn’t care—he was the one who set the temperature in the building, which was why it was arctic—but Rita, her primary audience, would.
After checking her makeup—with a spike of rebelliousness she hoped she wouldn’t regret, she’d gone ahead and worn her usual cobalt-blue eyeliner—she set up her laptop and connected it to the projector. She’d prepared a professional, unemotional slideshow to make her case.
Jennifer was going to have a very bad day.
“I’m not sure you should be smiling like that,” Virginia said, walking into the room. She held out two cardboard containers, each holding four steaming coffees. Behind her, grouchy George from the back door carried a pastry box.
“You guys can’t come in here,” April said, glancing at the clock on the wall. 8:55. “There’s a meeting in a few minutes.”
George dumped the pastry box on the table. “Cool your spurs. We’re not staying.”
Virginia set the coffees next to the box. “We wanted to help.”
“Those are for me?” April asked, unbalanced by the gesture.
“For Christ’s sake, don’t start blubbering,” George said. “It’ll melt that paint you slather all over your pretty face.”
“Aw, George.” April had to chase him halfway out the door to give him a hug. “I owe you one.”
“Empty words,” he said, swatting her away.
When he was gone, Virginia said, “No matter what happens, let’s catch a movie tonight. Would you like that?”
“Deal. It can even be a comic book movie,” April said. Virginia had stopped wearing her cartoon T-shirts to work, but her apartment was still decorated like a nine-year-old boy’s bedroom, with superheroes and video game posters all over the walls. “You’ve been incredibly nice. Even if you did take my hundred bucks.”
“Text me when you’re free,” Virginia said. “Now kick some ass.”
Just then Liam appeared in the doorway, Bev at his side. Virginia bolted past them through the door without another word.
“Thanks,” April called after her as she offered Liam and Bev the coffee and pastries. “I didn’t know if you two would be here.”
“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Bev said. “I don’t approve.”
Liam gave her a loving smile. “Softie.”
“No, it’s good,” April said. “This crap’s been building for months. It’s great to finally get it out in the open.”
“I wish you’d told me about what was going on,” Bev said.
“That’s what they wanted me to do, go crying to you. Then they’d never take me seriously,” April said. “No, I had to deal with this on my own.”
Bev sat down, shaking her head. “There’s no such thing as being on your own.”
“You ordered the donuts, didn’t you?” Liam asked Bev, looking at the pastry boxes with amused disgust.
“I would have, but Virginia and George already had it covered,” Bev replied.
April looked up from the projector, worried she was losing control of the situation. Bev and Liam looked too cheerful, too relaxed. “I hope you two aren’t here to put your thumbs on the scale. I’ve got this.”
“We don’t expect any freelancer,” Bev said, “no matter whose sister she is, to deal with the most impossibly difficult—”
Just then Teegan entered the room, Jennifer right behind her.
“Situations,” Bev finished, clearing her throat. She clasped her hands together on the table and gave both women a tight-lipped smile. “Good morning.”
Teegan glanced at Jennifer before mumbling, “Hi” and averting her eyes.
Jennifer flashed a cold smile of her own before sitting in the corner near the door and pulling out her phone, as if she wasn’t really a part of the meeting. Teegan seemed to look for a chair similarly remote but had to settle for one at the table. She shot April smug, malevolent glances, stroking the tablet in her lap as if it were a Persian cat.
“I hope I’m not late,” Rita said, bursting into the room. She paused when she saw Bev and then helped herself to coffee and a bear claw before she sat down. “I had to do a rush job for Men’s that couldn’t wait.”
At that moment, the creative director for that department, Darrin, entered with his phone at his ear. His new assistant, the charming Hayley, trailed behind him holding a liter-sized bottle of Diet Coke.
Everyone was there. The party could begin. Bending over her laptop, April adjusted the window for the presentation, trying to keep her hands busy as she got a grip. Her nerves were sending up last-ditch alarms in desperation: wah wah wah, SOS, abandon ship. Even if Bev, Liam, and Rita believed what she was about to tell them, they might forgive Jennifer’s bitchy shenanigans because of her design talents and her seniority, asking April: what did she expect from a fashion designer, hugs and cookies?
No, she could expect that from Bev, the former preschool teacher. She was the nice one—so nice she’d probably forgive Jennifer and Teegan for conspiring against her for months. And if Bev was forgiving, Rita would fall into line. April would have to suck it up. She’d have her job, but so would Teegan and Jennifer, and nothing would change.
“I’ve prepared a presentation,” April said, checking the whiteboard behind her for the projected title page of her slideshow.
Nothing would change…
She picked up the whiteboard eraser and wiped off an imaginary streak of marker. The projector lit up her arm with the Fite logo.
How could nothing change when she herself had changed so much?
Zack had asked her to come with him. It hadn’t been halfhearted—he’d really wanted her to. His eyes had lit up like a patrol car chasing a Ferrari going ninety-five in a school zone.
He’d wanted her to come with him. What had she said? Something about never.
She turned back to the group of big fish in the little pond of San Francisco fashion, and wondered why she’d ever let them get to her. All those years she’d put half her heart into her job and all of it into having a good time, she’d been right: making money didn’t matter.
He’d wanted her to join him in New York.
Finally, she understood what he’d done. Impulsively, emotionally, irrationally—he’d asked her to run away with him. Yes, he was already living there and would enjoy many conveniences she would lack—but he’d done it. He’d offered his heart. She realized now it hadn’t been planned, it hadn’t been in his notebook or his calendar. He’d broken all of his typically anal-retentive safeguards in asking her.
And she’d thrown it back in his face.
She frowned at the screen of her computer, vaguely aware of all the eyes watching her, her heart beating with renewed excitement.
Holy shit. She was going to move to New York.
If it wasn’t too late.
Chapter 32
ZACK WAVED HIS THANKS TO Virginia, who had seemed surprisingly happy to see him, and opened the conference room door.
Eight heads swiveled his way: Rita, Teegan, Jennifer, Darrin, Hayley, Liam, Bev… and April.
She stood at the head of the table, her back to him, wearing a turquoise sweater over a slinky black skirt with an asymmetrical hem that brushed her combat boots. She turned her head and looked at him.
His heart seized up for a moment. And because his throat had gone dry, he could only nod at the group, holding up his little notebook as if he were the court stenographer, before silently finding a seat at the end of the table.
Liam caught his eye, sending a tight-lipped warning look that Zack interpreted to mean not a word.
“Uh…” April said, staring at Zack.
The room fell silent.
“You have a presentation?” Bev asked.
“Yes. Thank you,” April said. She jerked her attention back to her computer. “I do. This presentation has a few interesting data points all of you should be interested in, whether it’s me or another artist you’ll be working with.”
Not wanting to distract her again, Zack turned his gaze to the whiteboard on the wall, where the projector was aiming the show. If his memory was right, the words FITE ART were flickering in the same color palette she’d come to find in this same conference room months ago, when she’d tripped over his feet. He remembered her bright blue jeans, the attraction he’d felt from the beginning, not admitting to himself then that he’d always been a love-at-first-sight kind of guy and had already had his second sighting.
He’d been lost from the beginning.
As the slideshow began to play, he gripped his notebook in his lap, wishing he hadn’t been a few minutes late. He’d had two informers about the meeting: Virginia had sent him an email the night before, apologizing for bothering him but suggesting he might maybe want to know about April fighting for her reputation. And Liam had sent a text an hour ago, telling him to drag his ass over if he hadn’t already skipped town.
He didn’t know if April was going to forgive him for walking out without a word, but he was going to do his best to help her defend herself at Fite. In his briefcase were a dozen copies of the section of his report addressing the design division, with particular detail about Jennifer, Teegan, and the Women’s team. Nothing most people with eyes couldn’t see for themselves, but it was good to have an outsider put it down in black-and-white.
Ten seconds into the presentation, however, he realized April wasn’t going to need his help. A colorful bar graph illuminated the wall—one that immediately showed how difficult she’d had it the past few months.
“Here’s a chart showing the trends in art room work requests over the past year,” April said, “to freelancers such as myself.”
“But you’ve only been here since November,” Teegan said.
“Which is why I pulled the data for longer. So you can compare. Get a frame of reference.” April’s sharp gaze flickered over to Zack, who couldn’t help but smile at her. He liked graphs. This one showed a spike in project requests of 126 percent in November… and 557 percent in the month Rita had gone on leave. It was like a pastel Mount Everest.
“That can’t be right.” Liam stood up and walked over to the whiteboard. He tapped the projected graph. “Spring is big, but it isn’t that big. And why does it keep going? It should go down after we moved on to the summer deliveries.”
April reached under the table and lifted up a stack of papers tall as it was wide. “Here are the hard copies of the project requests,” she said, dumping it on the table with a thud, “if you want to check my numbers.”
Zack bit back a grin and saw that Bev, sipping her coffee, was doing the same.
“Leave them with Rita,” Liam said. “If anyone wants to see for themselves, they can.”
The silence in the room seemed louder than it had a minute earlier. Everyone, even Jennifer and Teegan, were frozen in place, staring at the stack of paper.
“If you sit down,” April said, “I’ll show you the next slide. It gets even more interesting.”
Liam raised an eyebrow at Zack and reclaimed his seat. Zack drank in the sight of April at the top of her game, fighting for herself. It was killing him to keep a straight face.
“Here are the work requests broken up by department,” April continued.
There, in living color, a picture told a thousand words: the Women's department had sent the art room 764 work and revision requests from March through the day last week when Rita had told her to stay home. That averaged out to—Zack factored in five workdays per week over three months—over a dozen requests a day. All of the other departments—combined—had, on average, only three requests per day.
Most damning, in the most recent week, when April had been kept out of the office, Jennifer hadn’t asked for a single sketch, screen print, stripe, polka dot all-over T-shirt, or logo. Not one. And in the months prior to April’s starting at Fite the previous November, the work requests from the Women’s team were a low, steady line, about four per day.
Darrin actually laughed out loud, smacking the table with both hands, the impact sounding like gunshot. “Jennifer, what have you been smoking?”
“Shut up,” Jennifer said. She’d put away her phone and sat up as if she were strapped into an electric chair. “It only looks like a lot. I’m sure she recorded every little thing she did. Walking up the stairs to talk to the design team, saving a file to the correct folder, answering her phone.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she filled out a form to go to the bathroom.”
April patted the stack of work requests. “No, they’re all actual projects. Take a look for yourself.”
Without a glance at anyone else in the room, even Bev, Jennifer fixed her gaze on Liam. “I’m sure she tried as well as she could, but I heard she never got it right the first time. Never. She must’ve counted each revision as an entirely new project. I heard that just a few weeks ago she insisted on a special form just to print out a single page.”
“Who did you hear this from?” April asked.
Jennifer looked annoyed to be interrupted. “Who?”
“Yes. If you remember,” April said.
“It was Teegan. Obviously. My assistant.”
“Associate,” Teegan said. “I got promoted Monday.”
Jennifer’s eyes rolled skyward.
“Is this about that time you asked for the printout for an abstract all-over triangle design for a tank bra from a few years ago,” April began, her cheeks flushed in an adorable way that made Zack’s chest ache with longing, “but you couldn’t remember the name of it, or the line or the season—or the actual year, it turned out—so you ended up describing it to me from memory and I had to completely redesign it?”
Teegan didn’t reply.
“Teegan?” Bev asked, her tone sweet as always.
“Yes,” Teegan said. “We needed it right away, but she couldn’t get it to us until the late afternoon. We missed the FedEx delivery.”
Jennifer shot to her feet. “That’s what I’m talking about. Rita would’ve known what we needed without wasting an entire day’s work.”
“Sounds like you don’t know yourself what you needed,” Liam said, making Zack want to cheer.
“Rita would’ve had it for us in three minutes. And the company would’ve saved a thousand bucks, or whatever it costs to have your—April here,” Jennifer said.
“I’m not sure I would’ve known what you were talking about, actually,” Rita said.
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