The Job Proposal

by Wendy Chen

  “Do you want to have personal reasons?” His tone was even, not judgmental, but inquisitive.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said honestly. “I like the way my life is. I have fun, I have friends, I just don’t feel like I need a life partner in the traditional sense. I’m perfectly capable on my own.”

  “I know you’re independent and capable. I’m not talking about need,” Adam corrected her. “I mean do you want a partner and a real relationship?”

  It had been a long time since anyone asked her that, and a long time since she’d asked herself that. In her group of friends, it was Suzanne who was the one constantly looking for boyfriend material, and Kate who tried to remind her that bedfriend material was just as good, if not better. Kate always thought it was tough to be in Suzanne’s shoes and saw how much she struggled trying to find a man who was not intimidated by her successful career. Another lesson learned from Linda was to avoid falling in love with someone who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) bring home a paycheck and then held a chip on his shoulder about it. And at age thirty-two, Suzanne was a few years younger than Kate and already felt that she was over the hill for a lot of the men she met. Why should Kate think she should fare any better? “It’s not completely up to me,” Kate finally answered. “Even if I was looking for a serious, monogamous relationship, it’s not like Mr. Right is just sitting around waiting for me. And I’m not about to wring my hands in dire search of him!”

  Adam said nothing, just nodded, in agreement with her life approach or merely to show he was listening, Kate wasn’t sure. She had come to embrace her lifestyle and to love it, she told herself. She certainly didn’t require his approval.

  They walked along in silence for a while longer. “I guess I can let go of your arm now,” Kate said sheepishly. “No one’s around.” It had felt sort of nice to walk together like that, Kate admitted. It was … comfortable; she just hadn’t wanted him to feel awkward, that’s all. Had he felt awkward? Did he like playing the part of her fiancé? Kate didn’t really want to ask—she needed him now, at least for a little while longer until she got the promotion. Then she could make up some story about the wedding getting called off—that kind of thing happened all the time. She could even still keep her commitment to Alberto and just not tell anyone about the marriage. “Hey, let’s grab some dessert,” she said to break the silence and lighten the mood. “As long as we’re walking this way, we might as well stop for a cupcake.”

  The line at Magnolia ran outside as usual, composed of a mix of tourists and NY locals. But it was just the right thing to break any awkward tension that tonight’s act may have brought between them. Adam may not have completely approved of the way she was going about taking control of her career—he may not have approved at all—but for whatever reason, he had come to her rescue tonight. And Kate was happy that they were still close enough friends that they could spend a few minutes standing out on the sidewalk, laughing and licking frosting from their lips. “Remember when your dad made us those red velvet cupcakes?” Adam asked. His eyes lit up at the memory, with a happier expression than he’d had all night.

  “He got red food coloring all over the counters!” Kate recalled the blood-like stains that didn’t scrub out for days.

  “Those were some of the best cupcakes I’ve ever had,” Adam reminisced. “These are a close second,” he said, licking frosting from his upper lip. He didn’t quite get all of it, and Kate swiped her thumb across his mouth. He turned his head and caught her finger between his teeth playfully and let go quickly when Kate gasped in surprise. It was almost … flirtatious … but the moment was over before Kate could process it. And by the time they had cabbed it home, Kate felt like everything between them was as normal as it had been before.

  Things with Kate had taken a turn to everything but normal. Adam had not been sure about how he thought this dinner would go, had not thought through the evening past getting dressed and getting there. Winging it all was a very un-Adam thing to do, but this thing with Kate, whatever this thing was, certainly brought out sides of him that he didn’t often show.

  All of what Adam said about himself was true, though he would never have been so obnoxious about it. He really did vacation in Bali, had a certain preference for private jets when they seemed practical, and during the brief time when he thought he’d take up golfing (Claudia thought it was a good idea), he’d spent it at Pebble Beach. The last several years of hard work and lots of luck in the technology industry had been very good to Adam. He knew that the kind of woman that he needed to use his money to impress would not be the one for him. He never imagined he’d use his money to impress a woman’s boss. At the same time, it was so easy, so natural for them to be a couple. Did she see that? Did she feel how right it was for them to be together?

  Adam changed into his sweats and did what he always did to relax in the evening. He opened up his laptop and mindlessly perused the news, Facebook, his email, anything to try to get his mind off of Kate. He had liked seeing her reaction when she first saw him walk into the restaurant. Maybe he couldn’t compete with the grungy musician types, but he cleaned up well and he knew it. He didn’t really like the Kate that he saw at dinner, though. He could practically see her mentally keeping score against her colleagues. He had met assholes like her boss before, ones who thought fostering a cutthroat environment in the name of “healthy competition” was good for the organization, ones who then proceeded to make irrational decisions based on favoritism and their own egos. Not that he thought promoting Kate would be irrational. Adam really had no idea how good (or bad) she was at her job, though it was hard for him to believe she would be bad at anything she worked so hard at. But it would be irrational for her boss to promote her now because he happened to like Adam and the cache that he thought Adam could help bring to the firm. Sure, he’d been impressed by Adam’s leisure activities, but he wasn’t stupid enough to ignore the fact that Adam sat on several boards of directors and was acquainted with other major names in the Valley. Hell, Adam had already received a LinkedIn request from Kate’s boss, which he of course accepted. For Kate.

  Adam leaned back against his pillows. This lack of furniture thing was starting to irritate him, but he couldn’t hang out at Kate’s all the time. She had no idea how he felt about her, that much was clear, and annoying her with his constant presence wasn’t going to get him anywhere. You’re important to me, he had said to her. That was the best he could do? He wanted to smack himself in the forehead. Part of him wanted to just tell her, to declare his intentions, so to speak. Or to just grab her and kiss her. But he knew that would just scare her off and that he’d have to be more subtle—to win her over without her realizing it was happening until it was too late, until she’d already fallen for him. He was definitely scoring points with her right now, never mind that it was because she thought Alberto had suddenly changed his mind. He would figure out a way to change her feelings from those of gratitude to—to what? Being attracted to him, wanting him. To go from seeing him as the “safe” boy from her childhood to the grown man he’d become would be a start. Adam yawned and shut down his laptop. The night had gone well, and he had to get some rest to keep up with her tomorrow.

  Chapter 10

  During their morning run, Adam saw a noticeable change in Kate. She always had good form, but her shoulders were straighter, her stride was the tiniest bit faster, just enough that he could barely keep up. It was worth putting on the show, since it had clearly made her happier. She even smiled at him when they met in the lobby and said “hey” before putting her headphones in.

  Kate practically bounced into the office, humming another one of her favorite show tunes, but quickly gathered herself together as she booted up her computer. It wouldn’t do to let her coworkers think she was gloating, even though that was exactly what she was doing in her head. And there was an email from the boss, in all caps, all subject with no body text: COME NEXT SAT. YOU AND ADAM.

  Clearly she ne
eded to get the details from his assistant, but she had heard some hallway conversation about the annual grill-out at the boss’s house in Connecticut. “Yes!” Kate said to herself, grinning widely before schooling her expression in case someone passed by. She settled for singing “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Mis under her breath in celebration.

  Unfortunately the next days at work didn’t go so well. The firm had lost investors again, and those that were still with them were anxious. Not as anxious as when the whole Madoff scandal broke or the last major market implosion, but whenever business was bad, the boss became unpredictable at best. He fired an investor relations associate since it was one of her clients that walked that week, and she happened to have just expensed a five hundred dollar dinner on said client. Kate barely escaped one of those late afternoon meetings where the boss went around the table, publicly pointing out all the flaws in each person’s work performance. “Emergency meeting in my conference room, Kate,” the boss grumbled at her as she headed toward the elevator.

  “I’m meeting a client,” she responded truthfully.

  He narrowed his eyes, as if accusing her of lying, as if any of her actions over the past several years could have led him to question her work ethic.

  She gritted her teeth and looked straight into his beady little eyes.

  He lowered his head and mumbled something about needing to keep Silicon Valley on the hook. Kate hated that he thought she was ducking out to meet her “fiancé,” but she didn’t want to run late even if the boss could be argued with. If it weren’t for the promotion potential and the paycheck, Kate thought at that moment, she would have been out of that firm years ago.

  Money was always a weird subject for Kate, despite it being the central topic of her business school education and career. Kate did not have an uncomfortable upbringing by any means, but all the same, her family only bought things on sale or a generic brand—and this was before Target was Tarjay. Linda used to talk about money incessantly—how much getting a pizza delivered was versus cooking at home, how buying books at the book fair was a waste when there was a public library ten minutes away, how much college tuition would be if Kate didn’t go to Michigan, where her mother taught. As a result, Kate was aware, hyperaware of her personal finances, knew where every dollar of her paycheck went, and appreciated every Louboutin heel that her job afforded her. And she was happy to pick up her half of the restaurant bill on a date or the whole bill if she had been the one to do the asking. Her friends received generous birthday and holiday gifts—whatever amount she needed to spend to get them the item she’d found that was perfect for them. But the best part of her paycheck was that it afforded her the ability to not think about it. She had readily paid off her student loans and never had to carry a balance on a credit card or worry about how to pay for a kid’s music lessons—none of the things her mother had had to deal with while her father waited for his “big book deal” to come in.

  Kate didn’t like to think about money, and she especially didn’t like to talk about it. Every once in a while, she would date a guy who tried to impress her with his six-figure salary, who apparently hadn’t realized she had a fine six-figure salary herself. But another one of Kate’s rules about men—or people in general, really—the phrase “my net worth” should never be spoken in a social setting. So while she had a passing curiosity about Adam’s conversation with her boss, it was nothing more than that. She knew he was successful, but so was she. She assumed he had exaggerated a bit, as part of the act he was putting on, and was amused by how heavily her boss had fallen for it. And if the potential of having Adam as a client gave her a break from his assholeishness, she’d take it.

  Time with Adam became the saving grace of those couple of weeks. Kate became accustomed to having him come along on her morning run and even had a little fun racing him home on a couple of occasions. And after a bad day at work (and almost every one was bad these days), it was nice to unwind with Adam over a glass of wine and dinner. She even got him to go out to a few restaurants, even though he would have been glad to cook. But after being a guest lecturer for a class in the afternoon and his series of mysterious “meetings” with colleagues in California, she was glad he could enjoy at least some of the culinary offerings Manhattan had to offer.

  It was fun for Kate, too, to share some of her favorite places with someone new, someone familiar enough to split an appetizer with or snag a few frites from. The staff at the restaurants always assumed they were a couple, and Kate just started to laugh it off rather than try to correct anyone. It was pretty amusing, really, when an older woman, clearly from out of town, walked by their table at Smith & Wollensky and tried to channel Beyoncé when telling Adam that if he liked her, he should “put a ring on it.” The woman had even shaken her hand and done a little shimmy. Adam hadn’t missed a beat and just said, “Already tried. She won’t wear it.”

  It turned out that they liked a lot of the same food, though he was more of a meat and potatoes kind of guy. There was always something new that Kate would learn about Adam as each day passed, like how he’d met Steve Jobs once, years ago when Adam was first starting out, and how motivated he’d been after that meeting, even though their interaction had been nothing more than a fleeting hello. Kate loved hearing about Adam’s teaching, how his eyes lit up when talking about the students who would come up to him after class to talk about some article they’d seen or some new technology they had heard of. “It’s so humbling,” he said, “to see these freshmen, so articulate about these advanced concepts!” It was nice to see someone so enthusiastic about a job they clearly enjoyed. It reminded her about how Cassandra would go on about her brides and their venues. Kate couldn’t remember the last time she’d been excited about her job. Sure, it was nice when the money rolled in, but had it only ever been about the money?

  Chapter 11

  It was two days before the Connecticut grill-out, and Kate was stressed. Stressed about work (always) and stressed from not having run this morning. It had rained all day, and Kate thought she might have to resort to the treadmill in her building’s gym. She left work a little early, to avoid her boss and mostly because she was just in a foul mood.

  Kate came home to see Adam jumping up and down in front of her television, apparently playing some video game.

  “What. Is. That?” she said loudly, over the sound of crashing and splashing.

  “Xbox,” Adam called out to her. “Thought it’d be fun.” He stopped playing then and turned to her. “Since it’s been raining all day and you missed your run, I thought I’d bring it down from my apartment.”

  “Please don’t tell me that you’re one of those guys with the headsets who plays all night online.”

  “My handle is Buttkicker42 … I’m kidding!” he added quickly after she widened her eyes in alarm. “I don’t have time for that. These game systems are the future of personal technology.”

  “So this is an academic exercise?”

  Adam grinned. “It’s a fun exercise. Come on, it’s time to get your inner geek on.”

  Adam waved his arms a few times and turned on some game about dancing.

  “What is this?” Kate asked.

  “Are you serious? This is a really popular game.”

  She arched a brow. “I’ve been too busy living my real life to be concerned about a gaming one.”

  Adam tsked an amused sigh. “Just get out of that dress and those shoes.”

  “There’s a come-on if I ever heard one,” Kate called from her bedroom.

  She came back out in a tank top and shorts, and Adam pulled her into position to face the TV. “Just stand here and start dancing when the music comes on.”

  And in spite of herself and her bad mood, Kate followed the steps of her onscreen character and actually started to enjoy herself. They kept playing until Kate had the moves down enough to start singing along with the music. She also started laughing at Adam.

  “You
may have smarts, sweetness, and style, but you do not have rhythm.” He did have enthusiasm though, and as long as Kate steered clear of his swinging arms and legs, she could remain uninjured.

  When they finally stopped, Kate grabbed some beer from the fridge and took a long pull from hers as she flopped down on the sofa next to him. She was surprised to find herself out of breath and even sweating a little. She was even more surprised at how much fun she was having. When was the last time she stayed in playing video games? That would be never. Linda thought they were frivolous, and well, Kate never played them enough to miss having them.

  “You’re kind of fun to have around, Ad,” she teased, poking him lightly in the ribs, “even though you can’t dance for squat!” It reminded her of how they could always count on one another to cheer the other person up, like when he was overstressing about some exam that he was sure to ace or after his brothers had used him as a punching bag again. Or after she’d had to overhear another one of her parents’ screaming fights about—what else?—money.