“Hi. You must be Whitney,” Gracie said, extending her hand for Whitney to shake. “I’m Gracie, the CEO”
“Yes. We spoke on the phone. I’m Abbott’s friend.” Whitney shook her hand and then handed her the résumé and cover letter.
“Great. Listen, I’m heading out for a lunch meeting in a little while, but if you have a few minutes, we could duck into my office and have a little chat,” Gracie said.
Whitney forced herself to keep her composure. She couldn’t believe things were going so well. “I have a few minutes.” She walked with Gracie to her office.
Gracie shut the door once they were inside. She perched on the corner of her desk and gestured, indicating that Whitney should take a seat in one of the chairs in front of it. When she did, Gracie said, “Abbott tells me you two went to law school together. I’ve heard a lot from her about you. All good things. Very good.”
Whitney sat up straighter in her chair. “Abbott is such a great person.”
She nodded emphatically. “She certainly is. She says that you’re interested in civil rights law.”
“Definitely. I quit my job at Gibson and Grey. I’m ready for a change of pace and a shift of focus away from the corporate world.”
Gracie’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve already quit Gibson?”
“Well, I’m working a little while longer at the request of the partners. My last day is next Monday. But I’m basically done with them.” That was true in every way possible.
“And you know that things will be pretty different from what you’re used to here, right? We’re no Gibson, that’s for sure.” She crossed her arms across her cranberry-colored blouse.
“I’m counting on it.” She was depending on it with everything she had inside, actually, but no need to make herself look as desperate for change as she was.
“Well, you’ll be playing two roles like our other two lawyers,” Gracie said. “I’ll introduce you to them before you leave. You’ll be helping us with the transactional side of the legal work as well as the litigation side. For instance, our lawyers just walked us through the incorporation process, which is quite interesting for a 501(c)(3). But for anything out of your capabilities we’ll bring in outside counsel.” Gracie flipped her dark hair over her shoulders. “We’re usually able to get some pro bono help now and again. In fact, I think we’ve gotten some from Gibson before. Anyway, we also have quite a few litigation issues coming in from the community. Our lawyers can tell you more. They’ve been here just as long as I have and they’re the ones down in the trenches, so to speak.” She stood. “Are you ready to meet them?”
“Yes.” Whitney sprang up from her chair and smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt. She had a good feeling about this. Gracie seemed to like her. She didn’t know if this was an interview of sorts or not, but she knew it had to be a good sign that Gracie was taking so much time out of her busy morning for her.
She thought with a pang of sadness that she probably wouldn’t have even been there if it weren’t for Chace. He’d brought so much joy into her life. And she considered for all of a second calling him. But he’d been wrong.
He’d shown her a lot of wonderful things, and she’d never regret their time together, but she needed to be with someone more predictable. He’d shown her that carefree was good, but maybe he was a little too carefree. Whitney’s father had been carefree, too, and that had caused Jo to get burned.
Chace had probably forgotten about her and moved on with his life anyway. Most likely with Kelly. She didn’t dare ask Rob. She couldn’t bear to hear the answer if he was with someone else.
She didn’t want to know about it or think about it if he was with someone else. Because it would still hurt. Despite everything, she still cared about him. The fool had wormed his way into her heart over the few weeks that she’d known him. And she hadn’t figured out how to get him out yet.
She forced thoughts of Chace aside and plastered a smile on her face. Gracie was introducing her to the two lawyers she hoped would be her co-workers soon. It was time to make a good and lasting impression.
* * *
Whitney had told her mother about quitting her job a few days ago, and her mother had supported the decision. She was happy whenever Whitney was happy. She called her mother that evening to tell her that things had gone well at One Justice.
“I think I have a good chance at getting the job,” she said as she pushed open the door to her condo and walked inside. She couldn’t help but notice that no meal was cooking. Nobody had been in the place since she’d left early that morning. It was going to be another sad, lonely takeout food night.
“That’s good, baby,” Jo said. “Now that you’re between jobs, I don’t want you to worry about this foolishness going on with the plumber.”
Before Whitney had quit Gibson, she’d finally gotten Jo to agree to let her pay half the amount it would cost to redo the plumbing job.
“No, Mom. I still want to help. I have a lot of money in savings, I’m pretty sure I’m getting this new job, and the firm is even letting me have a severance package despite the clause in my employment contract that would let them get out of it.” Andersen had been sad to lose her after all. To show there were no hard feelings, he’d given her a generous severance package.
“I don’t feel right taking the money,” Jo said.
“Please. Just let me do this one thing for you. I can’t do anything right anymore. I can at least do this. Give you this.”
“What are you talking about, honey?”
Before she knew it, Whitney was pouring out all of her feelings of guilt—irrational as she knew they were—about Jo having to raise her alone for several years. Then, she started going on about her dad, her grandparents, and all that she’d felt she owed to others for so long. She even told her mom about Chace. About her brief relationship with him and how messy the end of it had been.
When she was done, Jo said, “You stayed at a job you hated for my benefit?”
“I didn’t know I hated it at the time. But yeah. That was part of the reason.”
“Whitney.” Jo’s tone was scolding. “You know all I want for you is for you to have everything you want and be happy.”
“Making you happy makes me happy.”
“Well, then make yourself happy. You being happy is all I need to be happy. I didn’t bring you into this world so that you could pay me back something you never owed me in the first place. You act like you went into a store and bought a mom on credit.”
She laughed. “When you put it that way, it does sound kind of stupid.”
“Because it is,” Jo said without a trace of doubt in her voice.
“I just feel like I don’t even know what the ‘right thing’ is anymore. And my grandparents—”
“Don’t you dare let those people tell you what to do. Or let you feel inferior. I never have, and why should you? You’re my daughter. A Jones. We don’t let people push us around, even if they are family. Most of the time.”
Whitney thought of her Aunt Cheryl and sighed. “Yeah.”
“And what’s this about Chace? I had no idea you two were serious. You’ve mentioned him once or twice, but that’s about it.”
“That’s another thing I don’t know.” She kept feeling less and less sure she’d made the right decision about Chace. He’d made her feel like no one else ever had. She’d fallen in love for the first time in her life. Did she want to give up on that so quickly? Even though he’d been wrong, he’d done what he did in a misguided attempt to protect her. Erika had been right when she’d said that the other day.
Maybe letting go of him wasn’t the answer.
* * *
Chace sat on the sofa, staring at the blank television screen. Rob had turned it off, and Chace made no move to turn it back on.
“I’ll turn it back on if you stop pretending like I’m not here.” Rob tapped the remote against his open palm.
“Huh?” Chace continued to stare at the scree
n. He knew what Rob was talking about, but he didn’t want to.
“You’ve been moping around this place ever since you came back from Richmond, man. I thought you said you had a good visit there.”
He had. It had been good to hang out with Ethan for a few days. That wasn’t what was bothering him. Being in D.C. again, in that apartment again, so close to her yet so far away, was what bothered him. After his initial excitement about his new collection, reality had sunk in again. Whitney probably didn’t want anything to do with him. He had no idea how to make her understand how much she meant to him.
“It’s about Whitney, huh? That’s why you’re like this?” Rob said as if reading Chace’s mind.
He shrugged.
“You should talk to her, man.”
“What makes you think that? Wait, did she say something?”
“You know I try my hardest to stay out of the crazy you two have created. We don’t talk about you two just like you and me don’t talk about it. But let’s just say I think that if you called her, she’d talk to you.”
“You think she misses me?”
Rob flopped onto the couch. “I think she’s not any happier about the situation than you are.”
“You know what? I don’t want to call her,” Chace said. He held up his hand when Rob started to protest. “Hold on, hear me out. I don’t think that’s enough. You think you can convince her to come to my show?”
“This mysterious show you won’t tell me anything about hardly besides the gallery’s location?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess. I’m like the official go-between for you guys, huh? First her with the cooking disaster, and now you.”
“You’d be doing me a huge favor.”
“I know.” Rob grinned. “Sure. For the two of you? And the chance of not seeing either of you mope anymore? I’d do almost anything.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just tired of you moping around here, always on this couch.” Rob walked into the kitchen, singing “Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof.
Laughing to himself and feeling a little better, Chace went to take a shower and get ready for work since he had the nightshift. They were catering some sort of awards ceremony that evening.
When Chace walked back into his room, still rubbing excess water out of his hair with a towel, his phone was vibrating on his desk. It was Kelly calling.
“Great,” he muttered. “Wonderful.”
He’d been working all day with June to get things together for the show, and he was going to have to spend all night at work. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with nonsense. She’d better actually want something.
“Yeah, Kelly?” Chace sighed into the phone.
“Somebody’s in a mood.”
“I’m tired. Did you actually call to say something or you just want to babble?”
“Oh, I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
Chace held the phone to his ear with a shaking hand. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
* * *
Rob and Erika thought Whitney had made a good decision when it came to her career change. They told her she was already starting to look less miserable on a daily basis. She did feel a lot better.
However, they thought she’d made a really bad decision about Chace. She was having trouble convincing herself that they were wrong. He hadn’t even tried to call her, though. Calling him was out of the question. He’d lied to her. He’d been in the wrong, not her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to call. The fact that he hadn’t called was probably a good thing.
She sat on her couch between Rob and Erika. They’d come over saying they wanted to watch a movie, but they had ulterior motives. The whole time they’d been making little hints about Chace. When she’d asked them to please stop talking about him, they dropped the bomb—they told her the real reason they were there. As subversives for Chace.
They wanted her to come to his show at a downtown gallery. Admittedly, she was impressed that he’d gotten the show and gotten an “in” with June—an heiress and up-and-comer in the photography world who’d recently opened her own gallery.
But she refused to go. There was no reason she wanted to see him—well, there was no way she would go see him, anyway.
Rob groaned and sank lower on the couch. “What would it hurt to come to his show? He really wants you there.”
“Yeah, Whit,” Erika said. “You haven’t even seen the guy in weeks. If you do this and you decide it’s the worst most horrible idea ever, you can leave. It’s a huge, public place. We’ll be surrounded by lots of people. You don’t even have to talk to him if you really don’t want to.”
“Yeah, and it’s not like my apartment, which you’ve been avoiding like the plague, and don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Rob said. “It wouldn’t have to be awkward and just you two. There’s going to be a lot of people at this thing. I mean, did you see that spread that June was able to get for him in the Post?”
She had seen it. She wondered darkly if he’d done anything special for that spread in the Arts section. Then she was ashamed of herself for thinking it. Chace would never even consider something like that.
“I’m glad he’s doing well,” she said. She stared at the movie she hadn’t been following at all instead of looking at either of them.
“Then why don’t you show your support, if nothing else? If the two of you happen to talk…you talk,” Rob said.
“Okay. I’ll go. To support his art. Because I think he’s a good artist. And that is the only reason I’m going.” She looked at her friends.
Erika and Rob exchanged looks.
“What?” she asked them.
“Huh?” Rob said.
“What was that?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
Erika turned innocent eyes on her. “What was what?”
“The look business. What were those looks you two were giving each other?”
“Oh, nothing. Stop being paranoid,” Erika said.
Whitney leaned back against the couch and looked at the two of them again. They had turned back to the movie and turned the conversation back to it as well. She didn’t know what they were up to, but if they expected anything to come of her going to Chace’s show, they were going to be sorely disappointed.
Whatever that craziness with Chace had been, it was over. She didn’t regret it, but it was over. She didn’t blame him anymore for what she’d known at heart had never been his fault, but she couldn’t get past him keeping the fact that he might have had a child secret, no matter why he’d done it. Besides, there was always the chance that he would want to be with the mother of his child—even if he didn’t think so yet. What if he changed his mind after the baby was born?
And if he did abandon the baby, he wouldn’t be any better than her father had been. She didn’t want to be with a man like her father.
Chapter 31: Beautiful Whitney
Rob drove. Whitney sat in the backseat of the car, glaring at the backs of Rob’s and Erika’s heads. Although she’d agreed to go, that didn’t make her any more enthusiastic about it. She’d trudged around the apartment as they attempted to get her out of the door. Finally, they’d had to almost pry her fingers from the door frame and push her downstairs.
The gallery was near Chinatown. She, Rob, and Erika walked up to the door after parking in a nearby lot designated that night for special guests of the artist.
Whitney wore a simple knee-length dress with a scoop neckline under her coat. She’d paired it with black knee-high boots that had three inch heels. She wanted to keep it simple and tasteful, not look like she was trying too hard, but also make Chace know what he was missing and regret losing it.
Whitney put a hand over Rob’s as he started to pull open the door to the gallery. “You said we could leave the moment it gets awkward, right?”
Rob nodded emphatically. “Absolutely. I promise.”
“Let’s go in.
Do y’all not know it’s freezing out here?” Erika said, brushing both of their hands aside and opening the door to the gallery.
Whitney’s heels clicked against the shiny hardwood floor and her eyes swept over the white walls featuring black and white photographs. Rob handed her a brochure and she saw the title, “It’s Not So Black and White,” but didn’t pay attention to anything else about it.
Rob and Erika mumbled about having a look around and slipped off before she could say anything. They weren’t slick. If things didn’t go well, she would find them, grab them, and be out of there before they could say “cheese.” Tapping the brochure in the open palm of her opposite hand, she scanned the crowd until her eyes landed on him.
Breathtaking, hurt-her-heart gorgeous. What had she expected? Chace wore a black shirt unbuttoned at the throat under a tan blazer that seemed to have been made for him even though she doubted he would have something tailored. His dark wash designer jeans were pressed and creased. And he wore the loafers she remembered from Valentine’s Day. He was talking and laughing with a woman Whitney recognized as a mutual friend of Rob and Ulrich’s. Ulrich knew her from college and Rob from his super secret double life.
Sometimes it seemed as if Rob knew everyone in the city, which was clearly impossible. Except maybe for someone like Rob. The woman was part socialite, part local art critic. Her opinion was highly respected in the city and beyond. Even a bad review from her was good news. And Chace’s charm alone was probably enough to make the review go well. Besides that, he had real talent.
Speaking of his talent, she moved further into the room and took her first real look at the photographs. What she saw froze her to the spot in shock. That was because what she saw was herself.
She put a hand over her heart. It was her. Everywhere. Crying. Laughing. Frustrated. In love. Every single photograph was beautiful. She’d never seen a better photograph of herself anywhere. She wouldn’t have considered herself art until that moment. But the best photos—even though there were only three in the whole collection—were the ones with Chace. The two of them in bed together. Holding each other on her balcony. And him trying to shove a disgusting hotdog piled with relish, mustard, and other unsavory things into her mouth, both of them laughing. Her watery smile broadened. That was the best one.
Holding Her Breath (Indigo) Page 24