Calm the hell down, Riley. This isn’t a field trip.
Go grab one of the tripods from the truck, Riley.
Stop giving me attitude, Riley.
Stop acting like I’m somehow mysteriously supposed to understand what’s going through your head, Riley.
Slow down, and turn around and look at me, Riley.
Lie down in the grass, Riley, and beckon me to lie beside you.
Jesus. I don’t like where my mind is going. The farther we walk and the faster she plods, the angrier I get. I want to grab her again. I want to feel her skin again. And when I hold her again, I want her to fight me just a little. Just enough to pretend it’s me she’s really mad at.
But I say nothing. Because I don’t know my role. I’m a maybe-vice president, and she’s a girl fresh out of college, but I’m not dumb enough to believe I outrank Riley James in life. She grew up with everything I never had. She lost her mother? Well, I lost both my parents, and given what I remember about my drunken junkie mom, I think I’d have been better off with a dead one. I feel a sudden need to blurt that out — to establish something that might put us on equal footing. Or maybe to show her that if anyone is going to win the inner turmoil contest today, it should be the guy without a past who literally can’t buy a cup of coffee.
But I just watch her trod off, taking big steps to keep up. I let it happen because she’s inadvertently doing our jobs correctly. A few minutes ago, we crossed back onto what I ballpark is the property we’re here to inspect. Now we’re crossing the southern edge, damn near what I’d guessed was the survey line.
I try and ignore her. To make it back to the office in time, I figure we have a half hour, tops. I’ll drive on the way to Cherry Hill, to headquarters, and I can get us there faster than Riley would. So I turn my attention away from her stalking footsteps, resisting an urge to point out that I’ve done nothing wrong, and focus on the land’s potential.
I picture the main community entrance near the hill’s top, where it connects to the state route.
I imagine the interior roads and how they’d branch like arteries and veins inside a body. Then the split-offs. The cul-de-sacs. I can’t picture it all, of course, because I’m not sure of the boundaries and what the utility companies might say about where we can and can’t dig. We’ll need an environmental impact survey, too, but I think I can get close enough for a feel.
Riley stalks us to the far corner. I’m counting steps and estimating distance. I’d need to look at the spec sheet, but I’m guessing somewhere between 160-180 acres. The land isn’t flat, and there are a few inhospitable areas we’ll want to landscape, so that’s maybe somewhere between two to three lots per acre on average, allowing for a nice clubhouse and pool complex. So maybe 350 or 400? Maybe less; we could give people more land and not lose it on price because it overlooks the valley. Turn the hillside to our advantage.
Riley turns and marches back to the truck. I’m picturing erosion lines, predicting where water enters the land and where it leaves. I don’t see her face. I’m not a soil engineer so I can only guess, but given that we can’t change the in- and outflows, I think drainage is fairly straightforward. And if that lip collects effluent and funnels it across the lots? Fuck it. We’ll make a big lake in the middle, flanked by stone-laid canals. Lose a lot or two but gain a place for people to feed swans. Unit price goes up a few grand for ambiance. Win.
By the time we’re back at the truck and Riley’s climbing into the bed to pull out equipment, I have what I need. She’s done my job for me already. An expert tour, given through spite. I should follow angry women on all these jobs. I’ll make VP in a snap.
“Leave it,” I tell her.
She has one foot up on the foothold. If that were me, my next move would be swinging my leg over to stand in the bed before rummaging for equipment. But Riley’s wearing a dress. She does that, and she’ll practically flash me.
“I’m getting you a tripod,” she says.
“I’ve got all I need on this property.”
“But you haven’t even scoped it.”
For some reason, the fact that I’ve better than scoped it while she’s been busy punishing me for whatever’s in her head is immensely satisfying. I want to say something clever. I want to take her hand and pull her down onto the ground where she belongs. I want to ask her why she’s so bitchy all of a sudden. Because there’s no reason for it. I’m a guy doing my job and trying to get a promotion, and she’s given me nothing but attitude. I want to correct her. Remind her that I’m the boss.
I want to push her against the truck and wipe the scowl off her face with my lips.
But she just climbs down. And something must register — either inside her head on its own, thanks to my expression — because her mood softens. She almost looks apologetic for a second, as if she’s realized that whatever’s going on isn’t appropriate. As if she’s embarrassed for dragging me into any of this.
“Do you need to see the folder?” she says. It’s almost quiet.
I tell her I don’t, but thanks.
Then, just because, I pull a tripod and a transit out on my own. I have to ballpark everything because I don’t know how to work the digital features and I’m not sure how to do it manually, but I’m not doing this for information. Time needs to pass. Whatever came over Riley down at the creek, she needs a few more minutes to let go. Because it’s not my problem, and I don’t feel like being blamed for nothing. I have enough problems of my own.
I finish then we get in the truck with me behind the wheel.
For almost the entire ride, Riley rests her goddamned hand on the center console. I keep mine on the wheel.
I don’t know why I’m angry.
I hope it’s not because of the long-forgotten things Riley is making me feel, and how the only way to quench them seems to be the one thing I can’t do.
CHAPTER 12
Riley
After a few miles, it becomes apparent that Brandon isn’t going to take my hand even though I’ve planted it on the center console. Maybe because he seems annoyed at my misplaced silent treatment, but more likely because we don’t know each other at all.
And yet, somehow, I feel like I do know Brandon.
I grew up without a mother. I can only imagine what it was like for him, growing up in foster homes. I want to ask about it, but that feels too personal. I feel like I’ve known this man all my life for some stupid (Dad would say “foolish”) reason, but I haven’t. To him, I’m the boss’s ditzy daughter, and I’d do well to keep that in mind.
How could he take me seriously? He’s lived in a way I never have. He’s had to struggle and overcome his whole life. Something in me lights up at the idea — not from attraction (though there is that), but because I honestly admire it. How much have I had to struggle? Other than getting past Mom’s sickness and death, what’s been hard in my life? Even since before I started getting boobs, Daddy’s Little Rich Girl got everything she wanted. And oh, yes, Dad tried to make me understand the value of a dollar, but I could never forget the net was there. Until college, I of course always lived at home. Even when I had jobs, I had a copy of Dad’s credit card, and even without it I just needed to ask for something to get it. There was never any sense of peril. I’ve never known the cliff’s edge.
But Brandon? I can’t picture living as he must have.
He couldn’t count on love. I wonder if he’s ever felt love? I wonder if he’s had a girlfriend serious enough to have given it to him. Maybe not. He seems so guarded. I mean, look at that beard. It’s not the beard of a man who’s simply chosen facial hair. Brandon strikes me as a guy who’s hiding something. A man with a secret. And if you can’t reveal your secrets, how can you let anyone in enough to love you?
So, no love.
No real home, at least until he was an adult, and presumably started living alone.
He has his “sister,” Bridget, but I have no idea what she’s like. If they were foster siblings, that really jus
t means they were two kids who found themselves thrust into the same prison. Like cellmates. What must that be like? And there’s something else he said, too: He referred to “both times” he lived with Bridget. Did that mean they didn’t move together? One or both of them left their shared home, and they ended up in two different places? How did they maintain their relationship, for whatever it was worth? And what kind of cruelty must that have been: a family deciding they didn’t want one or the other, or Brandon and Bridget demanding to leave?
I want to shiver. Life wasn’t like that for me.
I almost want to wrap my hands around my waist for a parody of warmth, but Brandon’s been eyeing my arm on the console for long enough that now I feel I have to keep it where it is, lest I reveal my reason for leaving it there in the first place.
A reason that makes me feel like an idiot, now that I think about it.
I’m trying hard to be a mature woman, and I left school feeling like one. But did I just lead a man who works for my father into an emotional trap in the woods then get pissed off for no reason — other than that I (not him) was suddenly claimed by an emotional flood I wasn’t ready to deal with, even though I brought on myself? Did I pout afterward, acting like a little brat for a reason he’d obviously not be able to understand or guess? And to top it all off, did I honestly try to make peace by offering my hand for him to take?
Oh God, did I really, honestly expect this man I met yesterday to hold my hand on our drive back to the office?
Despite my need to keep that hand where it is to allay suspicions of my true motives, I finally snatch it back. I don’t care how it looks. Because I suddenly feel so, so incredibly stupid.
What if he had taken my hand? What then?
And really, what kind of a fifth-grade thing is hand holding in the first place? If I’d wanted to mix business and pleasure, a damaged woman would do things differently from a teenager. I’m twenty-two fucking years old, for crying out loud. If I wanted do this, maybe I should have just jumped on him back at the site. That would show him who was boss, even if it popped my cover about who wanted whom.
I hold my hands in my lap, stuffing everything down. None of this is making me feel less stupid. I feel like someone who’s said something dumb, made it worse with a stilted explanation, then continued to make it worse by explaining the awkward explanation.
Relax. He doesn’t know what idiotic crap is going on in your head.
And besides, this has nothing to do with Brandon. This job happened to take you near the creek. The creek made you think of Mom. Feeling bad about Mom always makes you weak, and he just so happened to be the nearest person at the time — the closest port in the storm.
After a few minutes and a several deep breaths, I decide my poker face is composed enough to risk a glance. He won’t see the flush I feel in my cheeks. And he sure as hell won’t feel the other flushes that have crept into other parts of my body. But still, even imagining myself less transparent than I was at the site, I feel like a boy with an erection in class. The way I’ve come undone is probably plain as day.
He’ll look over and laugh.
Or maybe he’ll pity me.
Brandon will take his eyes off the road for long enough to return my no-big-deal-and-sorry-about-what-happened-back-there smile and see how conflicted this is all making me. And he’ll want to say something like, “It’s okay; it happens to everyone.” Or “It’ll be okay.” And maybe he’ll tell me he likes me as a friend and that I seem like a nice girl who will one day meet a nice boy, and I’ll look like an idiot as I backpedal, trying to explain that this has nothing to do with him.
This has to do with me.
This has to do with coming home, trying to be someone different. Trying to be more. To show my father that I’m capable of being Riley, not just Mason’s daughter.
This has to do with my understandable emotional confusion, back home after so much time away.
I probably miss school. I lived there for four years, after all.
I probably miss my friends. I probably miss Candace.
I probably don’t know how to feel, being back under my father’s roof and preparing to move out truly on my own, to get my own place and live there, alone.
I probably miss my mom, because I always do.
I flash my make-peace smile to Brandon, but he doesn’t really return it. He doesn’t laugh at me. He doesn’t pity me. He doesn’t patronize me and my childish feelings.
It’s fine.
If he’s decided to be an asshole, this will be so much easier.
CHAPTER 13
Brandon
I hear from Bridget two days later. They’re two days I’ve spent doing the Life of Riley dance, and so far things are going well. I thought it would be touchy, given the way I keep thinking about the boss’s daughter in inappropriate ways, and I thought it might be awkward on my end because I’ve had a dream twice now in which Riley and I end up by Reed Creek holding hands. There’s nothing to the dream; if her father saw it, it’d be hard to find anything there I’m doing wrong. But the simplicity is powerful in itself because in the dream, I feel like a teenager again. I hold her hand and watch her cry. I’m sure I’m there to comfort her over something, but the dream itself is far from sad. Both times, I’ve woken feeling guilty and somehow hollow, as if something is missing.
But Riley — whether she likes or loathes me; I could go either way and have done nothing to encourage either — has thus far been easy to avoid. I work out at the Stonebridge site. She works in the office. When I call, she doesn’t answer the phone.
I’ve been hung up on girls before.
Waitresses at my favorite bars.
Random girls who hit the floor to dance.
Even, once, a lady cop.
But in time, those waves of fascination always pass. I’ll either end up sleeping with them and the sense of wonder ends, or I’ll move on. That’s what will happen with Riley, despite the odd dreams. And just as well because man, do I need the VP job. I can avoid her until someone else catches my eye. I’m self-aware enough to know there’s nothing to any of these infatuations. They’re just me trying to get by, to grab for something better than where I am.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text. I can almost hear Bridget’s husky voice.
Throat feels like I swallowed a saw. Thanks, Bro.
I toss her a few texts then call her phone to fuck with her. The girl who answers is clearly not Bridget. It’s Abigail, whom I barely know though I probably should, considering she’s a good enough friend to sit with Bridget through recovery. Although it has to be easier when Bridget can’t talk, given that it’s so much harder for her to insult people when robbed of her primary weapon.
“Very funny,” Abigail tells me the second she picks up the phone.
“What’s funny?”
“Calling. You’re a laugh riot.”
“I just want to talk to my sister.”
“She’s not supposed to talk for a week. Ideally two.”
“Oh. Well, just put her on, and she can mouth things at me.”
“Asshole.” But Abigail is actually cool. She’s pretty, too, though I’m not allowed to so much as look at her sideways. Bridget said she’d “punch a hole in my dick” if I ever made a move on Abigail. Bridget has this impression that I consider women as one-serving dishes, and that I lose interest after getting my rocks off. Probably because so far, that’s been true.
“Seriously. Put her on.”
“No, Brandon.”
“I just want to tell her I love her.”
Abigail sighs. I hear the phone move then hear an unflattering sound that’s a lot like retching, like someone about to throw up.
“Hey, Bridge,” I say. “If you want me to not hit on Abigail, just tell me.”
My phone buzzes in my hand. I pull it away from my face and see a text that says, Go fuck yourself. I’m fascinated. I had no idea you could send and receive texts while on the phone.
“
Love you, Bridget. Now, put Abigail back on.”
And she hangs up.
I smile to myself, realizing just how giddy I’m feeling. I have no idea why. It’s been a hard few days. Yesterday, minding my credit card balance, I hunted through my couch cushions for enough money to buy a cup of coffee. It seemed indulgent with so few cents to my name, but I figured that if I worked for those funds, I deserved it. A true abundance mindset.
But still, I feel good.
Bridget got her nodule surgery. I spoke to the doctor before talking to Bridget. He said she’s doing well and that they all couldn’t wait to get rid of her and check her the hell out of the hospital. Everyone loves Bridget once they get to know her, but she never makes it easy. She’s more honest than a person should be, and outspoken in general. Let’s just say that even her friends don’t feel bad that she’s been muted for a week or two.
That uncomfortable morning with Riley James, which preoccupied me for the next forty-eight hours, is far enough past that I’ve shaken off its odd sense of foreboding. When we returned to the office, Margo told me that Mason wanted to talk to me, and I’d been sure he knew something — something I felt guilty for having done to his daughter, even though those things had never left my imagination. I was tense throughout the encounter, and even though it was a good meeting (Mason said something about us maybe having dinner together soon), what felt like a recent near-miss with Riley colored the whole thing in shades of meaning. How could I have dinner with Mason while his daughter held me in a twisted sense of confused obsession? And how could I capitalize if I had to see Riley again the next day, and the next after that?
The Boss's Daughter Page 7