I stared at Patrick, a glass of water with a cucumber slice for extra hydration in my hand, and waited—I didn't want to interrupt his diatribe. It was illuminating and hilarious, and keeping my laughter in check was testing my abdominal muscles.
"Bed. Now," I ordered, and Patrick complied. "Drink this."
Knowing his track record with cell phones and whiskey, I retrieved his phone, keys and wallet from his pants and set them on the other side of the room. When I turned around, the glass was empty and Patrick was sprawled across my bed with his eyes closed. I retreated to the bathroom to remove my makeup and change, and found him flopped on his stomach when I returned.
Apparently, he was a wiggly drunk.
Smoothing the covers around us, I pressed my hand to his back. He was right: a few hours apart felt like a short eternity, and his skin against mine was all I needed to recharge.
He rolled over, scooping me into his arms. "Do you love me?" Patrick asked, his voice thick and quiet.
I brushed his hair back, my fingers moving through his soft strands. "Yes."
"Mmm," he sighed, his eyes drifting shut. "'If you know, you need only ask.'"
19
Patrick
I probably didn't appreciate college while I was there. I didn't value self-replenishing dining halls, schedules that conveniently avoided Fridays and anything before noon, or the seemingly endless excuses college kids invented to throw parties. I knew I didn't appreciate it, and the three hundred and thirty-mile drive to Cornell was a definite reminder. Once I was deep in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, the gilded memories of a responsibility-free youth crept into sight.
Nonetheless, college was a messy time for us, and it was the first and only time in my life that I was separated from my siblings for more than a few days. All told, I spent two solid years alone at Cornell before Matt showed up.
Shannon should have been a year behind me like always, but Angus went to war with her during my first semester away. Before I made it home for Thanksgiving break, he emptied her college fund. He justified his behavior with his breed of fatherly wisdom, insisting Shannon was attending college with the intent of finding a husband, and he didn't deserve the tab for that.
It didn't deter her. She picked up her real estate license and cleaned up during the condo and loft boom, went nights to Suffolk University in the city, and proved Angus very wrong.
Good old Angus. May his ornery, angry soul rest in peace…or the eternal fires of hell. Whichever.
Smiling and nodding while the university lavished praise on his generous gift and visionary approach to preservation arts were preferable only to wading through a septic tank explosion. After six rounds of stiffly posed photographs and four requests for comments on my father's commitment to developing a robust crop of young sustainability architects, my forced smile started to crack.
"That's a great question," I replied, my eyes darting across the ballroom in search of the closest exit. "He believed…it was important…to put new architects through their paces. Learn the craft. And what better way to learn than by doing?"
That was a nice way of saying he was a massive douche who taught us by making us figure it out ourselves.
"I'm curious, Mr. Walsh, what propelled your father to embrace sustainability when the preservation field was slow to get on board?"
I glanced at the student reporter and withheld a snicker. Angus never embraced sustainability; he seized every opportunity to criticize our decision to move in that direction, and harped on our every misstep as evidence of our foolish strategy. Sam was still bruised from Angus's final beating on that topic.
"Well…"
"Just the man I wanted to see!" A strong hand clamped over my shoulder, and I was face-to-face with David Lin. Never was I so relieved to see my undergrad roommate, and I clasped his hand in a firm shake. "How the hell are you?" He glanced at the reporter. "Mariella, I need a few minutes with Mr. Walsh here. If you have more questions, forward them to his office. Give the reporter your card, Walsh."
She accepted my card—with my new title—and moved on to get comments from other university leaders.
"Thanks for that," I said, inclining my head toward the reporter. "How long's it been, Dave?"
He shoved his hands in his pockets and bobbed his head from side to side. "At least three, probably four years since I've seen your pretty face." He looked around the venue and leaned forward. "I'm sorry about your dad. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Catch up?"
"Lead the way."
Dave mentioned several recent additions to the area, but I was compelled to stick with something I knew well: Stella's Café. Cornell was always the kind of place that lived untouched in my memory, and I preferred the old haunts.
"Is it true that Mr. Disinterested is getting married?"
"True. The big day's coming up. Next weekend." I sipped my iced coffee and smiled. "He couldn't have found a better girl. Such a sweetheart, but she doesn't take any of his shit. It's awesome to watch someone put him in his place, seeing as he likes to think he knows everything."
"Never thought I'd see the day. He was my back-up, you know," Dave said. "I need to revamp my long-range relationship strategy if he's off the market."
"Off the market," I confirmed. "And, I don't doubt you, Dave, but I don't see him playing for your team."
"Well, shit."
"What's this new gig you've got?" I asked.
Dave passed a hand over his forehead and adjusted his glasses. "Associate Dean. Never thought I'd be The Man. Definitely not The Man in the suit," he laughed, gesturing to his gray three-piece. "But I'm more interested in what you're doing. Hell, we used to talk for hours about the shops we were going to open and the shit we were going to do, and you're the only person from our graduating class who went out and did it all. We were going to change the world, one brick at a time. I give you a lot of credit. We all do, up in the Ivory Tower, that is."
I sipped my iced coffee and shrugged. Shannon was better at handling the praise. "Not without its challenges, Dave. My girlfriend likes to remind me I haven't been inside a movie theatre since the nineties and I've missed major elements of culture because my head has been in building code for ten years straight."
"So you're not taking the girlfriend to the movies?"
My fingers were itching to message Andy. I wanted her to know how exquisite the word 'girlfriend' tasted on my tongue, and how I was beyond ready to tell everyone about us on Monday morning. Less than four days. "She's in the business, so…it's easier. Are you still with Jerome?"
Dave's lips pursed and he broke his biscotti into several pea-sized pieces. "No. Didn't want the same things. You think you know someone after six years…" He sighed, and looked up with a hollow smile. "Didn't we send you an apprentice? How'd that go?"
"Andy Asani, and she's fantastic. Incredible, really. We just offered her an associate position, and if she's the kind of graduate you're turning out, this program got a lot better after I left."
"She's a smart kid," he said, his brow furrowing. "Good to hear she's finding her niche, but, uh…keep an eye on that one."
I laughed, thinking about any number of ways Andy could put Cornell through its paces. I couldn't wait to tell her about Dave's comments. "Anything in particular?"
Frowning, Dave spun his straw through his sweating iced coffee. "I'm not sure how much to say, and most of this is secondhand information, but…"
"But what?" I asked, my blood chilling. His tone was too serious, and I wanted to hear what he had to say while retaining the right to scrub every word from memory immediately.
He lifted a shoulder, his frown deepening. "She was close with the department chair, Dr. Batista. He picked her up for quite a few research assistantships, and she TA'd for him. Rumor had it that Batista left his wife for Andy, and then she blew him off when she moved to Boston. He spent this past semester on personal leave."
Aggravation teased at my nerves. No way in hell that was Andy and my
patience for Dave's bullshit rumor was slim to nonexistent. No. Fucking. Way.
"That's a heavy accusation, Dave."
He held up his hands. "No accusation from me. There was a lot of talk, and when he dropped his courses three days before the semester resumed, there was a lot more talk. I heard he spent some time in Boston these past few months, trying to reconnect with her."
Gossip. It was all gossip. I refused to believe she was capable of that kind of manipulation. She definitely wasn't the kind of woman who left a man's life in shambles.
Except for when she told that man a few passionate moments in a bathroom didn't change anything.
I shook my head, ridding her cool, dismissive words from my mind. "That's not the Andy Asani I know. The Andy I know is focused and talented, and she doesn't need to sleep with anyone to get…" I swallowed, and the coffee went down like a handful of gravel. "To get ahead. Her work speaks for itself."
"Like I said, getting graduates placed in the right firm is the priority, and it sounds like Andy's in the right spot, and so long as she stays out of your trousers, it shouldn't be problem for you."
I glimpsed at my watch and estimated the amount of traffic I'd hit by leaving Ithaca at noon. The Mass Pike at rush hour on a Friday was the last place I wanted to be but I needed to talk to Andy.
20
Andy
The second floor conference room was a sad substitute for Patrick's office, primarily due to its complete shortage of Patrick, but the small, alley-facing window was part of the problem, too. It was slightly disturbing that less than twenty-four hours away from him left me discombobulated. I didn't sleep quite right, my Mason jar salad was a depressingly dull lunch, and I missed him—his scent, his touch, his eyes. All of him affected all of me.
Boston was experiencing its first hot day of spring, and I seriously contemplated a move to the State House courtyard to brighten my mood and soak up some sun. It seemed like the proper response to a winter dominated by permafrost snow banks and several visits from the polar vortex—never mind a solid month of April showers that looked a lot more like April monsoons.
"Well this is a dark and dreary cave," Tom said as he strolled into the crammed room. Boxes surrounded me—everything in Patrick and Matt's offices was packed in advance of tomorrow's demo, and teams were busy protecting the original elements in both rooms. "Is this where you and Patrick are camping until construction is finished?"
Mmm. That sounded nice. My rugby Sex God would make this room far less dark and dreary.
"I'm in here with Matt. Riley and Patrick will be upstairs."
"Right, right. Well, your boss told Shannon he would be back in the city around six tonight, and I need his signature on all of these." Tom hefted color-coded files and dropped them in front of me. "If you could get them into his hands, I will owe you an afternoon coffee."
There was no sense in reminding Tom I didn't drink coffee or that I handed the coffees he routinely brought directly to Patrick. There was always a snarky comment from Patrick about Tom compensating for his inability to grow a beard with coffee, or Tom's general inattentiveness to my beverage preferences. Patrick liked to claim he knew within a week how I took my tea and the minimum amount of hot salsa necessary for maximum taco enjoyment. "No worries, Tom. I need to run a few things by him tonight anyway."
By 'a few things,' I did mean some sassy new panties that laced up the sides.
Tom murmured his thanks and turned to go, soundly whacking his elbow on a tower of boxes. "Freakin' construction," he muttered. "I still don't understand why we're doing this to begin with. It's not like the firm's getting any bigger."
"How's that?" I called.
Tom edged into the room, his elbow cradled in his hand. "The firm isn't getting any bigger. It's right there in the partnership structure." He motioned to the blue folder on top of the stack. "Some possibility of future interns and apprentices, but five partners max. Don't take this the wrong way, but it floored me when they offered you a spot. It's not as if they were actively searching for associate architects. You should check that out. There's a lot of juicy bits in there."
I stared at the blue folder for a few minutes. There was no reason to believe Patrick was withholding information from me. He frequently mentioned the work he and Shannon were doing to adjust the organizational model. One particularly snowy weekend, we ate at least a quart of my red lentil soup while he bitched about the changes Shannon was pushing through. Trusting Patrick was a no-brainer, and digging through his paperwork felt presumptuous.
On the one hand, I knew they weren't looking for more architects—Patrick spent plenty of time bemoaning the number of résumés clogging his inbox on any given day. I knew Tom answered every single one with a 'thanks but no thanks but we'll keep your résumé on file' response. But they were also building an office for Riley, and it was no surprise he joined the firm after attending RISD. Right?
I weighed the evidence for a moment before snapping my laptop shut and shoving it in my bag along with the file. A sunny spot alongside the rose garden called to me, and I settled on the grass to read.
Hours drifted by and the sun moved across the golden dome of the State House. Stopping my hands from shaking was out of the question. When considered alongside the spectrum of awesomely bad decisions from the past few months, leaving the office to read the real story of Walsh Associates and hiding my tears behind sunglasses were the only smart ones. I never wanted to be the girl who cried at work. I wasn't letting any one of them see my humiliation or my hurt.
Tom was right: the firm had no intention of growing. They weren't looking for another principal architect, and they certainly weren't looking for another partner.
Unless I wanted to spend my entire career kneeling in submission at Patrick's side as an associate architect, there was no future for me at his firm.
Patrick's office—our office—was barely recognizable from my seat in his desk chair, surrounded by protective layers of cardboard and twill tarps. Without the drafting desk or conference table, it was as if I never inhabited the space.
I swiveled back and forth, my fingers drumming against the armrests while I stared out the window. There was no innocent explanation for the partnership structure documents, and I didn't misunderstand the legalese.
Patrick screwed me over. The plain black and white wasn't lying about it.
His text messages informed me he was hobbling through thick traffic on the outskirts of Boston. He didn't know my "ok" and "sounds good, meet me in your office" responses contained as much contempt, outrage, and betrayal as a text could hold.
The sad part was I knew better. All along, I knew better.
I heard him in the stairwell—his throat clearing and bouncing step on the stairs echoed through the empty building, and I hated the fluttering in my traitorous heart. It wasn't fair that at least one whole organ wanted me to lay my head on his chest and just breathe.
Ray-Ban Wayfarers propped on his head, and blue Oxford shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and travel-wrinkled, Patrick filled the office like a blast of icy air. With his collar wrenched open and the top buttons undone, his tie swung from his pocket, and he looked about as hurt as I felt.
"Hey, I need to talk to you," Patrick said.
Standing in front of me with his legs braced and arms crossed, his stance was defensive. Did someone tip him off to my study of the documents? What would be better? Catching him off guard or discovering that someone saw me crying over a partnership structure like a naïve, lovesick fangirl who was too busy pinning bridal bouquets to see her career going up in flames?
There was no 'better' in this situation. I was right back at worse and worst.
"Yes." The calm in my voice betrayed every emotion hammering in my veins. "We do need to talk." I tossed the file across his desk, its heft ringing out in the empty space, and I wrapped my fingers around the armrests to draw strength. "Care to explain this to me?"
The muscles in Patrick's jaw ticked an
d bulged, but he didn't spare a second to acknowledge the file. "Care to tell me about Dr. Batista?"
"No, Patrick, I'm not telling you a thing about Batista until you explain why I didn't know that I was never going to advance past an associate here."
We glared at each other, his rippling jaw to my white knuckles. Backing down wasn't part of my game plan, but I knew all about Patrick's style—he let his scowl do the talking and waited out his opponent with scalding silence. It worked like a charm on GCs and subcontractors, the entire office staff, and most of his siblings.
The scowl didn't bother me one bit, and if there was anyone who tolerated silence as well as Patrick did, it was me. Arching an eyebrow, I tilted my chin and forced my fingers to loosen their hold on the armrests.
When he finally broke his stare, he peeled back the folder with a snarl, his bunched shoulders dropping as he scanned the contents. "Where did you get this?"
"It doesn't matter, Patrick. What matters is you failed to mention at any point in the past few months that staying here meant hitting the ceiling at associate. You know that's not what I want, and you told me to stop interviewing. I've turned down partner-track jobs."
"None of this means anything," he said with a flippant wave toward the folder. "It's just…paper."
"That's bullshit and you know it. You know that you should've told me about this."
Patrick sneered at the file and slammed it shut. "These documents, they're meaningless. If I wanted to promote you to partner tomorrow, I could. If you read past the first few pages, you would've seen that I'm pretty much empowered to do whatever the fuck I want. These are meaningless. Totally fucking meaningless. It's the shit that lawyers like to do."
"Yeah?" I challenged. "What about the clause stating that partners must be family? Is that meaningless too?"
"No, actually, it's not meaningless," he shot back. "Jesus Christ, Andy, what do you want me to say right now? You want me to go back to Shannon and have her change the whole fucking thing because you've been here for a couple of months and think you know how this shop runs? You're not the center of the universe. You want me to change the operational philosophy because you want to be partner in a few years, and you happen to be fucking me right now? I'm not touching this document until you answer my questions."
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