by Molly Harper
Passing droves of tired parents toting their unconscious offspring to the exit, I made my way to the main headquarters tent for staff. There I found Ray schmoozing Deanna Stanhope, who served on the state fair board. She was wearing another fantastic millinery creation of silk flowers and wax fruit arranged over a straw bonnet. “Mrs. Stanhope, I see we’ve paid another visit to New York,” I said sweetly, remembering her story about a personal milliner in Manhattan.
“Oh, Ms. Hutchins.” Mrs. Stanhope giggled, patting her head to make sure the hat was situated correctly. “How nice of you to notice. And I visited your display earlier; what a funny idea. I was just telling Ray here that I can’t wait to see what you come up with next year.”
“Thank you,” I said, wondering if I was supposed to curtsy in the presence of such a hat. “Would you mind if I borrowed Ray for a moment?”
As Mrs. Stanhope dismissed us, a strange kaleidoscope of emotions crossed Ray’s face. He was pleased. He was sorry. He was a little scared. I was reminded of that day at the Derby hat auction when Ray told me about Josh’s hiring. This did not bode well.
Ray immediately tucked his arm through mine and pulled me outside the tent. “Sadie, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback about your campaign.”
“Great. Where is Josh?”
“Josh isn’t here,” he said carefully.
“So I gathered,” I retorted, clearing my throat to keep my voice from shaking. “And if you do that thing where you try to delay bad news by giving me useless information, you know I’ll just end up making a scene. So please cut to the chase.”
“He quit this afternoon, Sadie.” Ray sighed. “He came to the headquarters a couple hours ago and turned in a handwritten resignation. On a Tasty Time napkin. And because he’s only been with the commission a few months, he asked for a waiver of the usual two weeks’ notice. He’s not coming back to the office.”
I felt all the blood drain from my cheeks. Josh was just walking away? He left again? He quit without a word? Forget how much that hurt me on a personal level, that was just freaking rude to the entire staff. He’d come in and stirred up tension and instigated this bizarre beauty pageant over the job for nothing? He’d put me through the wringer at the office for months for nothing?
Ray put an arm around me. “Hon, I know you’ve put up with a lot and frankly, we’ve jerked you around pretty good here. I’m sorry about that, but you’ve got it. You’ve got the job. And not just because Josh dropped out, but because you deserve it. This campaign is fantastic. It’s different than anything we’ve ever done. I’m so happy to know I’m leaving the office in good hands, Sadie.”
I nodded shakily. Winning didn’t feel as good as I thought it would. To be honest, I could barely feel anything. Not the warm breeze on my neck or Ray’s gentle hands on my arms. I had what I wanted, and it didn’t mean much in the face of this dizzying numbness.
“Sadie, hon, the job’s yours,” Ray told me. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
I narrowed my eyes at Ray. “I’m going to kill him.”
• • •
It is really difficult to kill someone when you can’t contact that someone. Despite my numerous voice-mail messages, Josh didn’t respond to my calls or e-mails. When we returned from Louisville, his office had been cleaned out. And for the sake of not getting arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace, I elected not to drive over to his apartment building to check if his lights were on. He didn’t want to see me, that much was clear. And I was going to listen to what he was “telling” me. It was just as well. I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet, either.
I was so angry with Josh. I was so angry with him, and at the same time, hurt and sick and sad. I could barely register the idea that I’d achieved my dream job, because I couldn’t seem to breathe.
I accepted my promotion with grace, minimizing the “In your FACE!” to Gina and former Team Vaughn as much as possible. Okay, I only did it once, and that was after overhearing Gina tell Theresa that the only reason I’d won was that Josh dropped out of the race.
I’d underestimated just how fabulous Ray’s office was. Having a window of my own was fan-freaking-tastic. I didn’t want to be a vulture, but I will admit that the minute the buttercream on Ray’s retirement-party cake was scraped into the trash can, I was changing the height settings on his desk chair and making myself right at home. The walls were now a light spring green and I had a potted mint plant on my desk, courtesy of the ever-hopeful Mr. Leavitt. (He left care instructions with Kelsey, just to be on the safe side.) And there was a framed print of the newly redesigned Sammy the Squirrel on my wall. The good news was that the job wasn’t that different from working as assistant director, except that I weighed many more decisions and didn’t have to get a second opinion when I made them.
While I’d met with Commissioner Bidwell several times, it had never been under circumstances where it would be appropriate to have the conversation I wanted. So I bided my time. Fortunately, I had much to keep me busy. I moved into my new office, met with other department heads, and implemented the secondary phases of my winning campaign, including a Web site redesign, mailings, and a new forty-page magazine-style travel guide. The interns left, meaning that much of the office grunt work—copying, stapling, and the like—was left to us to do ourselves. (Kelsey grumbled endlessly about this.)
Though his absence left its mark, my coworkers took Josh’s departure in stride, assuming that he simply didn’t want to return to the office after losing to me. Meetings were calmer and quieter. Out-of-office trips were a little less of an adventure. There was an overabundance of jelly donuts, because Melody had gotten used to buying extra for Josh. Kelsey was disappointed she wouldn’t see Josh dressed up in his little cheerleading outfit, but she was happy he had taken most of the tension out of the office with him. She sensed there was something off with me, but she didn’t comment on it. She was restraining herself from her usual “I told you so” spectacular and I appreciated it.
Every once in a while, someone would mention Josh’s name in passing and then shoot me this guilty look that some give recent widows. I wasn’t sure if it was because they thought I had survivor’s guilt over getting the job or because they knew I had more-than-professional feelings for my vanquished opponent.
I missed him. It was hard to admit that someone I’d known for such a short amount of time was affecting my daily routine so dramatically. Particularly when I’d spent the better part of the summer mocking him. But I missed Josh like a phantom limb I kept trying to lean on, only to find myself off-balance and depressed when I realized it wasn’t there.
I missed the way he teased me, the way he threw ideas around and got us focused on the task at hand, the way he made me laugh. I missed his voice in my ear, and the way he dissolved into twang whenever he was rattled. I missed the way he invaded my personal space, because frankly, those boundaries I’d built so carefully needed to be shaken up every once in a while.
There was a moment every morning when I walked past the conference room and looked through the blinds to check whether Josh was sitting at the table, knowing that he wouldn’t be. And somehow, I was always a little crushed when he wasn’t there. I kept an eye out for him in the same way that Kelsey looked out for Charlie, as if he were the highlight of my day and I wasn’t sure how to get along without him. And eventually I realized I was sort of, maybe in love. With a total idiot.
Now what?
• • •
I did what any woman did when she was in love with an idiot. I forced him to talk to me, whether he wanted to or not. Because I was a little bit of an idiot, too. That night, I went to his apartment building and spotted Josh sitting on his tiny balcony, drinking a beer.
Holy hell, he wasn’t making this easy on me. Josh actually had beard stubble. I’d never seen him with more than the fai
ntest five-o’clock shadow. He was wearing a faded plaid flannel shirt over a gray T-shirt and jeans. It was the sloppiest I’d ever seen him. And I sort of wanted to eat him up with a spoon and smack him all at once. Apparently I had a thing for unkempt frat boys/mountain men.
This was not a good beginning.
I didn’t exactly get the warm, effusive greeting I’d hoped for. He just sort of nodded grimly at me and got up to open his door.
The apartment was impeccably neat, even if its owner wasn’t. Other than the big stack of flattened cardboard boxes stacked against Josh’s kitchen cabinets and the professional portfolio spread out on the kitchen table, it barely looked as if anyone lived there. I moved closer to the table and looked over the miniaturized campaign samples glued to small black presentation boards. It seemed Josh was preparing for a job interview.
Josh gestured at the comfy-looking denim couch and chairs that provided the only seating in the room, right in front of a mammoth flat-screen TV. It was a perfectly nice, if a little small, room. But it was completely impersonal. There was no art on the walls, no little knickknacks. He didn’t even have pillows or an area rug. The only sign that he actually lived there, beyond the portfolio, was a small framed snapshot by the TV. It was a picture of the staff dressed up in our Civil War Days finery.
The snapshot was a sweet one. We’d just started the day and Bonnie wanted to preserve us for posterity while we were still “pristine.” She’d managed to talk one of the state park staff into taking the picture while she posed with us. Kelsey and Charlie were grinning at each other impishly, making me wonder what sort of mayhem Kelsey had just suggested. I was smiling, bright and open, straight into the camera, while Josh was looking down at me. Why didn’t I see him look at me that way before? How had I missed it? Why had he taken the time to print and frame a picture when he didn’t plan to stay with us?
Josh’s gravelly voice sounded just left of my ear. “If you’re here to try to make me feel worse, Sadie, don’t bother.”
“Oh, no, this is more a ‘making sure you’re not dead’ visit than a social call. Because the people you worked with—the ones that you thought of enough to frame a picture of them, but not enough to say good-bye to when you left—would like to know that you’re okay.”
“I’m sorry I left the way I did. I thought it would be easier if I didn’t have to answer a bunch of questions,” he said. “The job is yours, Sadie. It should have been all along. You want it so much more than I did. And the office just doesn’t fit me the way it fits you. This is what you wanted. At least, it was until I showed up.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Before I showed up, you knew exactly where you were headed. You wanted to be the director of marketing. There was no doubt. And when that was taken away from you, at first, you fought like hell to get it back. Even after we became . . . involved, you still wanted it. You didn’t protect my feelings and tell me you’d be happy to be my assistant, until the night before the fair. All of a sudden you were willing to settle for less. And that scares me, Sadie. I don’t want you to accept anything less than what you really want. And I definitely don’t want you to do it because of me. You want that job more than I ever could, Sadie. You’re the right person for it.”
“And the only way for me to get the job was for you to leave the running?” I asked sharply.
“Don’t put words in my mouth like that,” he said, pulling at the collar of his shirt. “But my leaving was the only way to guarantee that the voters would make the right decision. I didn’t want to leave it to chance.”
A wave of anger and doubt rolled through my stomach with such force, I was afraid I would be sick all over Josh’s nice denim couch. He had tried to do a nice thing, I told myself, even if the result seemed to hurt me more. He thought he was giving me what I wanted, not realizing that I wanted him, too. I looked up to see him tugging at his collar as he watched me. And the wave of anger receded to make way for recognition. “Wait a minute, that’s bullshit.”
Josh’s hand fell away from his neck. “What?”
“You’re pulling at your collar, which I guess is what you do when there’s no necktie available. And you only pull at your tie when you’re really uncomfortable.”
“Of course I’m uncomfortable. A crazy woman is lecturing me in my own home!”
“Josh! Tell me what is going on. And don’t tell me that you wanted to make me happy. I know you don’t respect me on a personal level—”
“Hey, don’t put words in my mouth!” he exclaimed again.
“—but you wouldn’t just walk away and surrender to me on a professional level. You have too much pride in your work. Now, tell me!”
“Fine!” he yelled back. “I caught Rowley stuffing the ballot box.”
“What?!”
“Why do you always say ‘what’ so loudly?” He sighed. “I caught Rowley that first afternoon of the fair. I walked out of my tent and saw him shoving a bunch of papers into the ballot box between our tents. He’d photocopied a ballot a few hundred times and got a couple of his friends to sign a bunch of different names to them. It wasn’t like we were going to do in-depth checks on a fair vote for one job. We didn’t exactly have Fort Knox security. I asked him what he thought he was doing and he just grinned at me with that stupid smug face of his and said he was ‘helping a brother out.’ He said he was going to fix it so I won the job by a landslide. I told him to go screw himself, that I’d tell Ray not to count that day’s votes. But he said he’d just come back and do it again the next day and the day after that and the day after that. He was going to make sure you’d lose, come hell or high water. He didn’t particularly care if I won, he just wanted to make sure you didn’t win.”
I plopped down in my seat, suddenly remembering Kelsey spotting Rowley on the midway just before she’d brought me lunch. He must have skulked around all day until he got the chance to rig the ballot box. Being the ego-driven moron that he was, Rowley wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to do his dirty work for him. He would have relished stuffing the faked ballots into the box himself. And it wouldn’t have occurred to him to shove a few ballots into the box at a time over the course of the day.
Ray hadn’t even counted that first day’s vote, because it didn’t matter after Josh quit. And frankly, I hadn’t really wanted to know the results. I was awarded the job, no questions asked.
“Oh my— Of all the insane, sadistic, creepy, detail-oriented things to do,” I marveled. “And it didn’t occur to you to tell anybody?”
“Rowley was going to find a way to keep you from getting the job,” Josh said. “Even if we forgot about the vote or found some way to make it more secure. He would have found some way around it. So I figured the best way to keep that from happening was to quit right there. If I took myself out of the running, they would give it to you immediately and he would miss his shot.”
I stood and held my hands up as I tried to process everything he had said. To sum up, Rowley was insane. I had the job under false pretenses. And Josh cared about me a little bit more than I’d thought.
“I am trying so hard to decide between kissing you for being all valiant and stoic and trying to protect me, and smacking you for being all valiant and stoic and trying to protect me. You—you considerate asshole! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I hated the fact that Rowley steered me toward the job in the first place to hurt you. Because you wouldn’t have let me walk away. You would have forced me to explain and I just didn’t want you to start off your new job wondering whether you should have it or not. And I couldn’t take that from you. I couldn’t stand the idea of you being unhappy because of me, so I left.”
“And I’m assuming it would be pointless to ask you to come back?”
He stepped closer and I pressed my back against the wall to get away. The space felt
so small and his body took up so much of it. I’d done so well avoiding proximity. But now I could feel the warmth of his skin, breathe in his clean cotton-and-rosewood smell, and my resolve was weakening right along with my knees. I wedged my palm against his chest and pushed him back. His mouth tilted down just a bit at the corners, but he seemed relieved by my reluctance.
I was wrong. This is why you don’t sleep with people you work with.
“Yes, because I’m not good for you. Because I’m still the guy with the bad credit and the shaky job prospects . . . and the former frat buddies hell-bent on making trouble for you. Because it’s better for you if I’m not around the office. You’ll have more control of the staff. There will be no doubt who’s in charge. I won’t be there to distract you.”
“You don’t get to make those decisions for me,” I told him.
“No, but I can make them for myself,” he sniped, stepping around me to go into the kitchen and rummage around the fridge for two more beers.
“Okay, then how do you plan on getting another job? You did quit in a pretty unprofessional fashion in a very public venue. People in our field tend to remember that sort of thing.” Josh shifted uncomfortably, his eyes glued to the floor. I glimpsed the flattened cardboard over his shoulder. That wasn’t backed-up recycling. Those were leftover boxes, the kind you harassed grocery stores into giving you when you were packing up.
“You’re moving?” I exclaimed.
“Well, you said it yourself. This is the sort of thing that will follow me. Ray said he would give me a good recommendation, but I’m probably going to have to move somewhere without connections to here.”
“You were just going to move,” I scoffed, anger surging through my chest until I thought my heart would lurch up through my rib cage like something out of Alien. “You were going to leave and not say anything, about Rowley or any of this. You were going to leave me wondering what I’d done to chase you off, what I’d done wrong.”