Caroline tightened the corner of her mouth and highlighted the name of the firm in red. She propped her chin in her hand and stared disconsolately at the screen.
“I don’t know which of these is any better,” she mumbled. “Nobody in my family’s ever worked outside of Templeton. Maybe these jobsallsuck.”
Scanning the list of names, Adrian thought that was a strong possibility.
“What do you actuallywantto do?”
“I—I wish I had a better idea. I applied to the schools that recruited me for tennis, but I only got a full scholarshipat Central Texas Baptist, so I had to go there. And now I’m here, but maybe it’s already too late to do the things the other students here are doing? I thought I’d get here and the world would open up for me.” She blew a stray lock of hair off her face in a long hiss of annoyance. “Maybe I should just become a pastry chef. I can’t get my choux to puff yet, but I’m trying éclairs tomorrow.”
“All right...?” Adrian didn’t see how a career in French pastry was any less of an option for her than investing other people’s money.
“I was joking,” Caroline said quickly, but the way she looked at him out of the corner of her eye made him think she’d been waiting for his reaction but didn’t know how to process the one he’d given her.
Adrian did his best to keep his tone sympathetic to how stressed she looked.
“Caroline, you’re twenty-two—”
“Twenty-three.”
“And in your first semester of business school. You don’t have to figure it out now. You don’t have to figure it outever.”
She sighed. “Just because I’ve got this money, right?”
Yeswas not the answer she was looking for, but he didn’t want to lie to her. He didn’t know anything about career options for business school students beyond what he’d observed during the dissolution of Rose and Tom’s marriage. And God only knew he was the last person to offer gauzy reassurances on figuring out her life as she went. But Caroline was always going to have more choices if she didn’t have to worry about funding them.
“It can’t hurt.”
Her chest moved mirthlessly, then she wiped her fingers across her eyelids to rub away the fatigue there.
“This probably sounds obnoxious to you. I mean, poor me.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Adrian said. “It’s your life.”
Her lips were still pressed together, like she didn’t believe him.
“So, what did you come over here for?” she asked, changing the subject, even though she was the one who wouldn’t be expected at his roommate’s restaurant.
“I told Tom I’d touch up the mural in the banquet room,” he said. He was now very suspicious for having still not seen the man for more than a moment.
“Oh, the party’s in there,” Caroline said, glancing at the shut door. “I think it was supposed to be over by now, but they’re still ordering drinks.”
“I suppose they’re having a good time.”
“I wouldn’t really know,” Caroline said in a morose tone of voice, wincing at her own words. “Should we wait it out?”
“I’ll go check with Tom,” Adrian promised. He tapped the top of Caroline’s laptop screen. “Maybe work on something else tonight?”
She nodded slowly. “I found a list of Botticellis yesterday,” she said, looking up through blond eyelashes, expression still uncertain. “I’ll start cross-referencing them with major cities so that we can get tickets soon.”
Adrian had still not completely accepted the trip to Europe as a thing that would actually occur in his life, but he patted her shoulder and went off to find his roommate, not caring if he was still skulking in the kitchen. He eventually discovered Tom smoking in the alley out back with a couple of the dishwashers.
Tom braced like he expected Adrian to chew him outfor meeting up with Caroline again, but Adrian did nothing more than lift his hands in mute question.
“She called me,” Tom said defensively. “It sounded like she’d had a rough day, so I told her to come over here. I thought we could run lines before auditions this weekend, but those assholes in the banquet room are still ordering drinks every fifteen minutes even though they were supposed to be out by eight.”
“Isn’t ordering drinks a good thing?” Adrian asked.
“No. They’re not tipping.”
