All my hope drains as fast as a bucket with a giant hole in the bottom. “What did you expect me to do? Pretend the mistake was on our end?” I ask. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to sell out my assistant like that. She’s given my family nearly five decades of her life. The least I can give back is loyalty. Besides, the errorwason your end. You handed an important task to your sister, whom you knew you couldn’t trust. You should have checked to make sure she completed it.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” she grinds out. “Obviously I do. Weallknew it was my fault, but you didn’t have to actuallytellmy bosses I’m not ready to manage staff.”
Oh Theo, you really stepped in it this time.“You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I only meant to get Carolina to back off.”
“Yeah well, your clumsy attempt at helping totally backfired, and now I’m back where I started.” She waves at me. “But I don’t expect you to understand that since you’ve never had to prove yourself.”
“That’s not true,” I tell her.
“Yes, it is. And here’s a fun fact for you: Ninety-nine percent of people in the world don’t have billion-dollar corporations handed to them. They have to work really fucking hard to get ahead. You may work tostayat the top, but it’s a hell of a lot easier when you start out there than to get there in the first place.”
“That’s not fair,” I tell her, righteous indignation replacing my earlier feelings of romance. “I constantly have to prove myself to the board of directors. If I don’t perform, they will fire me, as they should.”
Scoffing, Nora says, “Oh yeah, I’m sure you live in constant fear of that for a job you don’t even want.”
My face heats up and I immediately regret telling her my secret. “Of course I don’t want to get fired. That would mean I’ve let down my employees, which is the last thing I’d do. Now, I know you’re upset, but you haven’t been fired. You still have your job.”
Nora rolls her eyes at me. “And thanks to you, I’m going to be stuck where I’ve been for years. Maybe forever, for all I know.”
She lets out a huff and turns to face the set. My attention shifts in that direction, and I see Carolina watching us. As annoyed as I am at her lobbing accusations at me, I force myself to calm down. She may be angry right now, but it’s no reason to throw away what we’ve got. And this is my last chance to salvage things. “You don’t have to stay stuck, you know. There are plenty of opportunities for someone like you.”
“You don’t get it, do you? Everything is so bloody easy for you that you think everyone else can snap their fingers and make their dreams come true. But that’s not how it is in the real world.”
“I’m not saying it would be easy, but—”
“You know what, Theo? Do us both a favour. You stay in your world, I’ll stay in mine, and we’ll call it a day.”
“Nora, please,” I say, in one last ditch effort. “I’m afraid you’re letting your disappointment about what happened today get in the way of something that could potentially be really wonderful.”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m not. Trust me. I don’t know why I allowed things to go… wherever they went. I knew better the moment Paz told me about what happened between the two of you. For some stupid reason, I was willing to give you a second chance, and yes, maybe you displayed some moments of humanity, but that’s all they were. Moments. You speak about loyalty as if you know what it means, but you don’t.” Taking a deep breath, she raises her voice, “Guess what, Theo? I’m not here to make you a better man. That’s not someserviceI provide to billionaires who decide to go on a self-improvement journey. So, you know what? Just goimproveyourself!”
“CUT!” Vincent yells.
Nora and I both start and look up, only to see him staring back at us. Holding the bullhorn to his mouth, Vincent says, “If you two could keep your lovers’ quarrel down a little, that would be super helpful. You just wrecked a perfect television moment!”
A deafening silence fills the air. Not even the birds dare to make a peep. All eyes are aimed directly at us. The only person who seems to find the situation remotely amusing is that ridiculous Mike the Moose guy, who is behind the middle bar shaking a cocktail mixer with a wide grin. The other two competitors flanking him, however, are glaring. MacClary, the Ginger Beast, shakes his head while Binna Chu looks like a tiny middle-aged assassin, brandishing a knife in one hand and squeezing a mango so hard with her other one that it leaks all over the bar top.
Wonderful. Not only am I striking out worse than I ever have in my life, I also have an audience to my humiliation.
Nora stage whispers, “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Vincent is both sarcastic and dramatic in his reply. “Thanks.”
She stands next to me, pale with anger, whereas I am hot with shame. Nora isn’t in love with me. She thinks I’m an entitled jerk. How could I have been so wrong about us? In a low voice, I say, “Please forget I said anything about my feelings. Clearly I mistook your kindness for something more. I apologize for wasting your time. I assure you I won’t do it again.”
She opens her mouth, but I walk away before she can get in one last shot.
I stop when I’m directly behind the tent where the crew is set up. I shake with emotion as I scramble to figure out what the fuck just happened. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully comprehend why she’s gone back to hating me again, but one thing she said is true: it makes no difference, because none of it matters.Idon’t matter to her. Nora Cooper and I clearly are not meant to be. I’ll have to chalk up my attraction to some sort of early midlife crisis and move on.
But the truth is, it doesn’t feel like nothing. It feels like everything that means anything is slipping through my fingers, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
27
From Bad to So, So, So Much Worse
Nora
“Nora, you are a star,”Vincent tells me, hurrying over with a martini glass in each hand. He’s absolutely thrilled that the show has wrapped and filming went off without a hitch.
