“Don’t you need them for your own flights?”
“Why? Where am I going? Nowhere, that’s where!”
I’m starting to sound like a peppy travel agent, but I don’t care. I am not letting this opportunity slip through my fingers.
“We can do it the same dates you were already planning,” I tell her. “I’ll look up reward flights right now.”
“I should talk it over with Dan…”
“One weekend,” I plead with her. I feel it in the marrow of my bones: if I can just get her to New York, I can turn the tide and convince her to call off this wedding for good. “Please.I really want us to spend some time together. It’s been ages.”
I didn’t intend to sound so desperate, and I know she’s clocked my tone.
“Fine,” she says eventually. “If you can get a reward flight, I’min.”
Eleven
Connor wants me there bright and early on Thursday for a breakfast meeting with my new team. Which I absolutely would have been on time for, if my fucking keycard wasn’t deactivated again.
This time, I calmly make my way over to the security desk and wait until I can explain the problem. I’m informed that unfortunately I will need a new keycard, which it is not in their power to give me, since I am unauthorized. I will need to take this up with the reception desk at Taskio on the twenty-first floor. Which I can’t access. Because I don’t have a working keycard.
I am now ten minutes late for my breakfast meeting.
The security guard, sensing that my mood is turning, suggests I check in as a visitor, so that my manager will receive a notification letting them know I’ve arrived.
“Could you please let Connor Reid know Annie Winstead is here to see him,” I say through gritted teeth.
I then submit to having my photo taken on a small, badly placed webcam. It gets printed out in grainy black and white, then clipped onto a garish yellow lanyard with the wordVISITORstitched across it in lettering so chunky it could be seen from outer space.
I wait for Connor. He doesn’t come. After another ten minutes I ask the security desk to email him a second time.
When he finally does appear, I am seething.
“Wow, late on your first day, huh?” he says when he sees me. I am too annoyed to do anything but glower athim.
The security guard buzzes me through the barrier. Connor sweeps me into the elevator and upstairs.
“The guys are up in the Scratch Kitchen,” he says.
“Mmm.” Inod.
Here’s the thing I don’t get. Did he not evennoticeI was late? I was supposed to be here twenty minutesago.
“After that we’ll go and sort out your keycard.”
I give him a halfhearted thumbs-up.
Where did he think I was, exactly? I’m over twenty minutes late and he didn’t so much aswonderwhat had happened tome?
I could have fallen into a sinkhole for all he knew. And that’s where I’d still be, with ratscrawling all over me,probably eating me for breakfast, because my new boss didn’t evenrealizeI wasn’t there. On my firstday!
“Can I just say,” Connor says, leaning in close. “That. Is a very fetching lanyard.”
I look down at the stupid yellow visitor necklace.
He’s making fun of me. I KNOW he’s making fun of me. His eyes are twinkling at me, willing me not to sulk, but to laugh with him instead. I won’t do it! I bite down on the inside of my lip, hard. I refuse to let him charmme.
He seems satisfied with this, chuckling under his breath as he straightens.
