“Okay, but…” Zoe says cautiously, and I already know I’m not going to like what I’m going to hear.“Have you called him?”
“No,” I say, taking off my glasses to wipe them on my shirt. I appreciate, for a few seconds, that the world goes blurry around me.
“Maybe you should call him. Let him explain.”
“Let him explain that he basically used me? That he’s been sleeping with me and telling me he’s not involved with my recruitment anymore? While he’s—I don’t know what. Gathering information he can use against me?”
“Kit,” Greer says.“It doesn’t seem that way.”
“How does it seem?” I ask, putting my glasses back on, looking back and forth between them.“Explain how I should take this a different way.”
“No,” Greer says, dropping her eyes.“You’re right. It does seem lousy. I just…it’s terrible. You seem to like him so much.”
Ilovehim, I think, and just as quickly, I think,thank God I didn’t say it back.
“I’m not defending him, Kit,” says Zoe.“But it’s worth talking to him. Corporate stuff—it’s complicated, fast-moving. This might not be him. Or if it is him, it might’ve gone a different way than he intended.”
I shake my head, unwilling or unable to see how to reinterpret this. I feel soupended.That’s the best way I can describe it. I feel like I’m going to wake up tomorrow and everything, once again, will be different. Everything will be new and I’ll have to relearn things, meet new people, steel myself all over again. It doesn’t matter if that’s not what’s really happening—it’s how Ifeel.
My phone rings from my purse, and I ignore it, my doing so another implicit answer to Zoe’s suggestion. I can sense them looking at each other as it rings, waiting, but I concentrate on sipping my tea. It would be good to go back to the collective indignation stage—that part at least seemed to stem the surge of tears I keep feeling welling up in my throat, behind my eyes. It’s not that I’m never going to speak to Ben again. Obviously, at some point, I’m going to have to be an adult and find out what the fuck happened between him telling me he loved me and him selling me out to his fucking horrible company. But I don’t have to make it easy on him, either. I don’t have to talk to him now, when I’m weepy and freshly devastated.
The phone goes quiet, but only for the barest of seconds before it starts ringing again, and it’s twice more that way before Greer finally slides off her stool and goes over to my purse, pulling it out to silence it. But she must look down at the screen before she does, because she says quietly,“Oh. It’s your brother.”
I haven’t talked to Alex since he left a few weeks back, aside from a few brief emails, him letting me know when he got back to the States, nothing about our fight. I’d wanted to give him time, space—to be on his own, the way he’d said he’d wanted. And I’d been wrapped up in Ben too, the happiness and excitement I’d felt about being with him dulling what I know, at any other time, would be a lot of pain and grief over what Alex had said during our argument. But Alex calling me this many times in a row, it sends a current of fear through my already overloaded system, and I’m off my chair headed to take the phone from where Greer holds it out to me.
I don’t even get out a hello before Alex says,“Kit. I’ve got bad news.”
Barely three hours later, I’m on a plane.
Chapter 18
Ben
I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing, and it takes me a minute to register where I am—on Dad’s couch, the remote on my stomach. The trip out and back to North Carolina was a slog, even though I’d made some good purchases of building materials—high quality, high resale value, and good for this time of year. But I’d spent extra time sorting transit for it all, and everything had been made worse by the flat tire I got out on one of the backroads I’d used to get to the highway more quickly. I’d finally come in around nine, Dad watching a ballgame on TV, and muttered about needing a few minutes to sit down, but I guess that had turned into a full night of sleep. I jerk to a sitting position and look around, panicked. Did Dad get ready for bed on his own? Did I miss Kit’s call?
“Kit?” I say as I pick up, standing to check Dad’s room.
“It’s Jasper.” I cross the living room again, peek into the kitchen. Dad’s there, at the kitchen table, sipping a mug of coffee, which he tips to me in greeting, and I breathe out a sigh of relief. He must’ve got himself ready for bed, got up on his own, made his own coffee—it’s huge progress, and I should feel happy, but something in me, again, feels a bit bereft.“You there?”
“Yeah,” I say, scrubbing a hand over my face.“Sorry. I overslept.”
“You know anything about what’s holding up Averin’s decision?”
“What?” I say, confused. My brain still feels sludgy, sleep-deprived, unprepared for Jasper’s work-ready attitude.“What decision?”
“Singh called me this morning to tell me he’ll need a couple weeks before he can give me an answer.”
Something goes cold inside me. But it’s been a rough couple of days. I must be missing something.“Singh?” I repeat.“Jasper. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jesus, I thought you were involved with this woman. She hasn’t told you?” It’s that cold feeling again—I say nothing, waiting for him to go on.“I went to Singh, Averin’s boss. We offered project funding for three years, some equipment too.”
I have to lean against the doorjamb to keep my legs holding me up.
“Told him we wanted her to come work for us, that she could stay involved in the research he’d do for Beaumont, regular travel back, all that. This guy, he needs the money. He’s running last in his department for external grants. It’s a good offer.”
“Jasper,” I say slowly, my brain trying to catch up.“You tried to get Singh to trade Kit?”
“Yeah.”
