She’s studying me. I can practically see the calculations running behind her eyes—the risk, the logistics, the fact that letting me into her childhood home is a different kind of intimacy than letting me read her eulogy. One is public. The other is closets full of old photographs and rooms where shegrew up and the particular vulnerability of showing someone the place where you became yourself.
“Why?” she asks. Not confrontational. Genuinely curious. “Why are you so insistent on being a part of my life?”
I point at her. “I promise you, when I figure that out, you’ll be the first to know. All that matters is right now,I do…want to be a part of this. I want to help.”
The office is quiet. Through the glass walls, the forty-seventh floor continues its choreography—designers moving, machines humming, Margot presumably googling “how to operate a Google calendar.” But in here, it’s just us and the Rolex on the desk and the question of what happens next.
“I’d pay you,” Celeste says. “For the work. Contractor rates.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I’m not going to let you renovate my house for free. This isn’t a favor. It’s a job. You’ll be compensated, and we’ll keep it strictly professional.”
“Professional. Right. Like the funeral.”
“The funeralwasprofessional.”
“I mean…we did sleep together.”
Her face flushes and she looks around the office as if there’s anyone besides the faceless mannequin to hear us. “We did not.”
“You fell asleep on my shoulder watchingClueless.”
“That’s not sleeping together.”
I blink at her. “We slept. We were together. What part of this are you struggling with?” It takes Herculean effort to keep my smirk from breaking free.
“Saylor, I want to make something clear.”
I roll my wrist, gesturing for her to continue.
“My divorce was really hard on me. And unfortunately, Greg and I can’t seem to escape each other’s orbits. I’ll admit, Rina and her agency helped me feel less like a loser. That’s why I brought Forrest to a few weddings and ceremonies. That’s why Ibrought you to the funeral. I’m not proud of it; it was a survival mechanism. But I’m knocking on the door of forty, okay? A hot and heavy romance with a guy that’s way too young for me is not a destination, it’d only be a detour. And I don’t have time for detours. So when I say professional,I mean it.”
I let the silence do its dance, too afraid to disturb the thick tension growing between us. I love the way she’s staring at me like she wants me to look away first. To prove I see her truth and understand it. But I don’t. “So what I’m hearing is you think our romance would be hot and heavy?”
“Saylor,” she snaps.
I grin. She doesn’t—but she wants to. I can see it in the fault line forming at the corner of her mouth, the tremor before the quake.
“Fine,” I say. “Contractor rates. Pay me whatever you like. I’ll start this very weekend if you give me the address and a key.”
She sighs. “I’ll drive you out there tomorrow morning. You’ll need to see what you’re working with before you commit. I have an early Zoom meeting I have to take from my office. Can you meet me here right after, at ten?” She slides her glasses off and sets them on the desk, and without them her face is the one I remember from the couch—open, unshielded, the version of Celeste that exists after all that pretty armor comes off. “And Saylor?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll have a badge made for you, in case you plan on breaking into my office again. Please scan in properly and don’t sneak past my security.”
I look at her—glasses off, arms uncrossed now, sitting on the edge of her desk in her corner office forty-seven floors above a city full of people who would kill for five minutes of her attention. And I think about telling her exactly what’s going through my mind.This feels big. Earth-shattering big. Like ameteor crashing into a planet. The entire ecosystem of our lives is about to change. I can feel it.
But she’s not ready for that. And maybe I’m not ready to say it in a glass office where anyone walking by could see the moment it lands.
“Yes ma’am.”
She reaches across the desk to snag a simple black business card with the Celeste logo on it. “This has my cell and my office number if you need anything.” She points to the watch box. “Don’t forget the watch.”
“Nope. Leaving it. I will take this though.” I snag the green smoothie. The condensation racing down the thin, plastic cup instantly soaks my hand.
“Gen Zs,” she mutters under her breath. “Obsessed with drinking your vegetables.”
