“Your penthouse keys. I’m planning our first date tonight and I need access to your place. Your other place. Actually, now that we’re on the subject, how many places do you have?”
She relaxes back into the Celeste I recognize, shimmying down her skirt, then crossing her arms, looking almost presentable. “In this country or worldwide?”
“Geez,” I mutter. “Point made.”
“Does my money bother you? Do you think I’m spoiled?”
I shake my head. “No. I just feel bad. Maybe I’m a little old-school, but I feel like a gentleman should pick up the check. But I’ll never be able to afford the meals you order.”
“Well it’s a good thing your cooking beats every Michelin-star restaurant I’ve ever eaten in.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t patronize me.” I chuckle softly, playing it off as a joke. But truly…I wish she wouldn’t pity me. How can she see anything real with a man she can’t respect?
“Everybody has money problems, just the scale is different. But fundamentally, you and I see wealth the same way. Saylor, I had a man who bought me expensive things and took me to fancy places. But he never made me happy. I want a man who can find happiness outside of wealth.”
“I’ve mastered the ‘outside of wealth’ part. I’m working on the happiness part. Is that okay? Am I still a contender?”
“Saylor, you’re the only contender.” I wish I could hold the smile she gives in my pocket forever. It’s sweet and girlish. A smile that should be dried and pressed, preserving a perfect moment forever. “So a date,” she repeats, in the voice of a woman whose operating system is rebooting in real time. “Tonight.”
“Tonight. Dress code is whatever you’d wear to a sleepover in college. I’ll handle everything else.” I hold out my hand. “Keys.”
She stares at my hand. Stares at my face. Stares at my back pocket where her lace is visible above the denim.
“The gold one is the front door,” she says, reaching into her purse with hands that haven’t fully steadied. “Silver is the elevator override. Alarm code is one-two-three-four.”
“Celeste when you’ve finished the line, and everything has settled with the custody care, you know…when life feels less heavy…”
“Yeah?” she asks. “Then what?”
“We are going through your passwords and passcodes one by one and changing them into something a five-year-old can’t hack.”
She’s laughing as I take her keys. Kiss her forehead, which feels almost comically chaste given what just happened three feet south of that forehead.
I’m at the door when she calls me back.
“Saylor.”
I turn back. She’s standing by her chair, skirt slightly crooked, hair thoroughly destroyed, the silk sash pooled in her lap like a piece of evidence at a crime scene. She looks like a woman who just experienced something she’ll replay in her head for the rest of the day and possibly longer.
“Tonight… Whatever you’re planning, it better be good. I promised myself if I ever fell in love again, I’d make sure it was worthwhile. I’d ask for things that I never asked for in the past—fierce loyalty, kindness, soft but strong hands. I’m not going to settle this time. So…bring the magic, okay?”
I salute her. “You’ve got it, Mrs. Robinson. Magic at six o’clock tonight.”
She grimaces. “Seven. I still have a lot of work here to do.”
“Seven it is.” I nod. “But don’t be late.”
I walk out of her office. Past Margot’s empty desk. Past the open floor plan where thirty-some employees are having a perfectly ordinary Friday afternoon with no idea what just happened behind those privacy blinds. Past the hallway where Greg Prescott told me I didn’t belong.
I press the lift button. The doors open. The mirrored walls show me three versions of myself, and in every single one I’m a man with a woman’s keys in his hand and her underwear in his pocket and the absolute, unshakable certainty that Greg Prescott has no fucking idea where I belong.
chapter 17
Celeste
I have been useless since two o’clock.
Not creatively useless, which has been my default setting this week. Functionally useless. A woman sitting in a corner office of a building with her name on it, staring at fabric swatches she cannot see because her brain has been wiped clean by a twenty-six-year-old Australian who walked into her office, blindfolded her with her own work in progress, and performed an act on his knees that should be classified as both a workplace violation and a public service.
