Page 14 of My Girl to Take

“Coffee?”

“Yes.”

I don’t say anything as I grab two pods from the box and make two cups. I don’t ask if she wants anything in it—I don’t have any milk or sugar anyway.

She takes it like something to hold onto rather than something to drink.

“Garth asked you to take over the company,” she finally says.

“He asked. I said no.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t come here for that.” I come back around and set my cup down. “I came to see him. That’s it.”

“But the company—”

“Will survive.”

“It won’t. Not like this.”

That stops me. She’s got her chin up, and she’s meeting my eyes. There’s nothing rehearsed in it, which is the thing about her I keep failing to be ready for.

“There’s no one leading,” she says. “Decisions are delayed. People are unsure. It’s already starting to show.”

“And you? Where do you fit into that?”

“I do what I can. But I’m not in charge. I don’t want to be.”

“You don’t want it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She hesitates, then says, “Because it was never mine.”

I wait.

“He always talked about you,” she says, quieter. “About finding you. About giving it back to you one day.”

Talked about me. Present tense, presumably. Seventeen years of a man saying his son’s name into a room with nobody in it.

“There’s an office on the fourth floor,” she adds. “End of the corridor. It’s been empty since before I started. There’s a desk in it under a sheet that nobody has ever sat at. Nobody’s allowed to put anyone in there, and in all these years, no one has told me why.” She looks up. “I worked it out eventually.”

I don’t say anything because something is happening in my chest I’m not prepared to deal with right now—especially in front of her.

“I don’t want to take that from you,” she finishes.

“You’re asking me to step into something I walked away from.”

“I’m asking you to help him,” she corrects.

The room is very quiet. She’s sitting on a borrowed couch in a borrowed apartment holding a coffee she hasn’t touched, and she has just described a room that has been kept for me since I was seventeen years old.

“Fine,” I say.

Her head comes up. “Really?”