Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
“Thank you, Uncle Martin.” Sofie’s face is softer than I’ve ever seen it. “I’m lucky they haven’t kicked me out yet.”
Martin chastises her with a look.
“Well, that Playboy stunt came close.” He chuckles when Sofie at least looks abashed. “Walsh went to bat for you on that score.”
“He’s done that more than once.” Sofie takes another sip of her drink, flipping her chin toward the bartender to signal for another. “Your son has a hero complex, I think.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t get that from me.” Martin waves to someone a few feet away, motioning for him to come over. “I better go. Glad you’re here, Bishop. Enjoy New York.”
“So Playboy, huh?” I ask as soon as we’re alone again.
Sofie meets my eyes as bold as a summer sunrise, shrugging her bare shoulders.
“It was tastefully done. My body, my business.”
Before I can dig into that anymore, a young girl approaches us. Maybe mid-twenties. How am I ever supposed to make any headway with Sofie before the quarterback shows up with so many interruptions? She probably wants to know where Sofie got her shoes.
“Mr. Bishop, hi.” The dark-haired girl wears a shy smile, flicking a nervous glance at Sofie. “Ms. Baston, sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to come thank Mr. Bishop.”
“Thank me?” I eye her more closely. “Have we met?”
“Not exactly. I’m Marlee Simmons,” she says. “I heard you lecture at Columbia a few years ago.”
“Oh, yes.” I return her smile. “I remember that talk.”
“You spoke about inciting incidents in our life and global good and world citizenship.” Marlee’s smile grows wider. “It changed my life. I was a senior about to graduate with a degree in business, but I knew there was something missing. I’d never experienced much to make me passionate about anything, but you said if nothing has incited you, seek it. Position yourself to be impassioned. After your lecture, I graduated and did two years in the Peace Corps.”
“That’s amazing.” I shake my head, still astounded and humbled when people tell me stories like this. “Good for you.”
“I want to spend my life finding ways to leverage my business training for the greater good.” She smiles at Sofie. “I interned with the Walsh Foundation last summer, and I’m helping Ms. Baston with charitable ventures for Haven.”
Sofie deliberately looks away from me to the other partygoers. What’s Haven? How is it connected to charity? What’s Sofie up to?
“Again, sorry to interrupt.” Marlee nods her head toward a table at the rooftop entrance. “I better get back over there, but just wanted to say thank you. You look lovely tonight, Ms. Baston.”
“Thanks, Marlee,” Sofie says with a small smile. “See you tomorrow.”
Marlee leaves behind a silence packed with questions and impressions I need to sort through, but I don’t have enough time. I’m about to ask Sofie about Haven when she surprises me with a question of her own.
“What’s that like?” Her voice is low and clear, free of sarcasm and the snark she usually dishes out. I hear only genuine curiosity.
“What’s what like?”
“To have people see you that way.” A laugh at her own expense slips past Sofie’s lips. “Uncle Martin compared you to Walsh, which for him is the highest compliment he could pay a man, and he talked to me about my Playboy spread. And Marlee, whom I’ve worked with for weeks, gushed that you literally changed the course of her life with one lecture.”
Her unblinking stare rests on my face.
“I’m just wondering how it feels to affect people that way.”
I could spout some self-deprecating drivel, some false modesty, or pull out some trite phrase that would make me seem like it’s old hat to me now, but I don’t. If I want to see what’s going on beneath Sofie’s surface, I have to show her what goes on beneath mine.
“I’ll never get used to it.” I shake my head, sliding my hands into my pockets. “And I always want to check for a hidden camera because I assume Harold’s punking me.”
Sofie smiles, relaxing against the bar. I lean back beside her, waiting for her to say the next thing. To make the next move. I can tell she likes to take the lead, and I guess I can let her take it until she shows me she doesn’t know what to do with it.
“I heard that lecture, you know,” she says so softly I almost miss it in the party conversation going on around us. “The inciting incident, I mean.”
“You heard that?”
I’ve addressed Congress, done TED talks, and spoken before dignitaries and kings from all over the world, but at her words, I’m replaying that lecture in my head, wondering if she thought it was any good.
“I listened to it today.” She looks into her drink instead of at me. “Four of them actually.”
Did she say four? Today? And then it clicks for me—the thing I sensed teeming beneath the surface, the thing she’s hiding from the world. Maybe even from herself.