Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
He lifts a shoulder. “It depends on the day. The quarter. There are performance reviews, as you’ve said, which for us, take a lot longer than the actual review itself. You’re copied in on just about every email, which, with a team of eleven, means I basically live in my inbox. You handle disagreements, frustrations. You field requests from other departments who want to make demands on your team’s time to save their own. You sit through a lot of conference calls in which your attendance is required, but not your opinion.”
“So, it’s exactly what you wanted to be when you grew up?”
He laughs, and it’s a nice laugh. Low and surprised. “Yeah. Sure.”
“What did you want to be when you grew up?”
“You first.”
“Easy,” I say without hesitating. “Rock star. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“I had backup plans though,” I say. “I’m very reasonable like that. If the rock star thing didn’t work out, I was going to be in the NBA. Not WNBA, mind you. NBA. I was quite clear on that distinction.”
He tilts his head. “How tall are you?”
“Five two. Why do you ask?” I say, twirling my hair.
Thomas smiles. “No reason. Continue.”
“Right, so rock star, then pro basketball. Let’s see what else was on the list? Manicurist, though only if science invented nail polish that dried instantly. Oh, and I wanted to be Secretary of State for a while.”
“That’s specific . . .”
“President would have been way too much pressure,” I continue. “Oh! I wanted to be a lobsterman for a while. My mom dated a guy who took us to Maine to visit his family. I tasted my first lobster roll, went to heaven, and decided to go straight to the source.”
I think some more. “Okay, I think that’s my complete list.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Your turn,” I persist.
Thomas’s smile is a little sad. “You put me to shame. I can’t remember what I wanted to be. I don’t know that I wanted to be anything.”
I see now, why his smile was sad. Because it is sad.
“Maybe you just haven’t figured it out yet,” I say gently. “Or maybe, you know . . . this is it.” I gesture at his desk and computer set-up.
“Hmm. Maybe.” He looks out the window beyond my shoulder for a moment. “I just realized, somewhere over the years, we’ve switched roles.”
“How so?”
He looks back at me. “You were the one with the plan as a child. I had none. Now I plan everything, and you . . .”
“Wing it,” I finish for him. “So, if you plan everything, what’s next for you, career-wise?”
“I move up. I was a manager. Now I’m a senior manager. Next, I’ll be a director. Then senior director. And so on.”
Yuck. Still, different strokes and all that . . .
“Well, now see,” I say, with encouragement, because my awful doesn’t have to be his awful. “You do know what you want!”
“I didn’t say I knew what I wanted. Just that I had a plan.”
“Okay, I’m confused. Aren’t those the same things?”
He frowns and looks away. “No. No, apparently they are not.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Monday Night, September 26
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Collette’s a bridezilla, but she is Collette, which means when she turns her attention to something big, like say, her wedding, it takes up 100 percent of her focus.
Which is why I’ve been trying to buffer her from my latest drama, but I can’t take it anymore. I need my best friend to weigh in on the Thomas thing. And so I finally fill Collette in on every last painful detail of the Thomas–Mac saga.
“Oh my god, so he actually saw as you rejected him?” Collette’s eyes are wide, her expression half-fascinated, half-horrified.
“Yup.” I take a huge bite of lasagna and wash it down with a sip of chianti. “He had a front row seat.”
Collette is shaking her head as she adds another heap of salad to her plate. She’s healthy like that. “Okay, that’s one of those things that only happens in movies.”
“Right? Horror movies,” I clarify. “Especially when you factor in the fact that I saw him again, not once, but twice, in two different contexts.”
“Well. At least he didn’t turn out to be some asshole,” my best friend says.
I give her a dark look.
“What! Thomas is a totally nice guy.”
“You have to say that. He’s going to be your brother-in-law.”
“True, but he really is sweet. He’s like a slightly shyer version of Jon.”
“Who’s shyer than me?” Collette’s fiancé asks, coming out of the bathroom, hair still damp from his post-workout shower.
He drops on the couch beside Collette and helps himself to a crouton from her plate, and she kisses his cheek.
It’s a spontaneous, domestic kind of moment and I unabashedly study it as I lick tomato sauce off my fork. I’ve never wanted that kind of comfortable familiarity. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, it just hasn’t really appealed. When it comes to spending time with guys, I’m more of a “Let’s have a good time, the wilder the better, then retreat back to our respective lives” kind of gal.