She shrugged. “You got to punch Lee, didn’t you?”
She had a point.
So, the next morning, while I nursed a hangover and ate congealed oatmeal, I wrote a reply email.
Mr. Andor,
It was a pleasure. Though I do have something for you. Do you think we could set up a meeting?
Sincerely,
Florence Day
Miss Day,
Would this Friday work, at noon?
Best,
Benji
Mr. Andor,
Noon would be lovely.
With all my best,
Florence
And that was that.
I second-guessed my email the entire week. Waslovelytoo strong a word? Should I have signed it Miss Day? Should I have addressed him as Benji instead of Mr. Andor? Rose told me that Wednesday that if I spiraled any more, I’d drill myself to the center of the earth.
So I tried to spiral morequietly.
I think I might’ve had a full-on panic attack if it weren’t for having to finalize plans for Carver and Nicki’s wedding that weekend. Right after the meeting with Ben on Friday, I was to take a taxi to Newark and hop on a plane home for their wedding on Saturday. Friday was the rehearsal dinner and bachelor parties, and as the big sister who did absolutelynothingto help with the wedding while I was in the deadline trenches, I had to at least show up for those. I reserved my room at the inn (to John and Dana’s pure ecstatic joy), and walked Mom through the whiplash of “I’m so happy!” and “My baby’s all grown up and leaving the mortuary!”andI managed to talk Rose into coming with me purely because I was the best eldest sister in the entire world and I knew for a fact that Alice wouldneverask her. She was bold at doing absolutely everything, except when it came to her own happiness.
I guess it ran in the family.
So I gave myself a little leniency when I realized that I hadn’t brought any sort ofWelcome Back!orGlad You Lived!card to go with Ben’s gift until I was already in the elevator going up to Falcon House Publishers. I bounced on my heels, quite unable to stop moving.
“Beautiful day,” I commented to a man sweating through his Armani suit. He grunted and patted his forehead.
It was summer in the city, and the men in the elevator looked like they were about to sweat to death in their ironed business suits, the women in flouncy skirts and kitten heels.
And I was in what I felt best in, an oversized blouse and straight-leg jeans with a hole in the left knee, and red Converses. I didn’t look like I fit in here, but looks were deceiving, and best of all?
I didn’t really care anymore. It didn’t matter. What mattered was where I was going.
I wasn’t scared of the looming floor number that we rose to meet. Executive editor Benji Andor had been back in the office for a little less than a month, though I was beginning to suspect he had done more than a little work from home before that. He apparently still had a lot of catching up to do, from what Erin told Rose. Then again, when did editorsnothave a lot of catch-up work to do? As long as I’d known Lee, he’d beenmajesticallybehind on every deadline. But I had a feeling that, unlike Lee, Ben actually wanted to catch up—but then why would he agree to entertain a meeting with me?
I was nervous. What if he thought I was some sort of weirdo who wanted to give him his favorite book? Couldn’t be any worse than a weirdo giving him a cactus, I guessed.
Because ithadbeen three months, and I wasn’t going to lie, quite a few of those nights I spent drowning in a bottle of wine, wondering what happened with Laura. Wondering if she stayed. If he wanted her to. If they decided to try anew.
I was alone by the time the elevator stopped at the floor for Falcon House Publishers, and I stepped out into the clean white lobby. The glass-cased bookshelves looked exactly the same. Ann Nichols’s bestsellers sat on a shelf all to themselves, and the glassreflected me, freckled cheeks and dry lips and messy blond hair pinned up into twin buns.
Erin was reading a book as I came up to the front desk, but she quickly put a sticky note on the page and closed it.When the Dead Singby Lee Marlow.