Page 14 of Unexpected You

“I’m not going to do that either,” I said, sighing. “If I need to get your attention, I’ll send you a message.”

“You’re going to send me a message when we’re in the same room,” she said, as if that was more ridiculous than any of her ways.

“Yes,” I said.

She shrugged and pulled at the end of the croissant with her fingers. “Fair enough.”

There were now croissant crumbs on my office floor.

* * *

She was louder today. Not by much, but definitely noisier. The headphones meant that she hummed more often. A very small part of me wondered what music she listened to. Probably sugary pop songs that you could dance to. Or maybe not. She could have hidden music depths. This young woman was still a stranger to me.

I tried to think of myself at her age and it was all a blur. I’d been at the start of my career, my eyes singularly on the next book. The next bestseller. Movie rights. Banking as much money as I could and then obsessively tracking my spending and constantly checking my bank account to make sure the numbers in it were real. There hadn’t been time or energy for much else.

Cadence obviously had more going on than I had, and that was good. If I could go back, I wouldn’t have changed anything, but I still wondered who I might have been if my circumstances had been different. The years of making bad decisions and going to bars and dating and flirting and just…doing something silly for the hell of it. Who would I have been if I’d had the space for that kind of life?

There was a joyful energy to Cadence that I had never had, even when I was a child. I swallowed around a stab of envy and got back to my emails. It was much nicer to go to my inbox now and find the trash and spam deleted and the rest prioritized for me. Cadence had done that, which was what I’d hired her for. I responded to the most important first, and then worked my way down.

My agent and I were hammering out the contract for another movie, the audiobook had come in for the same book, and my publicist was working on the next set of appearances. I’d need Cadence to book me flights and hotel for those, so I forwarded those details to her in the assistant email box.

She was humming and bopping her head, so whatever she was listening to was a good song. I allowed myself to watch her for a few seconds. Her hair wasn’t as polished today, with little wisps escaping around her face and by her neck. Her outfit today was also less put together. Her pants weren’t perfectly ironed, and her shirt didn’t fit her exactly. Still, I wasn’t going to harass her about it. She’d worn the pumps again today, but I got the feeling that she would feel more comfortable in flats. Or even sneakers. If she got through the week, I’d speak with her about casual shoes.

Writing was a job and I had to treat it that way, so every time I pulled out my computer to write, I put on the kind of outfit I would have worn if I was going to an office. Early on, my clothing had been from the thrift store and most of it hadn’t fit me, but that didn’t matter. It could be three in the morning and I put on a blazer with shoulder pads and used shoes and typed on my laptop in my dorm room. My roommates had mocked me, but I hadn’t cared.

Cadence was so focused on her work that I had to send her a message when it was lunch. I tried not to order delivery every day of the week, so today I was going to make sandwiches.

She followed me into the kitchen and offered to help, but I waved her off.

“Eventually I’ll trust you with my meals, but we’re not there yet,” I said, and I watched her jaw clench for a second. “What would you like?”

I was a big fan of sandwiches, so I always kept tons of supplies on hand.

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she said, and I could tell that she was trying to be easygoing, but that didn’t really work.

I made up my own turkey sandwich with bacon, Havarti, avocado, tomato, and a sun-dried tomato mayo. I turned to her and held up two bags of bread.

“Which one?” I asked. She pointed to the sourdough.

“Turkey, ham, salami, bacon? None of the above?” She’d had fish yesterday, but maybe she was a pescatarian.

I assembled her sandwich and hers was nearly identical to mine.

“Halves or triangles?” I asked her before I cut it.

She raised both eyebrows. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” I told her, surprised that she didn’t know. “It absolutely matters.”

“Okay then, do whatever you did for yours and then tomorrow do the opposite and I’ll compare them.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It was entirely logical.

I cut her sandwich on the diagonal and presented her with the plate.

“You really don’t have to feed me,” she said.

“Consider it a perk,” I said.