Page 44 of The Plus-One Deal
I could tell Claire wanted to jump up and down, maybe clap and cheer and do a victory lap. But she managed to stick to a restrained “That’s great news.” She and Verity shook hands again, and then they hugged. Then Verity went off to rejoin Ken, and we hurried to catch our car, coffee forgotten.
In the back of the limo, I thought of last night again, of what it had meant and what it could never mean. Regret made my throat clench, and I swallowed to clear it. I turned to Claire.
“So, with us heading back?—”
Her phone chirped in her lap. She frowned at it. “I’m sorry. A minor crisis…” She picked up the call and I practically saw it, the moment vacation-Claire turned to work-Claire. It was like a switch flipped in her head and she was already home. Already neck-deep in her day-to-day business. A cold chill ran through me at how fast she did it, how easily she dismissed me to get back to work. How easily I would’ve done just the same.
On the plane, I sat up front with Claire, the passengers we’d brought on further in back. The air crew had put up a partition, shutting us into our own private section, but we could still hear them through the thin screen. Their actual conversations were too muffled to hear, but a thin drone came through, and odd spikes of laughter. Claire got out her laptop and dove into work. I did the same, but after a while, I couldn’t stand it.
“Claire, I was thinking?—”
This time, it was my phone that cut me off mid-thought. I went to silence it, then saw it was Joe.
“Sorry. Hold on.” I took the call. “Joe?”
“Your two-o’clock’s stuck at O’Hare. He’s wanting to come in first thing tomorrow.”
“No way,” I said. “What’s he doing in Chicago? No, never mind that. Tell him no way. He had every chance to close this before I flew out. Tell him I’m booked through the next three weeks. He can join via video call in if he needs to, but the meeting’s today.”
“Are you sure? With that lawyer of his, he could claim duress. Scuttle the whole deal, even after you’ve signed it.”
“Duress?Duress?Asking him for a video call?” I took a deep breath, but the air felt too thin. “Listen, let me talk to him. I’ll call you back.” I hung up and looked to Claire for sympathy, but she seemed absorbed in her own conundrum. She didn’t look up as I scrolled through my contacts.
Three hours later, we were circling New York. Claire slammed her laptop shut and leaned back in her chair. She closed her eyes, then opened them and peered out the window.
“How long now?”
“I’d say twenty minutes.” I thumbed my phone off and tucked it away. “Listen, Claire, about when we get home…”
She looked at me flatly, still stuck in work mode. I smiled at her, hoping to break her out. I didn’t want this to go like some business deal, some thanks-but-no-thanks on an awkward merger.
“I’ll miss those sunsets,” I said.
“You have that roof garden at Constel. That reflecting pool. I’d love to watch the sun set through all those leaves. The reflection on the water should be chef’s kiss.” She did an actual chef’s kiss, but her smile was all surface. I hadn’t broken through to her. I tried again.
“It’s not the same, though, as out on the beach. Kicking your shoes off. The sand in your toes.”
She softened at that, and wiggled her own toes. “Thoseweresome nice sunsets.”
“And sunrises too.”
“Verity’s texted already to set a meeting.”
I steered her away from that, back to the beach. “Do you still have that picture of me as a merman?”
Her whole face lit up with surprised delight. “I’mneverdeleting that. That was amazing. You actually let them bury your legs.”
“Yeah, I might not have if I knew there were bugs in there. One of them bit me between my toes.” I leaned forward and reached for Claire’s hands. “No, I had a great time. Bug bites and all. But with us heading back, I was thinking, uh…”
“What?”
I tried to think back to the depths of last night, the speech I’d prepared while Claire lay sleeping. But Joe had driven it out of my head — something about friendship. Not wanting to lose it. About how our lives were so full and so busy, and trying to change that would be trying to change who we were. I wasn’t ready to do that, and neither was she.
“We’re both busy,” was what I ended up saying. “We’re going back to our real lives, our work. Our careers. I think if we tried to keep this thing going, if we tried to be, uh, what we were on the island, we’d disappoint each other. We’d fall apart.”
Claire didn’t say anything. She pressed her lips together.
“I think we should call it what it was, a sweet interlude. A glimpse of another life. But inthislife, we’re busy. We don’t have time, for, uh…” I looked away, feeling sick. My whole heart, my body, was telling mestop this. Telling me this was wrong. It wasn’t what I wanted. But my heart and my body didn’t run my life. They wouldn’t save me when my schedule got crazy, when nothing I did would make time for Claire. I had to go with my head on this, with what made sense.