Page 641 of Manhattan Bossholes

“Pretty shitty, right?”

“Yeah,” I finally admitted.

“Cam, look at what the hell I’m doing in the pursuit of a happy ending. The one thing I swore I’d never do. Rehab. Me!” He grinned. “And it’s not even because she pressured me into it—it’s because I’m finally ready to take this step for myself. I think you need to do some work of your own. Figure your shit out. Deal with your ghosts. And remember, your past is not your future. Again, use me as your example. Because I’m about to win a blue ribbon for best rehab-er, and then I’m going get out and start my new life with Nina at my side.” He paused. “You can win like that too. All you have to do is try.”

I leaned back in the rickety chair and crossed my arms. Damn it, he was right.

I’d hate myself if I didn’t try. I had to.

“So?” he asked. “Did my pep talk work? Are you feeling inspired?”

I laughed at him. “Yeah, yeah, it worked. I’m going to see what I can do.”

He punched the air. “Go me! Maybe I’ll give up this rock and roll shit and become a motivational speaker.”

“Don’t you dare,” I growled at him.

“You’re right, I’m pretty good at music.” He leaned over and grabbed his guitar. “Check this out. It’s the beginning of the song Nina and I worked on.”

He strummed what was undoubtedly his next hit and started singing about finding strength in the one you loved.

Yeah, I knew what I had to do.

27

FELICITY

“This is fine,” I said, thinking about the meme of the dog in a hat sitting inside a burning building.

I was in my new glass-walled office in Brooklyn, which looked out on the common area that featured multiple creatively designed work nooks, a bean bag pit, and a foosball table.

The little incident in the park and my subsequent follow-up video had turned me into something of a marketing rock star. I’d wound up with too many work options and found a new job within days of beginning my search. But the problem was I got overwhelmed and picked the one that seemed the most different from Veritique—an upstart sneaker company named Ideal.

The initial days had been fun and frenetic, but I assumed it was just the nature of being a young company. Sure, the CEO had forgotten we had a meeting scheduled on my first day, and the HR guy had lost my paperwork, but whatever. They were figuring stuff out. The problem was that the lack of attention to detail was a constant for them. No matter how hard I pushed for the absolute basics of running a marketing division, like formulating our SEO strategy and creating posting milestones, they resisted. They claimed rules restricted creativity, so I was left pivoting and trying new concepts every week.

The good parts of my new job? The office was basically an arcade, my fellow employees looked and acted like baristas who’d just graduated, which meant I could live in my comfy pants, and I was given unlimited free sneakers.

But I hated it.

The messiness made me miss Veritique’s structure. We had a plan, even if the last one blew up in our faces. But still, everything flowed. We worked well together.

Okay, not all of us.

Although Cameron was trying to make up for the disaster in the park.

He’d started off with an email campaign to me, but he probably assumed email was too easy to ignore, so he’d moved on to calling me once a day and leaving messages. When I ignored those, he’d switched to texting.

I didn’t want to talk to him, and he knew it, which is why he leveled up his game.

I glanced at the coffee sitting on my desk. Each morning, I woke to find a cup of Dutch chocolate mocha waiting for me outside my door. No note, but the only person aside from Nina who knew I drank them was Cameron. I’d mentioned it to him once, the first time we’d met about the CamLicity campaign, and he’d obviously never forgotten.

And other little gifts kept showing up. A Levain cookie delivery with so many boxes Nina and I had to freeze the extras. A Veritique bracelet with the Infinity symbol, to match my necklace. A small crystal bottle of bespoke perfume from Summit Fragrances named Felicitous that smelled like wildflowers and sunshine.

And today, I’d posted on my private Snug account about being excited for the flowers of spring, and a stunning wisteria topiary had shown up at my office. The exact flowers that ringed the window during our first date.

He didn’t include cards with the gifts, but he didn’t have to. Each one was a way of him letting me know he’d paid attention to everything, down to my preferred coffee drink.

The gestures were thoughtful, but I didn’t let the gifts move me. Sure, they were creative and probably expensive, but it was easy to throw money at heartbreak and expect it to mend the fracture. I was still too raw, and honestly, I wasn’t sure Cameron was capable of giving me what I needed. Buying presents was easy. Being a real partner took work, and he’d shown me he wasn’t capable.