Page 25

Four hours of sleep and here I am, back in the beige, pretending to be a woman who spent last night at home alone, watching Golden Girls reruns.

The trick to the morning after is the same as it's always been. Blend in. Route the calls, sign for the boxes, keep my face a smooth, neutral nothing.

It has never been this hard.

Because I know things now that a woman at a front desk has no business knowing. I know what Beck Cross sounds like right before he comes. I know Theo says baby in a voice that could end wars. I know that Elias Thorne, the human glacier, told a woman on the internet at midnight that he wanted to watch her lose her mind.

I know all of it, and I still have to sit here and route their calls like I don't.

Beck blows in at 8:52, on the phone, radiating his morning wattage, and my whole stupid body goes on alert like a cat that just heard a can opener. Eight hours ago, this man told me to drag a toy across my lips and lick it like it was him. Right now, he's arguing about a term sheet and eating a protein bar.

He clocks the front desk on his way past, flashes the grin, and says it.

"Morning, gorgeous."

And for one insane, unforgivable second, my heart does something. Some idiot organ in my chest goes, He means me. After last night, he means me.

Then Sloane is there, coffee in hand, hair doing the thing hair does for her and no one else, and beams. "Morning, Beck." Easy as breathing. And his grin swings to her like a spotlight finding its mark, because obviously. Obviously the gorgeous was for Sloane. The gorgeous is always for Sloane, or for the intern, or for the room. Beck Cross hands out gorgeous like a meter maid hands out parking tickets, and I stood in the path of one for a single second and let myself believe I'd been given one.

A fucking idiot is what I am.

I look back at my monitor before either of them catches my face.

Here's the joke, and it's on me. To three men last night, for one hour, I was the only woman alive. They admired me. They desired me. They paid a fortune. One of them said he wanted to watch me lose my mind.

To the same men this morning, I'm the thing you say morning, gorgeous in front of, but never actually to. The morning, gorgeous is meant for someone else. It always is.

Worshipped at midnight, parking ticket at nine. Same three men. And the genuinely unhinged part, the part I am not going to think about right now dammit, is that I am beginning to want the office version of these guys to see me too. I want the morning, gorgeous. I want it so badly, it's stupid.

I didn’t need that before. Why do I need it now?

And I can't even hate Sloane for standing in the sun, which is the rudest thing about her. She drops a blueberry muffin on my desk on her way past with a "They had the good ones downstairs, so I grabbed you one," and it's the nicest thing that'll happen to me today. The woman is kind. Genuinely, uncomplicatedly kind, the way you get to be when the world has never once made you be part of the scenery. I want to hate her, I want her to be the enemy, but I can’t and she isn’t.

I thank her.

And then there’s Elias.

He comes through the lobby the way he always does, fast, silent, eyes on the middle distance, a folder in one hand. He drops it on my desk without slowing. "This needs a signature by ten."

Normal. Completely normal. Fourteen months of normal.

Except last night, the voice attached to that face said, I want to see you lose your mind, and this morning, this needs a signature by ten. When he's two steps past the desk, he pauses. Half a beat. Barely anything. Like he's deciding whether to say a second thing.

Every cell in my body braces for it. You didn't cover your mouth last night.

He doesn't say anything. He walks into his office and shuts the door.

But he paused. Elias Thorne does not pause. And I sit there with my heart going and that little beak pecking at me again, and the question I am trying not to ask myself because I’m scared to death of the answer is does he know?

I get through the morning. I route the calls and sign for the boxes and eat Sloane's kind blueberry muffin, and I do not, at any point, laugh. The one time I nearly do is when Birdie sends a silly video of a fainting goat captioned THIS IS US. Before I explode in laughter, I catch it behind my teeth and swallow it whole.

Which is new. I've started guarding my real laugh, where nobody is paying to hear it and nobody is listening for it and there is no reason on earth to hold it back.

Except there is a reason, and he sits in the corner office. They all sit in their corner offices.

Agnes and Diablo are supposed to stay separate. But I’m afraid some Agnes is seeping into Diablo and some Diablo is seeping into Agnes like a stain soaked all the way through that I have no idea how to get out.

Birdie calls at two p.m., which for Birdie is basically dawn, and I know before I pick up that she's been thinking. Birdie thinking is how I ended up cosigning a goat yoga ranch.