Missing Christmas - Kate Clayborn Page 0,5
arrange my insides against what happens when our gazes lock. I held her last night. Given the news I have to deliver, it should be the last thing on my mind.
“You remember the Dreyer job we closed three weeks ago?” I say, proud of myself for getting it out, getting back on firmer ground.
“Sure,” Kristen says. “He’s going to Dubai. Two years, and turning over his desalination patent.”
“He’s not.”
She blinks, startled. “He’s—he has to. He signed the contract.”
I shake my head. “He says he’ll pay the penalty. He doesn’t want to uproot his wife. They’ve got a grandkid coming.”
Her eyes soften briefly before she looks down at her clasped hands. It only takes a couple of seconds, but I can feel it, when she registers what this means. We did the Dreyer job on behalf of GreenCorp, an environmental solutions firm. Getting Dreyer was a condition of them signing us for an exclusive recruiting contract. We lose Dreyer, we lose GreenCorp.
And GreenCorp is a huge part of our operating budget for next year.
Carol’s sweater blinks obnoxiously in my periphery. We lose GreenCorp, we’ll probably lose Carol, too. I think she knows, because she reaches into her sleeve and turns off the sweater.
“Okay,” Kristen says. “Okay. It’s only the fifteenth. You can get there Monday, spend the day. Change his mind.”
“Can’t. He’s off the grid until Thursday afternoon.” A hunting trip with his brother, he’d said, and I don’t think he’s lying, but I do think he’s relieved he won’t have to deal with me.
She nods, looks down at her tablet. “Friday, then. That’s still three days before Christmas. You’ll have time to get home to your—”
“I’m not going home.”
It’s so annoying that she’s said it. I don’t even really have a home back in west Texas. My family situation is a shambles, and maybe she doesn’t know why, but she knows that it is. Last year she’d FaceTimed me on Christmas Eve with a flimsy excuse about needing a software code for her phone, her face flushed with the pleasure of being with her family, and maybe with an eggnog buzz. We both knew she’d been checking up on me, alone in my condo. See you next week? I remember her saying, her eyes on me steady and a little sad. I miss you, I’d wanted to say, but of course I hadn’t.
She clears her throat. “Right, yes. I’m sorry.”
“Kris.” At the sound of my voice, she raises her eyes to me. “You know I can’t do this on my own.”
For a long second, we look at each other. In all the years we’ve worked together, we’ve come to know each other’s weaknesses, and mine has always been the human stuff. I can talk all day about where a recruit’s tech will land, give them stats about equipment they’ll have, but I’m garbage at selling places, experiences, people, and obviously this is where the Dreyer job has fallen apart. When Ben and I worked as a team, he’d always handle that side of things, and he was unstoppable. Now it’s Kristen who works these angles, and she’s even better than Ben was. Thorough and detail-oriented, but never robotic or distant. Approachable but not overfamiliar, genuinely excited but not frenetic in her energy. And so, so warm.
I fist a hand against the table. Don’t think about how warm she is.
“What if we set up a call?” she asks weakly. I don’t even have to say anything. Carol turns her head toward Kristen and raises her hand slightly, like she’s about to check her temperature. She thinks better of it and looks back at me with a question in her eyes. As many times as the three of us have sat together in this room, I’m sure Carol is thrown—not just at Kristen’s passivity, but at the cool awkwardness between us. Kristen does not want to go anywhere with me, and my stomach twists in dread.
It’s never been this way. Kris and I, we work as a team.
“A call isn’t going to do it,” I say grimly, and I realize that Carol might also be thrown by my somber delivery. I’m not a cheerful guy, but this problem—it’s exactly the kind of challenge that usually gets me focused, energized.
It’s doing neither for me right now.
“I’m supposed to go to Michigan on—” Kristen says. She raises a hand to her forehead, her full lips compressed and turned down at the corners, and my chest feels tight. Looking at her face like that, I