of cookbooks on her kitchen counter. It was the first time in almost two weeks she and Dee had been able to talk outside of work, and while Nora hadn’t necessarily planned to get into what had been going on with Will these last couple weeks, she also knew that Dee could read her so well, even through a computer screen. This conversation had been a long time coming, and before Nora had even finished her practiced, prudent explanation of her arrangement with Will, Dee had shouted, “I knew it!” in laughing victory.
“You’re making it sound awful,” Nora finally said, setting down her wine and moving toward the stove, stirring gently at the sauce she had heating.
And it is the opposite of awful, she silently added, staring down at the pot and blinking away images that rose up before her with the steam: Will above and beneath her in her bed; Will on his knees in her shower; Will—her cheeks flamed at the thought of this one—behind her while her hands clutched at the counter of the bathroom sink. Everything so brand-new.
Four times, he’d come over: always late at night, always leaving before dawn, never once since that first time getting so close to breaking the boundary she was still keeping for this. So far, in addition to the towel and shower curtain rods, they’d put in new faucets for her sink and tub, and replaced the old, speckled-at-the-edges mirror that Nora was pretty sure was original to this place. Look how clearly you can see yourself in this new one, Will had said that night from behind her, moving her hair to the side. Look, he’d repeated, again and again, as he’d touched her.
Stubborn image, that one.
“I think tonight we’re putting in a new light,” she said, all anticipation. By now she was used to being up late like this, waiting for him. She stirred once more, composing herself before turning back to the screen.
“Your face looks like a tomato,” Dee said.
“I’m cooking.”
Dee narrowed her eyes but relented. “We’ll come back to this.”
Nora took a relieved sip of wine. A great thing about Deepa was that for all her teasing, prying curiosity, she always knew when to stop. A joke about Nora’s chronic prudishness in the face of a sustainable dildo was one thing, but for the things Nora needed privacy for—or time for—Dee was always discreet, always patient.
And anyway, they both knew there was an elephant in the room.
“So how bad was it?” Nora said, bracing herself.
Dee rolled her eyes but took another big drink of her wine before settling further into her couch. “Bad,” she said.
They’d lost the eco-influencer today.
The email—hardly two lines, signed with an xoxox—had come through to the whole team around noon, Pacific time, which meant almost everyone at Verdant had their lunch hour interrupted or entirely canceled. Nora had been picking up her phone to text Deepa when it had chimed in her hand.
I called it, Dee had texted.
And she had. Weeks ago, of course, but more recently, at last Thursday’s staff meeting. “She’s going to bolt,” she’d told Austin, voice surprisingly sharp. “Cut her loose first and save everyone from wasting any more hours on this. We’re not what she wants.”
But Austin—a real the customer is always right type—hadn’t listened. In fact, for the last week he’d had Nora chasing down freelance game-app designers, even though that was absolutely not in her job description.
“I honestly don’t know what the big deal is,” said Nora, ignoring the pang of guilt she felt over her annoyance at Austin. “It wasn’t like she was a huge account for us. Why was he so insistent about this?”
“Because he hates to lose. They’re all the same.” Nora knew Dee well enough to know that this meant either men in general or men who were in charge of things. Probably both.
“Was it the silent treatment all afternoon?”
“He slammed a door.”
Nora raised her eyebrows. Slamming doors, that was serious business.
“Honestly, Nora, I really think I’m almost done there.”
A pit opened in Nora’s stomach. “What?”
“I’m going to start putting out feelers. I don’t know what direction Austin thinks he’s going in, but I’m not interested in it.”
Nora blinked at the screen, stunned. But she shouldn’t be, should she? For months she and Deepa both had been unhappy with some of the new projects being onboarded; their debriefs so often consisted of frustrated disbelief about some new ask, some new plan. And Dee was brilliant, talented, driven, networked.