Because She Stepped In Right Foot First

Chapter 2 The Game

I didn't cry in the office. That was the one thing I was proud of. I stood there while the shredder finished its work, and I said, "The board meets at nine tomorrow."

"They do," Julian said.

"You just destroyed the only copy."

"We have it." Corinne was back on the sofa, scrolling her phone. "I have it on my laptop. I reviewed it. It's fine. It's good, actually. The model is clever."

"It's my model."

"It's our client," she said, without looking up. "The Mercers have been ours for four generations. Julian doesn't care who builds the slides."

"I don't understand what just happened."

I said it out loud, to both of them, and Corinne finally put her phone down. Her face changed. For a second the party host went away and there was just a woman on a sofa, looking at me with something like pity.

"You don't get it," she said. "That's the problem. You never get it."

"Then explain it."

"That's not my job."

She stood up and smoothed her sweater. Julian moved to her side without thinking. He always moved to her side. I had thought it was habit, the way you move to the side of a person you'd known since childhood. I had thought a lot of things.

"Julian," I said. "Talk to me."

He looked at the floor. Then at Corinne. Then, finally, at me.

"I can't do this anymore," he said. "I'm sorry. I've been trying to—I don't know how to say it without hurting you."

"You just put my work in a shredder."

"I know."

"He put my work in a shredder," I said, to Corinne. "You told him to, and he did it. That's not a game."

"Oh, honey," she said. "It was always a game. You just weren't playing it."

She picked up her coffee and walked out. The door swung shut behind her, and the room was very quiet.

I stood in the middle of it, in the middle of the office I had rebuilt myself for, and I looked at Julian Mercer and waited for him to say the word.

He said the word.

"I've known her my whole life," he said. "I don't know how to explain it. It's not that I planned this. It's not that I don't care about you. I do. I care about you. I think you're—I think you're incredible. You built something from nothing. You did all of that yourself. But Corinne was there first. She was always there. And I think I've been trying to convince myself for three years that I could want something else."

I felt the floor under my expensive shoes.

"You love her," I said.

"Yes."

"Then why—"

"Because you were easy to love," he said. "You were so easy. You made it simple. I didn't have to choose. And then she came back from London, and I—"

"She never left."

"She went to London. For two years. Before you."

I remembered. The first month I worked at Mercer, there had been an empty office next to Julian's, and a nameplate that had been taken off the wall but not replaced. Corinne had been in London. She had come back in the spring.

And in the spring, Julian had stopped asking me to stay the night.

"I need you to leave," he said.

I didn't move.

"Not the company," he said, quickly. "You have your job. This is about us. I need you to leave the—the apartment. And us. I need you to leave us."

I looked at the shredder.

"Was any of it real?"

"All of it was real," he said. "That's the worst part."

I walked out of the office. I made it to the elevator, and then to the lobby, and then out onto the street, and the cold air hit my face and I still didn't cry. My proposal was gone. My boyfriend was gone. Everything I had built my life around was gone, and it had been gone before I even walked in that door, I just hadn't known it.

The doorman said good morning to me. I said good morning back.

That's when I noticed the text on my phone. It was from Corinne.

Corinne: Sorry. For what it's worth, the model was good. You should keep the job.

I stared at it for a long moment.

Then I deleted it.

The apartment was on the ninth floor, with a view of the lake that Julian had paid extra for because he said I would like the light in the mornings. I stood in the doorway and looked at it for the last time.

Most of it wasn't mine. The furniture, the art, the plates. He had bought all of it. I had brought two suitcases and a lamp, and even the lamp had been a wedding gift to someone else that I found at a thrift store.

I packed the two suitcases. I took the lamp. I stood in the kitchen with my keys in my hand and looked at the calendar on the wall, which still had his mother's birthday circled in red.

I put the keys on the counter.

I called my sister.

Maya picked up on the second ring.

"Hey," she said. "You never call on a Tuesday. Is everything okay?"

I started crying. There was no warning, no slow build. I just started, standing in a kitchen that had never been mine.

"Oh," Maya said. "Okay. I'm coming."

"He shredded it," I said. "Maya, he shredded my proposal."

"Who did?"

"Julian. He fed it into a shredder because—" and I heard how it sounded, how insane it sounded, and it made me cry harder.

"Because why?"

"Because Corinne told him to."

There was a pause on the line.

"Corinne Ashford?"

"Yes."

"The friend."

"The friend."

Another pause.

"I'm coming," Maya said. "Don't leave the building. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

She was there in eighteen. She took one look at me and took the keys out of my hand and dropped them in her purse, and then she walked me down to her car, and I got in, and we drove away from the lake and the apartment and the life that had belonged to someone else's story the whole time.