Because She Stepped In Right Foot First

I pushed open the glass door of the executive suite with my right foot first, the way I had done every morning for two years, and Corinne Ashford clapped her hands like a child at a birthday party. "There it is," she said. "Right foot. I called it. I always call it." She was sitting on the leather sofa in Julian's office, her legs tucked under her, wearing a cream sweater that probably cost more than my rent. She had a cup of coffee from the place on Wabash that didn't open until eight, which meant Julian had sent someone to get it for her. He didn't even get his own coffee. Julian Mercer was behind his desk, sleeves rolled up, looking at her the way he looked at the lake when the light hit it just right. Fond. Familiar. As if she had been there his whole life, which she had. I stood in the doorway with the Mercer account proposal in my hands. Three nights. Eleven drafts. A financial model that would finally prove to his father that I wasn't just the girl from the wrong side of the city who had somehow gotten into his son's life. "Right foot," Corinne repeated, and slid off the sofa. "You owe me lunch at the club. And you have to stop pretending you don't know I'm always right about her." I looked at Julian. He hadn't even glanced at me. "Julian," I said. He finally looked up. His eyes were the same blue they had been the first night we met, at a fundraiser his mother chaired, where I had been hired to carry trays and he had followed me into the kitchen to ask my name. That was three years ago. Now I had a desk with my name on it, a badge that opened doors, and a boyfriend who was watching his childhood friend humiliate me for sport. "Julian," I said again, because the first time hadn't seemed to reach him. "I'm going to the shredder," Corinne announced. She said it the way she said everything, brightly, as if the world were a party she had been hired to host. She walked past me, and her perfume was the same one Julian had bought me for my birthday, because she had told him it was her favorite. I didn't understand yet. That's the part I keep coming back to. Not the shredder, not the paper, not the way he stood up and reached for the folder in my hands. The fact that I didn't understand. I had been in that office a thousand times. I had sat in that exact chair and kissed him while his assistant walked in and pretended she hadn't seen. I had learned his coffee order and his mother's birthday and the name of the dog he'd had when he was nine. I had believed I belonged there. And Corinne had only had to say a word. "Give it to me," she said, and put out her hand. I held the folder tighter. "This is the Mercer account proposal. It's due to the board tomorrow. I spent three nights—" "I know what it is," she said. "I read it. Julian showed it to me last night." Something cold went down my spine. "You showed it to her?" Julian was standing now, moving around the desk. He didn't answer. He took the folder out of my hands with the calm of a man taking a piece of mail out of a mailbox. He was so gentle about it that I didn't react until it was already gone. "The shredder's on," Corinne said. "Listen." I heard it. The low hum under the desk, a sound I'd never noticed before because it was just a sound, just another piece of the office furniture. "Julian," I said. "Don't." He held the folder over the slot. The paper inside was letter-size, white, the kind of expensive stock the company used for board presentations, and the edge of it caught the light. "Julian." Corinne put her hand on his arm. It was such a small gesture, and it was the whole story. She had been doing that since they were children. I had heard the story a hundred times, how she had held on to his sleeve when they were six and lost at the fair, how she had been the one to find him. He had told me that story in bed, on a Sunday, while I lay with my head on his shoulder, and I had thought it was sweet. "Julian," I said, one more time. He fed the pages into the shredder. The machine chewed them with a sound like water going down a drain. I watched the last corner of the Mercer proposal disappear, and then he turned and looked at me, and his face was almost apologetic. "You can redo it," he said. Corinne laughed.