ACCIDENTALLY SLEPT WITH MY BOSS

The cake was leaning. Tess Brannigan had carried it across Hollow Bay on two buses and one long, damp walk, and somewhere around the second bus it had begun to list to the left like a drunk at a wedding. She'd made it herself, lemon with cream cheese frosting, because Grant liked lemon, and because a bakery cake cost forty-eight dollars and she had, at last count, fourteen. "You're fine," she told it, climbing the stairs to the fourth floor. "You're rustic. Rustic is a style." The cake did not look convinced. It was ten past nine on a Saturday night, and the rain had gotten into everything: her hair, her one good blazer, the box in her arms. She had told Grant she'd be working late. This was a lie, but a *familiar* one. She had been telling it for three weeks, ever since a woman named Brenda from HR had slid a folder across a desk and said the phrase "restructuring our contracts team" in a voice like a funeral organ. Tess had said *thank you*. She had actually said thank you. She'd been laid off and she'd thanked them for it. Since then she'd spent every weekday morning leaving the apartment in her work clothes and every weekday afternoon at the public library, applying for jobs on a laptop with a sticky F key. She had applied to forty-one. She had heard back from three. Two were pyramid schemes. Tonight, though, was going to be good. Grant turned twenty-nine today. She had arranged a surprise, a small one, a cake and a candle and the sort of evening that felt like a life. She had even asked her brother Nate to keep Grant busy until she got there. *Be nice,* she'd texted him. *Stall him. Make him watch the game or something.* Nate had replied with a thumbs-up. Nate always replied with a thumbs-up. It was his entire emotional vocabulary. She reached the door of 4C, the apartment she paid sixty percent of the rent for and had no name on the lease for, and hesitated. Inside, the television was on. She could hear it, a low roar of sports commentary. *Good,* she thought. *Grant and Nate, on the couch, doing the man thing.* There was another sound under the television. A thump. A groan. *Someone's pulled something,* she thought, with the sweet, stupid optimism of a woman who had never once been right about anything important. *Hamstring. Probably.* She put her key in the lock. She turned it. She kicked the door open with her foot, because her hands were full, and she said, in the brightest voice she owned: "*Surprise!*" --- The first thing she saw was the television. A man in a football helmet was being very sad about a fumble. The second thing she saw was the couch. There are certain images the mind rejects on contact, the way a body rejects a transplant. Tess stood in the doorway holding a lemon cake and watched her brain try, with real heroism, to make sense of what she was looking at. *That's a lot of limbs,* it offered. *Wrestling,* it tried, weakly. *They're wrestling.* Then Nate looked up. Nate. Her brother. Thirty years old, six foot one, with the same crooked nose she'd had to look at across the table every Christmas of her life. His eyes met hers, and she watched every drop of blood leave his face. "Tess," said Nate. Grant went still beneath him, like a man who has heard a gun c**k. "Oh my God," Grant said. "Oh my *God.* Tess, babe—" "Don't," said Tess, "call me babe with your pants around your ankles." It came out so calm that she hardly recognized the voice. She wasn't aware of deciding to speak. It was like watching someone else drive her car. "This isn't what it looks like," said Nate. "It looks," said Tess, "like my brother's backside, Nate. Is it not?" Nate opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at Grant, who looked at the ceiling like it owed him an answer. "Okay," Nate said. "It's *exactly* what it looks like." "*Nate*—" Grant hissed. "What? She's holding a cake, man!" They both looked at the cake. The cake, to its credit, chose that exact moment to slide out of its box, hit the floor with a damp, tragic *flump*, and lie there in a puddle of cream cheese frosting like a small crime scene. "I made that," Tess said, distantly. "It looks great," said Grant, in a strangled voice. "*Shut up.*" She hadn't known she had that in her. She stood in the middle of the living room, her wet hair sticking to her neck, the whole world tilted a few degrees off its axis, and a hundred small facts began to arrange themselves in her head like pieces of a puzzle she'd been refusing to look at. Grant's sudden "game nights" with Nate. The way Nate had gone strange and sweaty every time she brought up Grant's birthday. The year Grant had cried at a movie and said *I'm just tired,* and she'd believed him. Three years of dating. *Three years.* Three years of Grant being "not really a physical guy," and her thinking, *it's me.* Three years of lying awake wondering what was wrong with *her.* "You," she said to Grant. "I thought it was me." "Tess—" "I thought *I* was the problem. I bought a *book,* Grant. It was called *Rekindling Intimacy.* I read it on the *bus.*" Grant went a color that did not occur in nature. "I didn't even know you were—" she waved a hand at the general room. "Either of you! Since when? You said you liked *women.* You said it in a *toast.*" "I do like women," said Grant weakly. "Not helping," said Nate. "I'm not trying to help, I'm trying to *survive* this." "Then maybe," said Tess, "you should have thought about that before you decided to do it on my couch." She paused. "Actually, no. It's *your* couch. I've been sleeping on it for eight months while you worked 'late.'" She stopped. Looked at the television. "Is this *our* game? Are you watching *our* game?" "It was on," Nate muttered. Tess laughed. It wasn't a good laugh. It had a crack down the middle of it. She put a hand over her mouth and waited for the crying to start, but nothing came, only that awful tight pressure in her chest, like a fist closing around something small. "Tess," Nate said, and now he looked like her brother, the one who had held her hand at their mother's funeral, the one who had taught her how to ride a bike by shouting at her from the porch. "I was going to tell you. I swear to God. We both were." "When?" A long, miserable silence. "I don't know," Nate admitted. "After the thing." "What thing?" "There was always a thing." She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the room had a bright, flat, weirdly clear quality, the way things look right after a car accident. "You know what the worst part is?" she said. "I'm not even mad about the s*x. I mean, I'm *very* mad about the s*x. But you had *three years* to say *one sentence.* 'Tess, I'm gay.' Four words. I would've helped you *move.*" Neither of them said anything. She looked at Nate for a long moment. "You were supposed to pay half of Dad's care this month," she said quietly. "Did you?" Nate's face did something complicated. "Oh," said Tess. "*Oh.*" "I can explain—" "Don't." She put up a hand. She was shaking now, she noticed, from the knees up. "Don't. If you explain it, I'm going to hit you with the nearest object, and the nearest object is *Grant.*" "Hey—" said Grant. She turned, walked to the closet, and took her one good coat and her tote bag. Then she stopped by the door and took one last, careful look at the apartment where she had spent three years trying to make a man want her. The cake had begun to melt into the carpet. "Happy birthday, Grant," she said. "I hope it's everything you wanted." She closed the door behind her very, very gently. It was the loudest thing she'd ever done. --- It was still raining. Of course it was. Hollow Bay had been designed by a committee of clouds. Tess walked without deciding to. Down Marlowe Street, past the laundromat, past the shuttered bakery, past the bus stop where a woman sat under an umbrella eating a sandwich with the dignified calm of someone who had never been betrayed by a family member. She walked until her feet hurt, and then she walked some more. She did not cry. Crying felt like something that would require a *plan.* A place. Tissues. By the time she looked up, she was standing in front of the Hollow Crown Hotel. The Hollow Crown was the kind of building that existed to remind people like Tess that they were not welcome. Black marble, gold lettering, a doorman in a long grey coat who looked like he'd been carved from disapproval. She'd walked past it a thousand times on her way to cheaper places. Tonight, a banner hung above the entrance, glowing in the rain: **THE ASHCROFT FOUNDATION PRESENTS: HOWL AT THE MOON GALA — SAVE THE DATE.** A silver wolf's head. A crescent moon. Tess stared at it for a long moment. "Of *course,*" she said aloud, to nobody. "Of *course* they have a wolf." She'd hated wolves since she was nine years old. It was the one thing about her that had always been simple. Other people had complicated feelings about nature; Tess had a bumper sticker (she didn't own a car, but she'd bought the sticker anyway) and a firm, lifelong, deeply earned belief that every wolf on earth could go straight to hell. The doorman held the door open for her, which was either a kindness or a pity. She went in. --- The bar was called The Larkspur, and it was dark and warm and smelled like money and old wood. A pianist in the corner played something slow. A bartender with a silver nose ring was polishing glasses, and when Tess sat down, dripping on a leather stool that probably cost more than her rent, he looked at her once and said, without judgment: "Rough night?" "I'd like something," said Tess, "that makes me forget a couch." "We have a drink for that," he said. "It's called *Regret & Rye.*" "Is that real?" "It is now." He slid it across the bar. She drank half of it in one go, and her eyes watered. "Easy," said a voice beside her. "That one bites back." She turned. The man on the next stool was looking at her the way people look at a thunderstorm from a safe distance. Dark hair, a little too long, damp at the edges as if he'd been out in the same rain. A black coat that was probably cashmere. A face that was all hard lines and tired eyes, grey as the harbor, with faint shadows under them that said he hadn't slept properly in a year. Not conventionally handsome, exactly. The kind of face you looked at twice, and then a third time, to make sure you weren't imagining it. He smelled like cedar and rain and something warm she couldn't name. That was odd. Tess had never been a smell person. "I'm fine," she said, which was, historically, her answer to everything. "You're dripping on the bar." "It's *atmospheric.*" The corner of his mouth moved. It wasn't a smile, but it was in the neighborhood. "I'm Ray," he said. "Dolores," said Tess. A pause. "*Dolores,*" he repeated. "It was my grandmother's name." "Was it." "She was very *strong.*" "I can tell," said Ray gravely. "You have the look of a Dolores." She decided, then and there, that she would not tell him her real name, her real job, or her real situation. It was the first decision she'd made all night that felt like hers. She drank some more of the Regret & Rye, and the warmth spread through her, and something loosened in her chest. "So, Dolores," said Ray. "What did the couch do?" She laughed. She hadn't meant to. It came out sharp and surprised. "I walked in on my boyfriend," she said, "and my brother." Ray's glass paused, halfway to his mouth. "Together," Tess clarified. "Same couch. *Very* together." "Ah," said Ray. "I didn't know either of them was gay. I'd been dating one of them for three years. The other one taught me how to ride a *bike.*" "That," said Ray, "is a lot of context." "I brought a *cake.*" "A cake." "Lemon. It was *rustic.*" Something in his face shifted. He laughed. It wasn't a polite laugh; it was low and a little rusty, as though it hadn't been used in a long time, and it surprised him as much as it surprised her. He ran a hand over his mouth, trying to stop it. "I'm sorry," he said. "That's terrible. I'm not laughing at *you.*" "You're laughing at the cake." "I'm laughing at the *cake,*" he admitted. "In its defense, it sounds like it tried." "It did try. It tried so *hard.*" He glanced down, and she realized he was trying not to laugh again. It was ridiculous. It was the first time in hours that she'd felt like a person and not a casualty. "At least," he said, "they kept it in the family." Tess stared at him. Then she laughed so hard that the bartender looked over, and the pianist missed a note, and the whole dark, expensive, glittering room seemed to tilt, just slightly, toward her. "That's awful," she wheezed. "That's *so* awful." "I have a family," said Ray. "Trust me. I have standards of comparison." "Do you want to talk about it?" "No," he said. "I'm here for a family thing. I'll be expected to be a lot of things tomorrow." He looked at his glass. "Tonight, I'd like to be nobody." It was such an honest thing to say that she didn't know what to do with it. "I can be nobody too," she said. "I'm very good at it. I've been practicing for years." "Then we have something in common." They drank. They talked. About nothing, then about everything. He didn't ask what she did for a living, and she was grateful. She didn't ask what he did either, though she noticed things. The watch that looked like it cost more than a car. The way people glanced at him and then quickly away, as though he were a bright light. The way the bartender kept refilling his glass without being asked. Around eleven, a television above the bar flickered. A news segment about the Ashcroft Foundation, a silver wolf logo, a smiling woman in a gown, a voice saying *Hollow Bay's most legendary family.* Tess made a face. "Not a fan?" Ray asked. "I hate wolves." He went still. It was small, barely a flicker, but she saw it, the way you see a bird freeze on a branch. "That's a strong position," he said carefully. "I have a strong reason." She turned her glass in her hands. "My mother was killed by one when I was nine. In the park. I saw it." "Tess—Dolores—" He caught himself, and something in his voice had changed. It was low, and strange, and almost like grief. "I'm sorry." "It's okay. It was a long time ago." "It doesn't sound like it was." She looked at him. His eyes were very grey and very steady. For one dizzy second, she had the odd, unfair feeling that he understood something about it that she didn't. "No," she said quietly. "It doesn't feel like it was." He didn't say anything else. He just stayed there, close and warm and quiet, and let the silence be what it was. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for her in a year. Midnight came. The bar began to empty. The bartender wiped down the counter with the slow tact of a man who'd seen this exact scene before. "I don't do this," Tess said abruptly. "Neither do I." "I mean it. I'm not a one-night-stand person. I'm a *casserole* person. I make casseroles for people when they're sad." "I would eat your casserole," said Ray seriously. She laughed, and the laugh turned into something else halfway through. She looked at his hands, and his mouth, and the line of his throat, and thought, very clearly: *I have nothing left to lose. Not a boyfriend, not a brother, not a job, not an apartment. I have fourteen dollars and a ruined blazer. I could do something stupid. I could do something stupid and it would be* mine. "I'm a mess," she said. "I know." "I'm going to regret this." "Probably," said Ray. He stood, and offered his hand. He didn't look like a man who made a habit of offering his hand. "But I'll be a very good regret." She took it. --- It would be, she would later admit, a very good night. It would also be, as she'd put it in the formal complaint she would never file, the single worst decision of her life. And she had once dated Grant.