: Chapter 21

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, DREW told me the news. The terrible, awful, infuriating news.

“We didn’t make it,” she whispered, sitting at the high-top table in the communal kitchen, absently stirring her black coffee, and I knew exactly what she meant—

James and his agent had rejected our offer.

My vision turned red almost immediately. “What? But—”

“I know,” she cut me off with a heavy sigh. “There’s no way we bid lower than Estrange Books, and I heard from Tonya that they are in the next round. He must’ve just not liked us.”

Which was a lie because Drew was impossible to hate, and we had pulled together a hell of a plan to send with our offer. “Well, he’s wrong, and he’s going to regret it.”

“Thanks,” she replied, and slipped off the stool at the table. She was trying to act like the decision hadn’t gutted her—she was an editor, after all, and she was used to disappointment. But this felt a little different because she had gone after James Ashton. She’d pursued him. And under any other circumstances, she would’ve been the only editor to do so. It was just bad timing, and worse luck. “I think I’m going to go for a walk around the block. Tell Fiona if she comes looking?”

“Sure,” I said, a little helplessly, as she left for the elevator lobby. This didn’t make any sense. I thought for sure we’d at least get to the next round. I paced the kitchen, trying to recall what Drew could’ve said, what tells there could’ve been during the meeting yesterday, but she was perfect. Her presentation of Strauss & Adder was spot-on, and her passion for the project had been almost tangible. The only other possibility was—

I froze in my footsteps.

Me.

He remembered me, and he didn’t want to work with me, and I was the reason why he had rejected our offer. A sick feeling settled in my stomach because that was the only possible explanation.

I sank this acquisition. The second I knew it was Iwan, I should’ve recused myself, but I’d been so hungry to see him, and to prove myself to Rhonda that I could handle it . . .

“Shit,” I muttered, raking my fingers through my hair. “Shit.”

I WISHED I COULD say the bad luck stopped there, but Rhonda found out that the chef passed on us, and to say she was a little disappointed was an understatement.

She stood by my cubicle, going over his proposal, our plans, and Drew’s declined offer with a shake of her head. “It must have been something said in the room. The offer is good—the royalties are ridiculously generous.” She shook her head, and instead of handing his proposal back to me, she tossed it right into my trash can. “Rubbish—all of it.”

“The agent assured us that everyone would more than likely get into the next round, too.”

“Obviously Lauren lied. Back to the drawing board, then. Let’s take this as a learning opportunity and move forward.”

Then she turned and left for her office, and I resisted the urge to bury my face in my hands. A learning opportunity after I’d already been here seven years. This preliminary meeting should have been a cakewalk, and instead it had sealed our fate. I felt humiliated, mostly because I’d been so confident that we would make it to the next round.

And I had been the one to blow it up, and that left us without a major player to fill the role of Basil Ray. Fuck Basil Ray, seriously. Did he have to go to Faux?

“Learning opportunity,” I reminded myself, pulling up Instagram and browsing some of the bigger foodgrammers, ruling out every good-looking guy who came across my feed. They couldn’t be trusted.

By the time five o’clock rolled around, I’d plotted four different ways to kill James Ashton and make it look like an accident. I even had a spot on the Hudson saved in my phone as the perfect place to dump his body—not that I would. But thinking about it made me feel better as I gathered my purse to leave.

I knocked on the side of Drew’s cubicle gently, and she glanced up from the manuscript she had printed out and was currently taking a red marker to. “Hi,” I said softly. “You’re going to be okay?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve lost a bid, Clementine,” she reminded me, setting down the manuscript, “but thank you for checking in.”

I tried not to let my regret show too much, because I was the reason he had passed. He had remembered me, after all. What if he ended up hating me after that weekend, or I had secretly annoyed him, or he didn’t want to work with someone he’d kissed, once, a thousand years ago?

I was the reason we lost this book. What if I became the reason Strauss & Adder folded? That was silly, I knew that was silly. Publishers didn’t fold because of one failed acquisition.

I was trying not to panic.

Drew glanced at the clock, and gave a start. “It’s five already? I can’t believe I’m leaving after you.”

“That’s why I asked if you’re okay.”

“Ha! Oh, thanks. I’m fine. I’ll see you Monday?”

“Don’t work too late,” I said, waving goodbye, and headed toward the elevator lobby before she could see the panic rising in my face. I made my way uptown to the large off-white building with lions in the eaves, and thought that maybe one breaking off and falling on me—a recurring nightmare I had when I was a kid—might actually be a welcome way to spend a few months in a coma before waking up, having forgotten this entire summer, and returning to work blissfully ignorant of James Iwan Ashton.

Today was one of those Manhattanhenges, and as the sun sank between the buildings, tourists and Manhattanites alike crowded the crosswalks, taking out their phones to capture how the oranges and yellows and reds burst from the horizon just beyond the street. I didn’t stop as I crossed behind the tourists. The phenomenon was only a few minutes long, as dusk settled across the city like a shimmery tequila sunrise, and by the time I pushed open the doors to the Monroe, it was over.

Earl greeted me as I came in. He was halfway through his next mystery—Death on the Nile. I just wanted to get to my aunt’s apartment, draw a bath with a bath bomb, and sink down into the water and dissociate for a while as I listened to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.

The elevator was so slow to come, and when I got inside, it smelled a little like tuna salad, which . . . was just as unpleasant as it sounds. I leaned back against the railing, stared up at my warped reflection, and patted down my flyaway bangs, though the day had been so humid my hair frayed out at the ends.

There was no helping it.

The elevator let me off on the fourth floor, and I counted down the apartments to B4. I couldn’t wait to get out of this skirt. After a bath, I’d put on some sweatpants, take the ice cream out of the freezer, and watch a rerun of something terrible.

I unlocked the door and trudged my way inside, slipping my flats off at the door—

“Lemon?” a voice from the kitchen said, deep and familiar. “Is that you?”