Michaela was looking at her, with a little smile on her face. Izzy looked back down at her coffee. She should have texted him before rushing out of her room, but most of the time he didn’t have his phone on him, so that probably wouldn’t have done any good. She’d just have to say something.
“Um, Beau?” Beau immediately turned and smiled at her. “Marta asked me a question about your book, and I wanted to check in with you before I answered her. Can you meet me in the library so we can talk it over? It should only take a few minutes.”
“She did?” Beau suddenly looked nervous. Oh no, she should have come up with some other story to get him out of the kitchen. “Okay. Now?”
“Yeah, but it’s nothing bad, or anything,” she said, in an attempt to fix her mistake. Nope, he still looked stressed.
He stood up. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Michaela.
Michaela nodded, still with that smile on her face. “Sure, no problem.”
Izzy shut the door of the library as soon as Beau walked in.
“Marta didn’t ask me anything about your book,” she said right away. “Sorry, I just had to get you alone to talk to you about something, and it was the first thing I could think of.”
Beau looked relieved. And then he grinned. “Well.” He took a step toward her. “What a nice surprise. Couldn’t wait until later? I like it. Does that mean we’ve suspended the library rule?”
Izzy laughed. “No, not that either.”
He looked at her closely. “Something good happened?”
She bit her lip and nodded. “I think so? At least, it has the potential to be good. But also, it’s…” She tried to come up with a word to describe how she was feeling right now. Excited? Terrified? Worried? Conflicted? Thrilled? She didn’t know.
Beau walked over to the table and pulled out her chair. “Sit down.”
She sat, and then he walked around the table and sat across from her. “Now. Tell me.”
She tried to figure out what to say. “Okay. Do you remember how I told you that a long time ago, I applied for that job at Maurice, working with that editor I really respect, and I didn’t get it and how I have always sort of wondered what if?”
He nodded. “Of course I remember. Why, what happened?”
She still couldn’t believe it.
“She emailed me this morning. That editor, Josephine Henry. She said they have another opening, for a job that would be a promotion for me. She said she thought of me immediately, and she wants to bring me in for an interview.”
Beau’s face lit up. “Izzy! That’s fantastic news. Congratulations.”
He looked so happy for her. That look on his face made her want to leap across the table and throw herself into his arms, but she held back.
“Thanks,” she said. “I can barely believe it. Granted, it’s just an interview, but—”
He brushed that off. “You’ll be fantastic,” he said. “When’s the interview?”
She took a deep breath. Would it matter to him? Would he care? Suddenly, she felt weird about rushing downstairs to tell him.
“She said she wants it to be soon. Sometime next week, but I’m not sure what day. So that means—”
“You’ll have to go back to New York,” he said. His voice was flat.
“Yeah. I’ll have to go back to New York. I haven’t…I didn’t email her back yet. I wanted to tell you first.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Obviously, you don’t want to tell Marta that you’re going back early for a job interview. Why don’t you schedule the interview, and then I can tell Marta I don’t need you here anymore, and you can just let her think you’re going back to New York a day later than you actually are, so you can go the day before the interview. Does that work?”
Oh. He’d thought the reason she wanted to tell him first was to help her deal with Marta. That was nice of him. But she hadn’t even thought about Marta until he’d brought her up. She’d only been thinking about him.
He’d tell Marta he didn’t need her anymore. Why did that sting so much? Maybe because it came to him so quickly. She tried to shake that off.
“Yeah,” she said. “That works great. I’ll email her back right now.” She took her phone out of her pocket, read over her draft email, and pressed send.
“Okay.” Beau stood up. “Just text me when you hear back. I’ll email Marta when I hear from you.”
Izzy stood up, too, and walked to the library door. “Yeah. Okay. That sounds great. Thanks for your help.”
That sounded so cold and businesslike. But it suddenly felt so businesslike between her and Beau.
No, she was being silly. They were in the library, remember? She was the one who had made the work-only-in-the-library rule. And he was helping her. He’d probably assumed she came to him because she needed help with the Marta part of the problem. Which she did, actually. She was overreacting again.
When they walked out of the library, Beau looked both ways, then grabbed her hand and dragged her into the TV room.
“Okay, now that we’re out of the library,” he said, “I can congratulate you for real.”
He enveloped her in his arms and kissed her so thoroughly she couldn’t think about anything at all.
By the time she got up to her room, Josephine had emailed her back.
Hi, Isabelle—
Thanks so much for your quick reply. Are you available for an interview Monday afternoon, by chance? If not, I understand—just let me know what works for your schedule next week. I’m going on vacation the following week, and I’d love to meet with you before I leave.
Best,
Josephine
Monday. Butterflies fluttered around her stomach. That was so soon.
To make it to the interview by Monday, she would have to leave California the day after tomorrow. Probably the smart thing would be to actually leave tomorrow so she’d have time to settle in at home, unpack, and prepare. But there was no way she could leave so soon. The whole idea of it made her feel panicky.
Everything was going so well between them. They’d only had a few weeks together, like this. She wanted more. And she had no idea what was going to happen when she left.
They’d never talked about that. Their relationship had been purely present tense. Everything between them had centered around her living here, in his house, working together in the library once a day, being together every day for hours, rarely texting, because why would they, they were right there together. Even this morning, it hadn’t occurred to her to text him when she had news; she just walked around the house to find him, like she always did. The night before, when they’d had that not-quite-a-fight, they’d had an actual conversation about it and figured it out. How would it have gone if he’d just texted her and she’d sent him some bitchy text back, like she knew she would have? Not very well, probably.
But then, this situation wasn’t forever. She’d known that from the beginning. She’d tried to ignore the ticking clock for the past few weeks, but she’d felt it all the same. Beau was probably right when he said, that he didn’t need her anymore. He could write the rest of this memoir on his own and send it on to Marta. If she didn’t get this job at Maurice, she’d still be involved with it, as Marta’s assistant. Just at a distance.
Would that hurt, to still be involved in everything about Beau’s book, from her desk at her cubicle in the TAOAT building and not from her seat across from Beau in the library? To be cc’d on emails with him and his agent and Marta, to write him polite, professional notes reminding him to send in his copy edits?
Izzy dropped her head into her hands. She knew the real question was whether she would still be involved with Beau romantically. Whether this thing between them could or would survive when she left. Or was all the magic between them here, in this enchanted house, in the rooms where they’d talked and worked and fought and kissed and loved each other?
No. It was too soon for that word. She was just getting emotional, that’s all. She was freaked out about this interview, that this was all happening so fast, that she could finally get away from Marta and TAOAT and land the job she’d been dreaming of for so long. So instead of worrying about that, she was heaping all her stress onto leaving California and leaving Beau. She needed to pull herself together and reply to Josephine’s email.
Hi, Josephine—
Monday afternoon works well for me, thanks so much. Please let me know the timing and any other details. I look forward to seeing you then.
Regards,
Isabelle
Then she texted Beau.
Interview is set for Monday afternoon!
He texted her back a few seconds later.
Great. I’ll email Marta now. Michaela can get you a ticket to fly out on Sunday.
And now it felt all business again. How else was it supposed to feel when he had his assistant book her plane ticket back to New York?
She tried to push the thought aside—Michaela was probably far more efficient at this than Beau was; it was a business expense, after all—but the curt tone of Beau’s text didn’t help. That was probably just how he always texted. It’s not like she was all that familiar with his texting voice.
And then she stood up and started to pack.