Sydney shook her head.
“Oh no you’re not. Not with that look on your face. Stay here while we close up. I’ll drive you home when I’m done here.”
Margot sat back down.
“Only if you promise not to make fun of me for all of this.”
“I promise,” Sydney said immediately.
“Okay,” Margot said. Sydney started to walk away.
“He’s not dating Avery,” she said as she stared down at the bar.
Sydney stopped and turned back to Margot.
“He told you that? Please don’t tell me you asked him.”
Margot’s eyes shot back up to Sydney’s.
“No. My God, no. Of course not. And no, he didn’t tell me. Avery did. When I had breakfast with her to talk about the party.”
Sydney counted on her fingers. Margot knew what was coming.
“You had breakfast with her on Thursday, yes? Last Thursday?”
Margot sighed.
“Yes.”
“Mmm,” Sydney said. “So how did it take you this long to tell me that Avery Jensen made a point to tell you that she wasn’t dating your little fling turned employee?”
Margot tugged her hair up into a bun.
“First, don’t call him mine. Second, she didn’t make a point to tell me, it wasn’t out of nowhere; it was in the context of me hiring his mom’s boyfriend to do landscaping. She told me they’ve been friends since high school. Third, I was going to say some bullshit about how I haven’t seen you since last Monday so that’s why I haven’t told you, but I know exactly what you’d say to that, so I’m not even going to bother, and I’ll say the real reason, which is that I didn’t want you to think I cared that much.”
Sydney raised her eyebrows.
“But you do. Don’t you?”
Margot didn’t say anything for a while.
“Yeah,” she said finally. “I do.”
Sydney took a step away.
“Be right back.”
In a few minutes, she walked up, a paper bag in her hand.
“I was right—we did have more of that ice cream you liked in the back. Let’s go.”
Margot looked up at her.
“I love you so much.”
Sydney dropped an arm around her shoulder.
“Yeah. I know.”
Eleven
LUKE WOKE UP SUNDAY morning and checked his phone. A text from Craig? That was a surprise. Craig had been his mentor at work; they’d always gotten along well, but Craig had seemed as shocked and disappointed as everyone else when Luke had quit. He’d been pretty sure he’d never hear from him again.
CRAIG
Thought you might be interested in this news. Let me know if you want to chat about this. We miss you around here.
Luke clicked on the link Craig had sent him and laughed when he saw the headline. Oh, they’d pledged $10 million toward diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts? And had hired a brand-new chief diversity officer? Right. Of course they had.
He flinched when his phone rang. Craig couldn’t be calling him to talk about this, could he? Did he want Luke to talk to the press, to parade him around in the way they’d done before, this time as a Black former employee who had just loved his time there and didn’t experience discrimination at all?
Oh, it was just his mom. Luke was so grateful he immediately picked up.
“Luke! Pete and I are going to that sale and auction you and I always used to go to today. Want to join us? Maybe you and Avery could come along? That is, if you two didn’t have other plans today.”
This is what picking up the phone got him. And he didn’t have to work today at Noble, so he couldn’t wiggle out of this that way.
“Sure,” he said to his mom. What else could he say? “I don’t think Avery can come, but I’ll meet you guys there.”
Maybe today was a good time to tell his mom the truth about his job. And about this Avery thing. He was feeling better about everything, maybe because he’d been out of that job for over a month, and working at Noble for three weeks now. It was fun, to learn something brand-new, to get to interact with people all day, none of whom seemed to be looking for him to fail. He wasn’t stressed, anxious, about work anymore. That felt weird, almost unnatural.
Maybe Avery had been right—it was good to do something so different from his old job, get some distance from it. He was maybe even starting to get his swagger back.
He laughed at himself and got in the shower.
Before he left home he texted Craig back. Partly to stay friendly with him, just in case he’d ever need Craig in the future for a reference. But also because he’d always liked Craig; he didn’t want to blow him off.
LUKE
Thanks for reaching out—good to see this. Hope all is well with you.
There. That was good enough.
When he caught up with his mom and Pete, his mom grinned at him.
“I can’t believe my son voluntarily came to this place that I dragged him to for years when he was in high school,” she said.
Luke hugged his mom.
“That’s the difference between age fourteen and twenty-eight, I guess,” he said. “Just point me toward the rooster.”
He and his mom both laughed. Once, in high school, when he’d come with his mom to one of these things, she’d insisted on buying a huge metal rooster for his grandfather’s yard; she’d said his grandfather would love it. Luke had hated the thing, and had no idea why his mom was so thrilled with this find, and was furious at his mom for buying it after she’d dragged him along to this stupid event, especially because he knew he would have to be the one to carry it to the car. But then, he and his mom had laughed so hard when he’d tried to wrestle the damn rooster into his mom’s tiny sedan for the drive home that he’d forgiven the rooster. His grandfather had loved it, just like his mother had predicted. After his grandfather had died, his mom had called him and told him an antiques dealer had offered her hundreds of dollars for the thing, which had made them both weep with laughter.
His mom pulled him in for another hug.
“It’s good to have you so close by, Luke. It’s nice to be able to see you more often. When do you have to go back to work? Your real job, I mean. Or are you thinking about staying up here, working remotely?”
This was the perfect opening.
“Actually, Mom, I . . .” He swallowed. “I’m not sure.”
He’d chickened out, again. But then, the time wasn’t right—he couldn’t tell her he’d quit his job and had no idea what he was doing with his life when they were in public. He’d do it later.
She nodded, that smug look back on her face.
“I understand.”
She thought he meant Avery. She thought he was waiting to decide because of Avery. He had to tell her that wasn’t actually happening.
But if he told her that, then how would he explain what he was doing here?
“Oooh, looks like there are some treasures over there!” she said, and ducked into a booth, leaving him and Pete standing there.
“You, um, liking the job at Noble?” Pete asked him.
A question he could actually answer honestly.
“Yeah, it’s been great so far. A nice change from what I’d been doing, that’s for sure.” He shrugged. “I know it’s weird to do it with my background and all, but it’s fun, and the people are great. Really supportive and helpful.”
“It’s a good group there,” Pete said.
Pete had been there with his team every day that week.
“Margot seems pleased with how the landscaping is going,” Luke said.
Pete nodded.
“She’s definitely very particular about what she wants, but I don’t mind that. And she doesn’t do that thing where she changes her mind after we’ve already made a decision. When she wants something, she makes it clear.”
Luke thought back to that first night with Margot, when they’d left the bar. Yes, when she wanted something, she definitely made it clear. He fought back a grin.
His mom popped her head around the corner of the booth.
“I found a gorgeous set of vintage CorningWare. Can one of you bring it out to the car?”
Luke groaned, then laughed at himself. How did he always revert to teenage Luke when he was around his mom?
“Lead me to it.” He reached his hand out to Pete, who was trying to volunteer for this. “I had this job first, Pete. Just give me your keys.”
When he walked back to find his mom and Pete, he heard his mom’s voice before he saw her.
“Well, Luke has only wonderful things to say, too!” She saw him walking toward her and beamed at him. “Oh, there you are! Look who we found!”
He knew, before she even turned around, that it would be Margot. Had he conjured her up, just by talking about her to Pete?
She turned and smiled at him.
“Hi, Luke,” she said. Why was her voice always perfectly normal whenever she talked to him?
Well, not always. It hadn’t been, last week in her office.
“Hi, Margot,” he said. He looked over and saw Elliot deep in conversation with Pete. “Hi, Elliot.” Elliot waved at him and went back to listening to Pete talk about soil.
“Enjoying the fair?” Margot asked him.
He grinned at her.
“Oh yeah, having a blast,” he said.