“Thanks, Dad.” Lily smiled at her father and took a deep breath. “Now that that’s settled, does anybody have an iPhone charger?”
Everyone shook their heads. Violet, who was still intrigued by Lily’s revelation about her emails with Nick, smiled slyly. “What kind of emails were y’all sending, though?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows. “Kinky stuff?”
“Violet.” This from Dahlia, Benjamin and Iris.
“No, the emails were . . .” Lily started. Wait. Email.
She could email Nick! Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
She ran to open her laptop, pulling up her personal email account. And the first thing she saw was a message from Edith.
I’ve been trying to reach you every way possible, and I’m hoping that you regularly check your personal email, unlike the way you’ve been ignoring your work account. I need my new business cards! Please bring them to the party!
Was she serious? She wanted Lily to go back to the office and bring her business cards across town, just so that she could hand them out at a party that happened every year?
Forget that. Lily wasn’t going out of her way for Edith like this anymore.
But then she thought about how Edith had bullied their poor book cover designer Jeremy into designing those business cards. Jeremy was kind and patient and never gave Lily grief over the many comments Edith made about his cover sketches. Lily didn’t want his hard, unpaid work to go to waste.
“Where are we going for dinner?” she asked, grabbing her tote bag and useless, dead phone. “I’ll meet you there. I have to do something for work first.”
Iris gave Lily the address for Osteria 57 in the Village, and Lily rushed out the door.
The party was being held on the rooftop at the Moxy hotel in Times Square. Lily spent a good five minutes in the lobby trying to explain that no, she didn’t have an invitation, she simply needed to bring business cards to someone in attendance. After she was finally allowed entry, she took the elevator up to the rooftop. When she exited the elevator, her steps faltered. This party was packed. Clusters of people were spread out across the rooftop. Hotel staff milled among the crowd, holding trays of appetizers. To the far left, there was a large projector screen, displaying a book cover that Lily didn’t recognize. A short white man, who was sweating in his blazer, stood behind a makeshift podium, gesturing to the screen as everyone listened. He must have been an author.
Lily maneuvered through the crowd, searching for Edith. She heard someone call her name, and she turned, spotting Dani and Oliver by the bar. They waved at her, and Lily laughed, waving back. Of course Dani had found a way to score two invites for junior-level staff. Lily kept moving through the crowd. Along the way, she spotted Marcus standing by the rooftop railing, speaking to a tall, brown-skinned woman with long, dark hair. Lily would have to find him and say hi before she left.
She finally located Edith near the back of the party by the bathrooms. Edith was talking with another white woman, who was short like Edith, but her strawberry blonde hair hung loose to her shoulders. She wore a bright orange, sleeveless A-line dress in contrast to Edith’s all-black outfit. They looked like night and day.
When Edith noticed Lily, she waved her forward impatiently. Lily fought the urge to roll her eyes and slipped through the crowd.
“Here you go,” Lily said, handing over the business cards.
Edith didn’t even say thank you. She took the cards and dropped them into her purse. “Lily, this is Bernice Gilman.”
“Oh,” Lily said, looking at the woman who would be her second boss if Lily was unfortunate enough to be stuck at this job by the time Bernice started. “Nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too.” With a warm smile, Bernice shook Lily’s hand. “Did you really come all this way to drop off Edith’s business cards? That’s dedication.”
“She’s decent most days,” Edith said, waving her hand in dismissal. “Lily is a career assistant type. She’ll be with us for a long time.”
Lily smarted at Edith’s words. Not just her words, but the way she’d said them. Lily had literally just asked for a promotion. She obviously didn’t want to be a career assistant!
She thought again about what Nick had said to her. You’re the most capable person I know. He was right. Lily was capable. Months ago, she’d been a mumbling, hesitant girl in the elevator who couldn’t even look Nick in the eye. And now she was in love with him. If she hadn’t taken the leap all those days ago, who knew where they would be. Life was about the leap.
Fuck it. No more of this bullshit. Lily owed Edith nothing. If she could finally stand up to her family, she could surely stand up to Edith.
She took a deep breath. “Actually, I quit.”
Edith gawked at her. Bernice looked on in confusion.
“You what?” Edith sputtered.
“I quit.”
Maybe the job with Francesca Ng would pan out or maybe it wouldn’t. Lily had other options while she continued to apply to other publishing jobs. She could go back to being a bookseller. She could freelance edit. She’d take temp jobs. She’d be without healthcare for some time and that would suck, but anything would be better than working for Edith. She deserved respect and to work with someone who believed in her. She deserved peace.
What the hell was she still doing at this self-indulgent, elitist party? She couldn’t spend another second wasting her time, doing things that made her unhappy.
“I’ll hand in my official notice tomorrow morning,” Lily said. “Good luck with her, Bernice.”
Bernice’s jaw was on the floor. Edith’s pale cheeks flushed red as she struggled to come up with a reply. Lily wasn’t going to stay long enough to hear it. Feeling weightless and free, she turned on her heels and began to make her way back to the elevator.
Her first order of business was going to Duane Reade to buy a new phone charger, and then she’d call Nick and hop her ass on the first flight to North Carolina because she loved him, and she wanted to be there for him, and she wasn’t going to let him push her away.
She was halfway to the elevator when the doors opened, and Nick stepped out, wearing a black T-shirt and Adidas joggers. Definitely not party attire. He looked like he’d just gotten off a flight. His gaze immediately fanned out across the crowd, searching.
Lily froze in place, blinking at him, wondering if he was really there or if he was a figment of her willful imagination.
She called his name, not caring if she interrupted whoever was speaking at the front of the rooftop. Nick’s attention snapped in the direction of her voice. But before he could see Lily, the woman who’d been speaking with Marcus appeared and pulled Nick away toward the podium.
27
“Nick!” Zara hissed excitedly into his ear. Her hands were clasped around his arm as she ushered him across the rooftop and through the crowd. “You’re here! Marcus told me you weren’t coming!”