My best friends were also convinced this was the case.
“I just, I don’t fucking get it,” Natalie protested, holding her fork in her fist and punctuating each word with a table pound. “You guys were so good together, like, really good together! What the hell, Clara?”
“Look, you knew this wasn’t going to last. It couldn’t. I was always leaving. He knew this. I knew this. Fucking hell, you guys knew this, so quit busting my balls.”
Natalie pointed her fork at me. “I will fucking bust your balls all I want, Morgan, because you’re acting like a real ass here. This is literally the worst decision you could make, you cannot leave. You just can’t!”
“Clara, honey,” Roxie said, always the voice of reason. She knew me better than anyone, she was always the mediator, the one who could tamp Natalie down when she was getting too out there. She would calm this down, she’d be able to articulate to Natalie what was really going on here, that it was just simply impossible for me to stay. Roxie would make it make sense. “This is some kind of bullshit.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, my head swiveling toward her in surprise.
“I love you,” she said, her eyes sad, “but this is the very worst kind of bullshit. And you know I don’t push you very often because I know that’s hard for you. I know you hate it when you think someone is trying to tell you what to do, but in this case, I don’t care. Unequivocally and without question, this is a mistake. You do this, you leave this man who loves you, you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”
Tears, hot and wild, burned behind my eyelids. But I wouldn’t let them fall. I couldn’t let them fall.
“Has everyone gone crazy? This isn’t about me, and it’s not even really about Archie.” A lump the size of an orange swelled up in my throat from saying his name out loud. “For God’s sake, it’s not like I have a choice. This is my job, in case anyone has forgotten, and my job means I’m in a different place all the fucking time.” I swallowed hard, the orange growing to a grapefruit. “It’s been fun, really fun, being here with you guys and meeting everyone and getting to know Leo and Oscar, and even Chad and Logan, and seeing Trudy again, and yes, of course, Archie.” The grapefruit was now a pineapple. “I have loved the time I got to spend with Archie, and it was incredible and wonderful and fucking hell he’s . . . Jesus, he’s everything . . . but that doesn’t matter because I have to go. And I can’t be here. So that’s just . . .” I sighed, so deep that every part of me down to my toes suddenly felt exhausted. “It’s just the way it goes.” I looked at them both through heavy lids. Everything felt heavy, every part of me just felt weighed down and so very sad. “Okay?”
Roxie shook her head, pursing her lips and looking for all the world like she had so many things to say but knowing innately that none of them would work. “Okay.”
“Not okay, but okay,” Natalie agreed, her normally loud and full voice no more than a whisper.
I picked up my fork, not hungry at all but needing something to do. “Okay.”
Chapter 23
Two months later . . .
“Two hundred thread count is too low.”
“It’s what we’ve always used.”
“I realize that, but it’s still too low.”
“I don’t think guests really care what the thread count is when they’re on vacation.”
“Well, that’s exactly where you’re wrong.” I sighed. “People want to feel taken care of when they’re at a hotel of this magnitude, sometimes in ways they didn’t even know they needed. They want to feel comforted, and looked after, and when they slip into their bed at the end of a long day they want to look at each other and say, ‘Wow, this is seriously the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in.’?” I picked up the old sheet and rubbed it between my fingers. “Believe me, the last thing you want anyone saying when they slip into bed is ‘Holy shit, can you believe we’re spending eight hundred dollars a night and they can’t even spring for some nice sheets?’?”
I was sitting in the Charleston Conference Room at the Oakmont Resort and Golf Club in Buford, South Carolina, in a meeting with their director of operations, their VP of sales, and the housekeeping supervisor. Trying to explain to them why their shitty scratchy sheets had to be replaced. As expected, they were fighting me. As expected, I was fighting back.
Not expected? I couldn’t give a shit whether I won this argument or not.
I’d been at the Oakmont for less than two weeks and had already identified their staffing issues, noticed new branding opportunities, and pitched several severe cost-cutting initiatives as well as an entirely new recreation program. Before that I’d been at The Lantern Inn in Stowe, Vermont, The Red Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast on Mackinac Island, Michigan, and a whirlwind but highly productive visit to The Sea Grass Hotel and Tennis Club in Mendocino, California. Same issues, same troubles, basically the same solutions. I’d saved the day, righted the ship, and went on my merry way. And now here I was, in South Carolina.
Forty-five minutes in and we hadn’t even addressed the new duvet I was suggesting. I’d shoot myself in the face, but I was tough on gun control.
I was suddenly exhausted. “You know what, let’s table this. I know you’re all anxious to get done and get home before the holiday weekend, so let’s just all think about what I’ve proposed, and then when we come back we’ll figure out a way through this, okay?” I waved them out with a tired smile.
Everyone, as anxious as I was to get home for the holiday weekend, agreed, thanked me for my time, and exited the grand conference room. I closed the door, and on second thought, locked it. I went back to the table where my materials were all in neat, tidy stacks. Ideas well researched and fully thought out, how-tos and to-dos and this-will-helps and these have-to-gos.
I sat in my chair, looked at everything, and laid my head down on the table. My boss, Dick Stevee, heavy on the dick, although in reality, I doubted it somewhat, had been right about one thing. When you don’t give a shit about the job you’re doing, you can bang it out pretty fast.
I’d become a machine. I breathed, slept, and ate cost analysis, staffing spreadsheets, booking projections, target sales goals. My schedule had been so busy I hadn’t even competed in a marathon or a triathlon, and the exercise I did get was all inside a gym on a treadmill, usually with my iPad open so I could get more work done.
My boss was fucking dazzled. “You keep this up, Morgan, when it comes time, that partnership is yours.”
I should be ecstatic. I should be over the moon. I should be . . . fuck me, I should be happy.
I was miserable. I’d only managed to sneak in one weekend to New York City to help Roxie shop for her wedding dress, and spent much of that weekend tripping over my own words to make sure no one mentioned the one person I was dying to ask about.