Page 28 of A Conflict of Interest

She looked sadly at me, brows furrowed, before she said, “I’m not—”

“Okay, but you are, though. You and Lucy stood up for me at a meeting and got me this wholenew projectthing. Anyone else would have been fired in my position. But I’m immune, I guess.”

Anna didn’t say anything, drawing her lips in a tight line. I looked down.

“I’m not complaining at you. I’m really grateful for your help. I’m just complaining at myself… I’ll make sure the, uh, the data is thoroughly scrubbed and checked very closely.”

“Lucy and I are still just a ping away at any point,” she said. “We’re still here for you however we can be. Let us know how things are going.”

I smiled thinly. “I will,” I said, even though I wouldn’t. Dirty little liar that I was.

I walked the walk of shame packing my things up and heading out of the office, keenly aware of everyone’s eyes on me and feeling myself burn under the awareness of it, and once I got back to my car, I stepped into the driver’s seat, tossed my bag into the passenger seat, dropped against the back of my seat, and I let out a rush of air through my lips, staring straight ahead at the frost accumulating in the corners of the windshield.

Why was it I kept ending up useless again? Every time I set out to make myself better—to fix my issues—I made things better for a bit before I found myself drifting back to my old ways. Back to being clueless and messing up everything in my orbit.

Come to think of it… it was always Veronica. Every time I was thinkingI’m getting it together and doing better now, it was because I was trying to get her attention, or that I justhadgotten her attention and I was trying to live up to it. And then things would go south and I’d fall off a cliff with it.

I was a big believer in Christmas miracles. I just wished they believed in me. This was a terrible miracle.

I needed something to get me out of my rhythm, something other than just going straight back to my apartment, or I’d associate my apartment for the rest of forever with sad… sad sack energies. With a heavy sigh, I pulled up my phone, hovering over my chat with Nic before I swiped away. I’d… tell her later. Tell her that I let all of her overtime go to waste. I went to my maps instead, plotting out a course to the coffee shop—I’d gone full stalker and tracked down the spot that had been in the photo Nic had sent, since it had looked so cute and Christmassy, and when I realized also maybe that meant there was a chance I’d run into Nic there… it hadn’t dissuaded me from going as much as it was supposed to.

Not that I’d be likely to recognize her if I saw her. All I had to go by was a mostly obscured picture of her dress, but evenin that she was jaw-droppingly beautiful. As if I wasn’t already crushing on her enough! But unless she showed up in that dress, I probably wouldn’t even recognize her. She wouldn’t recognize me. We could very well be at adjacent tables and not know it.

We… probably wouldn’t be, though. But a little fantasy was what I needed right now, the imagination of something nice.

The shop was as cute and cozy as it had seemed in the pictures, and I trudged inside, still feeling like I needed to cry and not being able to—like I’d been hollowed out and the part of me that actually made tears had been taken out too, and all I could do was vacantly put one foot in front of the other to push in through the doors, into where hanging light strings and tinsel tied in boughs brightened my spirits a little bit. And the stuffed Rudolph on the counter next to the register and the Santa hat at a jaunty angle on the corner of the register brightened my spirits a little bit more.

“Hi—” I said, stepping up to the register, and I flinched hearing how small and sad my own voice sounded, putting my hand to my throat. “Oh, uh, sorry. I was just… choking.”

That was a bad lie. The guy behind the register stopped, knotting his brows in concern. “Are you… okay?”

“Yeah, I stopped choking. Just got… muffin in my throat. Yeah. I’d like a muffin. Is what I meant…” I scratched my head. “I could go for a second muffin. Clearly, the first one didn’t go well.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, staring blankly at me. I welled up a little bit.

“Can I… get a pourover too? That would actually be really nice.”

He softened. “Absolutely. The bean on pourover right now is a Brazilian medium-roast. Is that good?”

“Viva Brazil,” I said in a watery voice. When he stared at me, I said, “That is to say… that sounds great. Thanks.”

He got me an apple-cinnamon streusel muffin that smelled so good I thought I might cry and he started on a pourover, and while I waited for it, I scanned the shop and found my heart crushed to dust, shattered on the pavement and ground into ruin, because the one thing I’d pointed out that I liked about the place—specifically the red-and-blue nutcracker from the window Nic had taken a picture of—was gone.

Just that one. Everything else in the place was the exact same. None of the other nutcrackers had even moved. I just saidoh, that guy seems niceand the… the snipers took him out. It was the last straw, and I broke down crying, burying my face in my hands, leaning back against the counter, curling my fingertips into my hair and crying quietly. I heard the poor barista make a noise in his throat before he said, “Miss… ma’am. Are you all right?”

“I ruined everything at work because of my stupid ex and my stupid self, and I’m getting taken off the project that was the one shot I had at proving I wasn’t completely useless, and… and they got rid of the little blue nutcracker guy,” I said, my voice thick and wavering, pointing to the windowsill. “I loved that guy. What did he do wrong?”

“Again with that nutcracker…” he said, and I gave him a blotchy, tear-stricken look. He shrugged. “Just the other day, this girl came up and insisted on buying it, said it was for a gift. I told her to just go ahead and take it, since I’d never known someone to have such strong feelings on a nutcracker, but, uh… she said then it wouldn’t be a good gift and insisted on paying for it, so I charged her ten bucks, which I think was about how much it had cost at Target.”

I stared at him with a sudden nervous sensation tangling in my stomach. I’d… now that I thought about it, I jokingly asked Nic to get me that one. And… I wiped my eyes, speaking in a small voice. “Nic?”

He scratched his head. “Maybe? I don’t really remember her name. I could ask my friend… he was here on a date with her that didn’t last long because apparently she was desperately hung up on her ex. This a friend of yours? You the nutcracker brigade?”

She’d gone on a date. What? When? She hadn’t said a word. Desperately trying to get over her ex? “What?”

He looked at his phone. “I think he texted it at some point… yeah. Veronica.” He pursed his lips. “Veronica? Goes by Nic? Who does that?”

Oh… oh, no. That didn’t seem right. That was probably a mistake. Probably just a coincidence. That someone else was interested in that specific nutcracker. And that it was someone with my ex’s name. My ex’s name which did… in fact… now that I thought about it… haveNicin it.

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