Page 82 of The Seven Year Slip

“Of course it is,” I replied quickly, hoping the words could be the salve for the itch under my skin. “I want this.”

Rhonda’s red lips quirked into a smirk. “Good. I expected nothing less. Strauss might want to hire someone else, but there are two people atStrauss and Adder, and I have just as much weight as he does. You,” she went on pointedly, “just have to nab James Ashton.”

“Oh, that’s all?” I asked, trying not to sound too panicked. “As easy as catching the moon.”

“Go get ’em,” she cheered.

I returned to my cubicle, where there was so little privacy I couldn’t even scream into my donut neck pillow I had tucked under my desk for days when I took cat naps in the stock room. I already knew the imprint and my career were riding on the acquisition of James Ashton. She didn’t have to remind me.

Breathe, Clementine.

If I wanted the career I had been working toward for seven years, I had to do this.

No matter what.

I sent a few emails and followed up on some podcast interviews, and slowly my eyes strayed to the landscape watercolors I’d painted years ago, hanging on the corkboard beside my monitor. The Brooklyn Bridge. The pond in Central Park. The steps of the Acropolis. A quiet tea garden in Osaka. A fishing pier. Snapshots of places I’d been, and the person I’d been when I painted them.

That restless feeling under my skin returned, more terrible than ever.

The painting of a wall of glaciers had hues of purple and blue, from the summer I turned twenty-two—the Clementine from Iwan’s time—fresh off a heartbreak with her boyfriend. I should’ve seen it coming, but I did not, and I was an utter mess afterward. I’d graduated, and went back to my parents’ house on Long Island, and holed myself up there to waste the summer away while I applied to curation jobs I wasn’t sure I wanted.

My boyfriend and I were going to go on a backpacking tour across Europe, but obviously that didn’t happen when he dumped me and decided to take a tech job in San Francisco, and I almost refunded my airline tickets—until my aunt caught wind of it and refused to let me.

“Absolutelynot,” she said over the phone. I was lying in my bedroom in my parents’ house, staring up at the ceiling filled with boy bands from my youth. All of my things were in boxes in the hallway, moved out of my ex’s apartment in a whirlwind of twenty-four hours. “We are going to take that trip.”

I sat up, startled. “We?”

“You and me, my darling!”

“But—I didn’t plan for us to go. Half the hotels I have booked have one bed and—”

“Life doesn’t always go as planned. The trick is to make the most of it when it doesn’t,” she said matter-of-factly. “And don’t tell me you don’t want to sleep butt-to-butt with your dear oldaunt?”

“That’s not what I’m saying, but you must have something else to do. That trip you were talking about, the one to Rapa Nui—”

“Nah! I can postpone it. Let’s go backpacking across Europe!” she said decisively. “You and me—we haven’t done it since you were in high school, remember? Just one last time, for old times’ sake. You only live once, after all.”

And whether or not I wanted to say no, Aunt Analea was the kind of force of nature who wouldn’t let me. I could have thought up any excuse, found any reason to stay home and wallow in self-pity, and it wouldn’t have mattered. My aunt showed up the next morning with her bags packed, in the blue coat she always reserved for travel, and large sunglasses, a taxi waiting on the curb to take us to the airport. Her mouth twisted into a smile so big and so dangerous, I felt my heartache break way to something else—excitement. A longing for somethingnew.

“Let’s go on an adventure, my darling,” she declared.

And, oh, did I realize then, that I had the thirst for adventure sown into my very bones.

I missed that girl, but I felt her coming back now, little by little, and I didn’t quite hate the thought of something new anymore. The longer I sat here, in this small cubicle, the more I began to wonder what, exactly, I was working toward.

I thought it was the idea of Rhonda, a woman surrounded by framed bestseller lists and accolades, quite happy where she was, and I imagined myself in her orange chair. What I would look like. I’d need to throw my whole self into it. As many hours as I’d worked, Iknew Rhonda put in more. Made herself available to our authors, to their agents, to her staff, every waking moment. She wore her job the way she wore her Louboutins. To be as good as I wanted to be, I’d have to do that, too. I’d trade my flats for heels, buy a set of blazers, be the kind of person everyone expected me to be—

Someone like James, I supposed.

I wanted that. Didn’t I?

My phone vibrated, and I glanced at the text message from Drew.

It’s in! Second and final offer!! Send good vibes, she said with a praying-hands emoji.

YOU GOT THIS BABE!Fiona replied.

James and his agent invited us to the soft opening of his new restaurant on Thursday. Move Wine & Whine to then and there??Drew asked.

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