Page 50 of The Refusal

“Yeah, once or twice when I’ve had no alternative.”

I busy myself extracting my laptop, finding my headphones, and getting settled. The flight attendant greets me by name, like they always do with people who fly a lot, and puts my glass down on the little table that folds out of the dividing wall before moving up the aisle.

“I’m sorry about how last minute this is, Jo. Is your boyfriend okay with you going away?” I ask as conversationally as I can manage, eyes down on my bag. If we’re going to be working together for four days, it would be easier if we were more relaxed and open with each other. I like Jo, I want to get to know her better, and—boyfriend or no boyfriend—we don’t need awkwardness on this trip. My eyes shift to her freckled face and her brows are a hard slash on her forehead.

“My boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Um …” She tilts her head at me. “Who’s that?”

I smile at her. She’s cute. “You’ve got more than one?”

“I wasn’t aware I even hadone,” she mumbles into her glass, knocking far too much back and spilling some over her chin. The flush I like so much starts on her neck, and now it’s me who’s frowning.

“The guy you were with at the dinner, the blond one? I saw you with him before that as a matter of fact, at the coffee shop.”

She wipes the liquid off her face with a careful hand, grimacing. “At the coffee shop …? What coffee …?”

Her face clears, and she starts to laugh—actually fucking laughs. My stomach is about to dissolve from this conversation. I take a deep breath.

“Andy?” She covers her mouth, shaking her head. “Good-looking, blond, smooth?”

I nod tightly; the tension in my chest won’t let me speak. Our voices are hushed and I’m confident no one can overhear us, but I consciously try to relax my face.

Amusement is still dancing around her mouth. “Andy’s not my boyfriend. He’s an ex-colleague.” She leans forward, oblivious to my internal meltdown. “There is no way in hell … Honest to God, Janus, if you knew …” She shakes her head. “He is such a dog. He used to come into the office and brag about all his conquests. Mainly all the places he’d persuaded women to give him blowjobs—he’s with a different woman every night. I went to that event with him because he thought he’d got a girl pregnant”—she waves her hand—“but that’s a whole other drama.”

And I can’t even be interested in the pregnancy story, because I’m still stuck on the wordshe’s not my boyfriend. My entire body collapses in on itself, like a deflating balloon—all tension gone, whizzing through the air in a random arc. I close my eyes. I can’t look at her face.Not her boyfriend?How did I get this so wrong?

“Janus?”

My eyes pop open, and I try to temper a smile that would be dopily wide if I let it escape, hoping the adrenaline coursing through my body is not showing in my face.How long has this been eating away at me?

“Okay. Good.”

I’m not making much sense, but better words are trapped behind my tight throat. Her eyes go minutely wider, and she blinks, fiddling with her hair.

“What about your …?” She hesitates, and I instantly understand where she’s going with this. She’s talked about my dates before in a teasing way, but not in this way, not right after a conversation about a non-boyfriend. Suddenly, I want to give her every reassurance I can.

I shake my head. “For several years now, the company has been all-consuming, and I haven’t had a relationship in a long time. I’ve seen women because it’s sort of expected at the events I go to and need to be seen at.”

“So just hookups, huh?” she says, looking down at her hands.

I shake my head, but she’s not watching me. I don’t normally pay much attention to journalists and what they write about me, but, in this moment, I feel sick with it. I hate how it sounds. I hate the hesitancy in her voice.

“The media love to take photos of me with some eligible woman or other on my arm, but it was rarely more than a pleasant evening out. I’ve hooked up a few times, sure, but way less than people think.”

She glances up the aisle to where a flight attendant is helping a businesswoman settle into her seat. “So, this thing about you only seeing a woman for a couple of months …”

I take a deep breath and start counting: one, two, three … I’ve chosen to run this company; to have a profile in the press. But I loathe the idea that the media have created a false impression of me. The desire to set the record straight makes my words come out in a rush.

“The assumption is whoever I’m photographed with is my ‘partner’”—I make air quotes around the word—“so by the time I take a different woman to the next event, papers like to write that I’ve ‘split up’ with the first one, even though we hadn’t been actually dating.” I roll my shoulders in an attempt to release the tightness. “It gets them readership, I guess.” I squint at the darkness of the window behind her, trying to remember how often I’ve seen a woman after a function or even slept with one. One or two were nice, but they blur into one in my mind. It’s difficult to recall any other women with Jo sitting right in front of me.

“I’ve gone out with someone like that a few times—dated a woman again after an event, I mean.”

I’m well aware all this probably makes me seem sketchy, whereas I’ve never really had the time to think about it or met anyone who grabbed my attention. I can tell she doesn’t really buy this explanation, but I don’t know what else to say here.

“I reckon you missed out on a golden opportunity. Some of the women you went to those events with were gorgeous.” Her smile is teasing but her voice has an edge I can’t quite put my finger on. But … hang on … she’s looked me up? I immediately deflate:Of courseshe looked up a potential client, and all those pictures are probably front and center.

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