STEP BY STEP (11 page)

“Hi,” I said as I walked in. My heart
pounded in my chest as I waited for the moment of truth. I sat down in the
chair across from Preston and studied his face, trying to gauge whether or not
he liked it.

He sat back in his chair with a solemn
look on his face.

“Well, what’d you think?” I asked. I
couldn’t help but smile. I was damn proud of that work.

“Garbage,” he replied, his words cutting
into my emotional flesh like a sharp knife. “Complete garbage. I’m actually
really disappointed in you, Mirabelle.”

I struggled to catch my breath, as he had
nearly knocked the wind out of me. “Can you elaborate, please?”

“What’s the point?” he sighed. “You
obviously don’t understand what you’re doing. I really think I jumped the gun
with you. I took one shining moment of yours and assumed that you were going to
be my next star. I guess I thought-”

“Stop,” I cut him off. “Don’t say
anymore. You don’t have to be mean about it.”

“I’m not being mean,” he said with an
incredulous glare. “I’m being honest. You need to have thick skin if you want
to work in advertising, Mirabelle. I thought you were a real shark. You’re not.
And that’s okay. It’s just not what I’m looking for. I’m going to hand the
Johnston account over to one of the senior execs.”

I pursed my lips together, trying to
fight the word venom that was bubbling and aching to come out. “I feel sorry
for you.”

He laughed. The asshole fucking laughed.

I flew out of his office like a mad woman
and made a beeline for the fourth floor. I had to talk to Monica.

“Monica,” I said as I barged into her
office, slightly out of breath and face red hot with adrenaline.

“One sec,” she held up one finger as she
tied up her phone call. “What is it, sweetie?”

I damn near slammed her office door and
plopped down in the seat across from her. It took all the strength I had not to
break down, but I couldn’t fight the rogue tears that fell from my eyes and
left tracks down my cheeks.

“You slept with him, didn’t you?” Monica
said as sheer disappointment washed over her face.

“You can say ‘I told you so’ if you
want,” I said between light sniffles. I grabbed a tissue from the box on the
corner of her desk and dabbed my eyes.

Monica shook her head. “I won’t say
that.”

“What should I do now?” I sobbed. “I feel
like my career is over before it’s even started.”

“You have to rectify this,” she replied.
“Resign. Get the hell out of here. Find a different place to intern and never
look back. You’ve been here, what, two weeks now?”

“Yeah,” I replied, dabbing my hot tears
once again. “There’s no way I can finish out the semester here.”

“Resign, sweetie,” she said. “Cut your
losses. Start fresh somewhere else in the fall.”

I didn’t want to push my graduation date
any farther, but it looked like it was going to be my only option.

“And promise me you won’t blur those
lines ever again!” she said with a slightly joking tone to try to lighten the
mood. “Your career is not over. Unless you really piss him off…”

She looked to the side, as if she was
recalling an awful memory. I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t ask.

“I thought he liked me,” I said, my voice
barely a whisper. “I wouldn’t have done anything with him, but he told me he
had to have me. He treated me like gold. He was starting to soften up with me a
bit. And then Sapphire showed up. Ever since then it’s like he almost hates
me.”

“Sapphire?” Monica asked.

“Yeah, she came into his office last
week,” I said. “They had a heated argument. He kicked her out.”

“Interesting,” Monica said as she sucked
in a slow breath.

“What, do you know something I don’t?” I
asked, praying the answer was yes.

“I’ve heard some things,” she replied. “I
don’t know if there’s any truth to them. You know how people like to talk.”

“Tell me what you know, because all I
know at this point is he’s calling me a liar and acting like he wants nothing
to do with me,” I said. “And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what
changed between us.”

“I didn’t tell you much before because I don’t
know everything,” Monica said, taking her sweet time recalling the precious
information. “I just know he was crazy about her.
Crazy in
love.
Damn near obsessed. And she turned out to be married. Rumor has it
she was using him to get to the top, but that’s about all I know.”

I shook my head. “I still don’t know what
that has to do with me. None of it makes sense, Monica.”

“Cut your losses,” she said. “You’ll
never be able to figure him out.
Life’s
a whole lot
easier when the only committed relationship you have is to your job. Men suck.”

PRESTON

The faintest sound of paper sliding
across carpet filled the echoes of my quiet office. I glanced around the room,
only to see a white envelope resting in front of my door. Someone had just slid
it under the crack in the bottom.

I stood up, annoyed that I had to leave
the confines of my cozy leather chair. Who writes letters anymore? Whatever
happened to typing up a quick email?

My fingers slid between the
paper
as I peeled open the letter.

Preston,

Thank
you so much for this tremendous opportunity to intern at your advertising firm.
It was truly the chance of a lifetime, but without going into too much detail,
I feel that I’ve compromised what this internship was supposed to mean.

I’m
sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I’m not good enough to be your shining star.
I’m sorry you think I lied to you.

But
most of all, I’m sorry that you feel the need to punish me for the sins of Sapphire
Hart. I’m not her, and I’m sorry you couldn’t make the distinction. We could
have been happy but now we’ll never know.

I
refuse to pay for the sins of another woman, and that is why I am resigning
– both personally and professionally. My formal resignation is on file
with HR.

Mirabelle

I crumpled the letter and tossed it
across the room into the garbage can, missing by a couple inches. I stormed out
of my office, towards Mirabelle’s office, and flung the door open, but her desk
was cleaned off. Not a single pen or one of her millions of notebooks covered
it. The computer was shut down and her chair was pushed neatly under the desk.

“Ruthie,” I called out as I stomped down
the hall. “Where’s Mirabelle.”

“She left, sir,” she replied with a bit
of fear in her eyes. I must have looked damn angry. “She resigned this morning.
She told me to slip the note under your door after she left.”

“So she’s gone,” I repeated, those words
hitting me hard along with the reality of her absence.

“Yes,” Ruthie replied, her eyes studying
mine. “I’m sorry, sir. She was a nice addition to have around here.”

I didn’t have time for her niceties.
“What’s her address? Look her up in the system.”

Ruthie hesitated for a second, but she
knew better. She clicked around in her computer before jotting down an address
on a scrap of paper and handing it to me.

I practically ripped it from her pudgy
fingers as my feet carried me towards the elevator. Maybe Mirabelle lied to me,
but she was right. She was not Sapphire Hart. I had to see her one last time.

***

The cab dropped me off in front of a
brick apartment building above a small printing business. I approached the door
and hit every last buzzer on the call system until someone let me up.

I climbed the three flights of stairs
until I got to Mirabelle’s floor and found her apartment door at the end of the
hall.

“Mirabelle,” I said as I knocked three
times, “…It’s Preston.”

After several long minutes, the door
unlocked from the other side and flew open, revealing Mirabelle standing there.
She was already in low-cut, pink sweats and a skin-hugging, sheer white tank
top. Her long, blonde hair was pulled into a low braid that hung over her
shoulder, and her face had been wiped clean of any makeup.

Fresh-faced, casual Mirabelle was just as
much of a bombshell as the fox in the business suit I’d been around day in and
day out. The pudgy, pimply teenager was long gone, even in her natural state.

Her eyes full of hurt and angst, she
said, “What do you need, Preston?”

“I wanted to talk to you about your
letter,” I said. “Can I come in?”

She swung the door open winder and
motioned for me to come inside. A modest studio with minimal furnishings,
nothing really caught my eye except for a small bookcase next to the door
covered in frames and photographs.
That and the lack of even
a single child’s toy in the entire space.

“Why are you staring at my pictures?” she
asked, annoyed with me.

“You have a ton of pictures of yourself,”
I observed out loud.

“Are you kidding me?” she snapped. “That’s
Madison, my sister
..?
”

“Well, fuck me,” I sighed, drawing out
each syllable. Obviously I remembered Madison, but never in a million years did
I think they’d grow up looking like freaking identical twins.

As my eyes scanned the rest of the
photos, I noticed several more of the little girl I’d seen her with the weekend
before.

“She was here last weekend actually,” Mirabelle
said. “With her daughter. My niece. A lot’s happened in ten years…”

A hard lump formed in my throat, and
anger boiled through my blood. I hated being wrong, and I hated myself for
never being able to admit it.

“I don’t want you to resign,” I said as I
turned back to face her. “I want you back at the firm.”

“But you said my work is garbage,” she
said, glaring at me with her beautiful ocean blue eyes and curious, arched
brows.

“I want to help you,” I said. “With my
guidance, I know you can take things to a whole different level.”

“I don’t think I can,” she replied, her
voice low.

“That’s absurd,” I replied. “Of course
you can. Go get changed. You can ride back to the office with me.”

“I can’t work with you, Preston,” she
said, her eyes pleading with me not to push the issue any further.

“What happened to the girl I met two
weeks ago?” I asked. “The girl with fire in her eyes and an air of confidence about
her?”

“When you constantly give your best, and
you’re told it’s not good enough every single day,” she said. “It sort of eats away
at you. I don’t even think I want to work in advertising anymore.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, secretly
realizing I’d maybe pushed her a little too far, too fast.

The truth was, her work was never
garbage, and I knew that. Her work was amazing. It was better than anything I’d
ever churned out in all my years in the business. I’d graduated at the top of
my class at Duke, and her work put mine to shame.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t make me beg. I
don’t like to beg. And I don’t like being told no…”

I reached my hand out and took hers,
pulling her closer to me. I placed my hand gently under her jaw and nudged her
lips closer towards mine. Inches away, it took all I had not to kiss them.