ThisTimeNextDoor (29 page)

“Jeez,” Blair said, finally sounding indignant. “That’s bad. Do you think he just needs a little time?”

“That’s what his mother says about you.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

What if he was thinking the same thing? Rose closed her eyes. “I refuse to waste another minute on a man who only loves me when the lights are out,” she said quietly, her breath fogging the mirror.

“Oh, Rose.”

“I thought I was beyond all this. I’m twenty-six, not sixteen. I accept myself. I love myself. All of me.” She stepped back, scanned her figure in the mirror. “So why do I feel so scared all of a sudden?”

“Maybe because this is a man who could actually mean something to you.”

Rose stared into her own eyes, not sure she liked the sound of that.
 

A long silence ensued. “What are you going to do?” Blair asked.

Rose had been asking herself that for hours. “I’ve been underemployed for a really long time. I can’t tell you how nice it is to be proud of my job. Having a job at all. Good health insurance, bonus programs, stock options.” She ran her hand through her hair. “My tenth high school reunion is coming up. I might actually be able to go. I was this smart chick who graduated at sixteen, voted most likely to succeed… but then I went nowhere.”

“It’s not just you, it’s everybody. The economy has been terrible.”

“But can I throw my first real opportunity away on a guy who hasn’t even had the guts to smile at me in front his mother?”

Blair’s silence was answer enough.

Chapter 21

FOR THE NEXT WEEK AND a half, until Thanksgiving break forced her to stay away, Rose arrived at the WellyNelly offices before eight in the morning and went home after seven in the evening.

She discovered she wasn’t the only ambitious employee at WellyNelly; although most of the staff worked more modest hours, there were a few young men and women who seemed to have nothing except their workstations, the software, the forums, the online community, and vast quantities of imbibed stimulants, most of them legal.

Rose joined their ranks with a psychic sigh of relief, anything to stop herself from thinking and feeling too much about her personal life.

She’d worried about seeing Mark around the office, but shouldn’t have. He hadn’t been into the office since his birthday.

“Back to working from home,” Jared, one of the programmers, told her as they refilled their coffee mugs in the break room. “He gets more done there. In November his productivity totally tanked. What used to take him a day was taking him forever. Now he’s back, true to form, saving my ass.”

“Yours?” Mark and Jared, so far as she knew, were in totally different departments. “How does he do that?”

“I have no idea,” Jared said, misunderstanding her. “But some people are just fucking brilliant, you know? And he doesn’t care at all if I pass off his work as my own. He encourages it, actually.” Smiling, he sipped his coffee and walked away.

Rose heard similar tales from others around the office, even from Bridget at the front desk.

“He set up a camera for me so I can snap a quick picture of everyone who comes through the door, label it with their name, study it later. That’s how I learned everyone’s name so fast.” She grinned. “Sylly’s promoting me next month because he says that’s what management needs, more people people. Instead of just geeks.”

Rose forced a smile, her heart squeezing. “You’ll do great, Bridget. Really great. Congratulations.”

Just because he was Mr. Wonderful with everyone else didn’t mean he was wonderful for her.

So she went back to her desk, threw herself into her work. Most of her extra hours were spent studying the revenue stream, a creatively unobtrusive array of advertising.

The numbers—and the opportunity for growth—fascinated her. Her group, the Women’s Forum, had the same kinds of ads as the rest of the site, which she felt was a major problem. Not that she wanted flashing tampon ads all over it, but WellyNelly was neglecting a lot to keep the site strictly non-gendered and medical. Vitamins were great, but why not put in a little fun? Moisturizers, aromatherapy, yoga-themed spa vacations… she began creating a spreadsheet of hundreds of companies and services she thought would be excellent sponsors of their vibrant, growing network.

One evening, as she was eating a sandwich for dinner at her desk, she scrolled over the open positions within the company, curious to see what other people, who didn’t have Mark recommend them, had on their résumés. She enjoyed the planning work on her team, but she felt like she was missing out on a lot, had so much to learn.

The list of qualifications for existing openings at the company made her put down her sandwich.

MBA. MA. PhD. Ten years experience. Computer Science. Economics. Marketing. Electrical Engineering.

Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, MIT.

She’d expected at least one position similar to her own, some entry-level biology graduate type thing, but no.

Mr. Wonderful had pulled more than strings, he’d pulled ropes. Massive cabling. Enough to suspend the Golden Gate Bridge.

She scanned the jobs again, swallowing the food in her mouth that had turned into a hard, dry lump, then logged off her computer.

Maybe she was just tired from the long hours and the sleepless nights, but at that moment, Rose felt as if she’d been fooling herself. Just as if she’d tried to pass herself off as a web developer or pediatric cardiologist.

Except this time, she’d lied to herself.

* * *

The Johnsons always had Thanksgiving dinner at their house. Every year, even if Liam was competing around the world, or Mark was on the other side of the country, or even if April was backpacking with another dopey boyfriend in Central America, everyone made the journey home to gorge on roasted oversized poultry and hug their mother. This year was no different.

Well, it was a little different. Liam had Bev at his side, and she wasn’t at all thankful for the Johnson Family traditional low-carb, protein-powder pie crust—so she baked three pies of her own. Each of them, she declared, placing them on the kitchen table, was half butter and half sugar.

Nobody complained, not even Liam.

And April was alone—no sulky, body-pierced lover in tow; another first. She’d been inviting boyfriends to their Thanksgiving dinner since eighth trade, but this year she showed up in her own car, sober, not wearing her usual black eyeliner, and set about making a salad without insulting anyone.

Mark assumed he looked the same as he always did: alone, quiet, slightly miserable. He snuck pieces of Bev’s pie crust into his mouth while he stringed green beans next to the sink, lost in thoughts of soft, creamy skin, smiling blue eyes, and deep feminine laughter.

Liam poked him in the ribs. “What’s the matter with you?” He held two glasses of wine, one extended outward.

“What do you mean?”

Liam rolled his eyes. “You’re sighing so loud I could hear you over April’s shitty music.”

“She dumped him,” April said, reaching across Mark’s chest, claiming the glass for herself.

“Ah,” Liam said knowingly.

Mark flung a green bean into the bowl. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Liam said.

“
Ah
,” Mark mimicked. “Like you’ve got me all figured out.”

Liam shifted his gaze to April. They stared at each other.

“Forget it.” Mark dropped a handful of beans and strode out of the kitchen to the back porch. The winter rains had started, making a satisfying march out into the peace and quiet of the great outdoors unavailable, so he paced back and forth between the doggie beds.

Zeus joined him a few minutes later, looking as miserable as Mark felt. Some sadist had put the dog in a miniature reindeer suit, complete with antlers and sleigh bells. Never had Mark seen such disgust on the loving, patient animal’s face. The bug eyes and lolling tongue suddenly captured the indignant rage poor Zeus was unable to express verbally.
Look at this shit,
he was saying.
Can you believe what I have to put up with?

Mark squatted down. Unfastening the antlers, he gently rubbed Zeus’s tiny, bony skull. “Who did this to you, dude?”

Grateful, Zeus applied his tongue to the side of Mark’s face like the shammy in a touchless car wash.

Liam stepped out onto the porch and closed the door to the kitchen. “Looks like this is where the men hang out.”

Not interested in conversation, Mark lowered himself all the way to the floor, legs crossed, and captured Zeus in his arms without a word.

His brother joined him on the floor. “I told her the antlers were too much.”

“Who?”

“Kate. Bev’s sister. She’s designing the Fite Dog line. I was just showing everyone how hideous it is.”

“I knew I didn’t like that woman.”

Liam stifled a snort.

“Shut up,” Mark said. Kate was just one more of the women Mark had the misfortune to dream about. Very briefly in her case, thank God; Bev was a lot nicer than her sister.

“Sorry.” Liam held out another goblet. “I got you a fresh glass.”

Shaking his head, Mark nuzzled Zeus, remembering the look on Rose’s face when the dog climbed up her chest.

God, he missed her.

“You might as well tell me. I’ll keep harassing you until you do,” Liam said.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“What’re you, fourteen?”

Holding Zeus to his chest, Mark shifted his weight to get up. Liam stopped him with that grip of death of his, with one of the enormous hands that used to paddle through the water at sixty miles an hour and was now clamped on Mark’s arm. “Sorry,” Liam said. “I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”

Mark stared at him. His brother had always had it so easy. His looks, his talents, his confidence.

And Dad had loved him best.

Realizing how ridiculously low he’d sunk, Mark dipped his head, laughed softly to himself.

Liam relaxed his grip, smiling a little. “What?”

“Just now I was feeling sorry for myself about how Dad gave you all the attention.”

Liam lifted his wine glass off the floor, gulped down a large mouthful. “Yeah, lucky me. Years of my life wasted on a sport I didn’t even like,” he said. “For a man who’d never be satisfied.”

“You must’ve liked swimming a little bit. You lived in the pool for, like, twenty years.”

“Sure, I loved it when I was, like, five. After that”—Liam shook his head—“Anyway. I don’t think this is about Dad, is it?”

Mark reached over, claimed the glass Liam had brought, wondering if his misery did have some roots in their father’s cold, driven, critical personality. That bone-deep sense that Mark would never be good enough; that he was so inadequate his own father gave up on him. Now that he was older, Mark could see, intellectually, that his father was a sporty, manly guy who just didn’t understand math, engineering, chess, chemistry, computers. Putting Mark down was a way of holding himself up.

Not a good quality in a father. And hardly Mark’s fault.

“It
is
Rose,” Mark said finally, lifting the wine to his lips. “And don’t say ‘ah.’”

“What happened?”

Mark looked at his brother, scanning his face for any hint of mockery, amusement, criticism, boredom.

There was none.

Fortifying himself with the rest of the wine, Mark told him everything, from the day he lent her the jumper cables to the afternoon of the picnic.

Well, not everything. Some parts were too nice to share.

When he was done talking, Liam was silent for a full minute, and the two brothers sat together with the appreciative, ugly dog, staring off into the rainy November night.

“You haven’t spoken since?” Liam asked.

“She won’t answer my calls.”

“How about at work?”

“Oh, I’m working from home again. With Sylly threatening to fire her because of me,” Mark said, “it seemed like the least I could do.”

“It definitely is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Liam whacked him on the back, not quite hard enough to hurt. Not quite. “You screwed up. Time to stop moping around and fix it.”

“How the hell do I do that? By getting her fired? That job is the one thing she’s got going for her right now. She’s great at it. They love her there. It’s the perfect place for her.” Mark put Zeus on the floor and climbed to her feet. “I’m not going to screw it up.”

Liam stood up next to him. “So find another way.”

“How?”

His brother whacked him on the back again. “You’re the genius. You figure it out.”

* * *

“I’m glad you accepted Sylly’s offer,” Mark said into the phone. Instead of attending the WellyNelly holiday party, he’d worked late from his desk at home, three computers whirring around him.

Gloria laughed. “Oh, I didn’t accept his offer, but he accepted mine. After a little back and forth.”

“Good. You deserve whatever you asked for.”

“That’s what I told him,” Gloria said. “I start the day the office reopens after the holidays. We’ll announce the change then, but Sylly will stay for a transition period.”

“Shovanna Wise and Helen Shih start a week later. They need a little more time relocate. Finding a house in the Bay Area isn’t easy.” On his middle monitor, he opened the window for the Sport Injuries Forum. As they had for the past three weeks, all over the WellyNelly site, users were protesting the rumor that a large drug company might swallow up their beloved social network.

Mark smiled, counted the vast number of views, comments, links. He’d been busy the last few weeks stirring up trouble, and it was all paying off. “Did Sylly give you a hard time about your plans? All your do-gooder nonprofit stuff? He was pretty set on the Big Pharma deal.”

“He didn’t say anything about that. I got the impression he was looking forward to something else he’s got going on. Whatever’s made him decide it was time to step aside as CEO, just be the owner.” Gloria chuckled softly. “I’m sure you have no idea what that might be.”

“Me?” Mark asked.

“Right. Whatever it is, Sylly’s lucky you’re including him in it. You’ve got a golden touch, Mark. Makes me terribly jealous.”