Chapter 11

11

Sunlight streams through the windows in wide yellow stripes, casting a glare on computer monitors and a pall over the mood in the office as the day wanes on. People would rather be anywhere but shut up in the office, dashing between meetings in stuffy rooms or tap-tap-tapping away at their keyboards with a steaming cup of coffee beside them and sweat beading on the back of their necks. Somewhere, a few banks of desks away, someone has a playlist of pop songs murmuring out of their computer. It makes heads bob distractedly and feet tap lazily, and adds insult to injury that we're not basking on picnic blankets somewhere enjoying cold ciders and ice creams.

It's the end of June and almost a month into the Arrowmile internship.

Things have ramped up a lot in the last two weeks. I told Dad it was like riding a bike with the stabilizers on at first, but now it's more like being pushed out of a plane with a thumbs-up while trying to remember which cord deploys the parachute.

Some of that, I know, is my own fault. When someone asks if I can do something, the answer is always an unhesitating yes. Or sometimes I overhear things my team are working on and ask if I can help out, in an attempt to prove myself.

After all, I'm not here to coast through. If I'd wanted an easy summer, I would've stayed at home.

So the answer is always yes, I can do that. And the question is always, can I get involved in that?

This is nothing new, though. I'm used to pushing my limits, tiptoeing just along the edge of being too burnt-out to function. I make sure to put in the effort with the other interns, going out enough that they keep inviting me, missing enough dinners and drinks that I can catch up on sleep. Or work. Whichever needs my attention most at the time.

It's a delicate balance, because the others are always making new plans—heading out to posh cocktail bars or chic Instagrammable restaurants they stumbled across on some influencer's TikTok….

As much as the others are hanging out together and enjoying themselves, whenever we all talk about work, it's clear that everybody is trying to suss out the competition. We all want one of those coveted full-time roles when we graduate; we need to know that we're not just doing our best but better than everybody else. I wonder if I'm the only person downplaying how hard they're working—although while I'm scared of them calling me "boring," they might be doing it to lull everyone else into a false sense of security. More than once, someone has joked about outright sabotaging another intern over something so silly, it's obviously a joke—but still. It adds to the pressure.

I honestly don't know where they find the energy to socialize as much as they do—or the money. Clearly, they're not too concerned with saving as much as they can ahead of their next term at college, and would rather enjoy the moment.

Today is payday, and tonight they're going to the Shard for drinks. It's eye-wateringly expensive, so I make some excuse to avoid joining them.

Distracted by the nagging worry that they'll start excluding me if I don't go out, and listless in the heat, I take a break from an email I've been trying to write for the last ten minutes and open up the internet browser instead. A brief respite before I get back to the grind, that's all. One of the open tabs is the Zara website, where I have a basket full of pretty, office-appropriate outfits that I'll never buy but like daydreaming over.

There's a sudden weight of hands grabbing the back of my chair that startles me out of my daydream, and a voice too close that says, "Working hard or hardly working, Barbie?"

I click hastily to another tab, although it's not much less embarrassing: a step-by-step tutorial on VLOOKUP IF statements in Excel, which I still haven't figured out. (I might have ultimately succeeded in my automated report for Michaela, but now the whole team seems to think I'm a whiz and everyone keeps asking me to rebuild their spreadsheets better.)

Near my ear, Lloyd laughs. "Don't worry, I won't tell on you."

Scowling, I crane my neck and look around just in time to see him wink. "Can you let go of my chair, please? And did you just call me Barbie ?"

He lets go, allowing me to swivel my chair to face him. His usual bright smile is spread across his face, and he seems undeterred by my frown or the way my arms are crossed, my spine stiff.

Instead, he just gestures at me with one hand. "Yeah. Because of the bright pink. Or were you going for more of a Legally Blonde thing?"

I cringe.

He doesn't need to know it was very much originally a Legally Blonde thing—or that I had decided to retire this dress after taking stock of what everybody else wears to work here. It didn't take me long to notice that the bubblegum-pink dress I initially loved so much is…

Well. It is loud.

Everyone else is always in blues and browns, beiges and whites, blacks and grays. There's the occasional splash of color in a floral blouse. I saw someone in olive green once, and it felt like they might as well have been wearing neon.

So I decided not to wear the pink dress again—until today, when everything else was in the wash, and this was a last resort.

But at Lloyd's Barbie comment, my bright-pink dress suddenly feels like a blinding beacon. I feel immature, like a kid playing dress-up—and not in a cool Margot Robbie Barbie kind ofway.

I fidget with one sleeve, readjusting it on my shoulder. "Was there something you needed, or are you just here to make a nuisance of yourself?"

He clasps both hands to his chest. "Annalise, you wound me. To think I would be trying to misuse your precious time by simply being a pest, rather than having a worthwhile reason to be here…."

I give him a flat look.

And, as he's done several times over the last couple of weeks, he drags a spare chair over, plonks himself into it, scoots it so close that the wheels of our chairs get caught, and leans over my desk before asking me about one of the ongoing projects.

"How's the budget looking on the Vane engine?" he asks.

With a sigh, I close Chrome and pull up the documents for Vane, pointing out the places it's over budget. I'm all too aware that my tone is clipped and irritated, but I can't help it.

The rest of my team are usually so busy that they ask me to help Lloyd out, and I can hardly refuse—but I hate that they all expect me to immediately drop whatever I'm doing because whatever Lloyd Fletcher wants must be more urgent and more important than anything else I'm doing. It grates on me, and while I can't take it out on my team, I don't mind letting Lloyd know just how much of a pain in the arse he's being.

So, okay, he had a point about something being missed in the Phoebus IV reports—some rounds of testing were overlooked, so while everything looked pretty good on paper, it was actually behind schedule.

Trust Lloyd to be heralded as a hero for catching it.

For the next half hour, I go through the updates on the Vane engine, and although I like to make it abundantly clear to Lloyd that whenever he does this to me, it's a great inconvenience…it actually is quite helpful today. I get to treat it as a practice run for when I actually present this on Monday, which is a pretty big deal. It's my first time giving a presentation, not just compiling one or sharing with the rest of the team.

"What happened here?" he asks, pointing at the screen, where the red bar signifying "cost of component materials" is way higher than its accompanying gray line for "projected costs."

" That was your experimental coolant."

Lloyd gives me a funny look, and not just because I sound like I'm accusing him personally. "That's accounted for under Phoebus IV."

"It's supposed to be. But when I tried to bring that up, it didn't go down very well."

"Who'd you talk to?"

"Well, Fiona in R I'll only stress about them all night otherwise. I don't mind staying late, but I do think I should take a break.

Outside, I take a gulp of fresh air. It's somehow cooler out in the blazing sunshine and still city heat than it is in the office, and the sun feels good on my skin, breathing a little life back into me. I walk to the Starbucks a few streets over to grab myself a Frappuccino and a snack.

I'm not paying much attention as I go back to the office; my mind is already on the details of the Vane engine and Lloyd's notes. There's a mass exodus underway as people escape a little bit early to make the most of the summer afternoon. I have to wait for a break in the tide for an empty barrier to swipe my way through, and then wait for the lift, which seems to stop on almost every floor on its way down.

But finally, the lift makes it to the ground floor, and I wriggle past the group of people on their way out. I reach for the button for the eleventh floor.

"Sorry, do you mind pressing number twelve as well?" says a voice behind me, and I jump out of my skin, choking on the Frappuccino I just took a sip of; I hadn't realized there was anybody else in the lift.

Coughing into the back of my right hand, I jab the button with my left.

"Thanks. I've been stuck in here ages trying to get out. But you know our motto—at Arrowmile, we always strive to keep moving forward, " my lift-mate jokes, and there's something familiar about the way he speaks….

I'm already rolling my eyes, turning to face Lloyd with a wholly unimpressed look.

"I'm surprised you didn't just command your legions of adoring subjects to step aside for you to—"

Oh.

"Oh."

Crap.

"You're…"

Not Lloyd, but…I pause to take a better look, feeling like my brain has stalled. The guy is a bit older than me, with thick dark hair, green eyes, and brown skin like Lloyd's, and even a similar lean physique, but he's decidedly not Lloyd. His hair is cut shorter, his nose is smaller, and he's skinny where Lloyd is slightly more built.

Also, he's dressed very casually in green shorts, a faded band T-shirt, and a pair of brown-framed glasses.

So, no, not Lloyd.

His mouth pulls into a wide smile, and while it's uncannily similar to Lloyd's, it's not quite the same. It's not as all-consuming, as infectious, as Lloyd's smile.

"Wrong Fletcher," not-Lloyd tells me. He sticks out a hand toward me. "I'm Will. His—"

"His brother, right, yes. God, I'm—I'm so sorry, I just, um…"

Just made an atrocious first impression on the CEO's other son. Brilliant. Well done, Anna, gold star.

I trail off helplessly, cheeks burning, and then look at Will's outstretched hand and gesture with my own: Frappuccino in one, brown bag of cake and panini in the other. Will grimaces and drops his hand back to his side, trying to laugh it off.

I almost ask what he's doing here, because it's been a month and this is the first time I've seen Lloyd's brother around the office. Actually—nobody's even talked about him. The only reason I know Will exists is because Lloyd mentioned him that night by the river. Why isn't he hanging around the office like Lloyd, making a nuisance of himself? He's clearly not as arrogant as his brother, but is he invested in the goings-on at Arrowmile like him?

Has he hooked up with interns in the past, too?

No—I can't ask that. That's a bad route to go down.

"Hi," I say again, getting more of a grip on myself—and giving him a proper smile this time. "Will. I'm Anna. I'm on the internship program. Sorry about that…I just—"

"It's all good." The smile he gives me this time is sincere, but small and fleeting. While Lloyd always takes up so much space, Will leans against the back wall of the lift and seems to shrink into it. I'm not sure what to say—what kind of polite small talk will carry us through the next twenty seconds without coming to a sudden, awkward end. Instead, we lapse into silence until the lift eases to a halt and the doors slide open.

"Well, see you," I say.

I get out, and only make it a short way when I hear a hand catch the doors and Will hurrying after me. I stop and he tries to fall in step, but ends up bumping into me and has to stumble around me to prevent us from crashing to the floor. He flings a hand toward my shoulder to steady me. My coffee and snacks survive; Will's pride, not so much. I can't help but laugh at the flustered, embarrassed look on his face.

"Sorry," he says. "So, you're on the internship program? How's it going?"

I think he's only asking to be polite, but I say, "It's tough, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm guessing you had more exciting ways to spend your summer than working here?"

"Ah. Um. Yeah. Something like that." He lets out a breath of laughter that I think is supposed to sound nonchalant but is more of a self-deprecating snort. He reaches up and scrubs his hand through his hair a few times, making it stick up at odd angles.

"You didn't take a gap year like your brother, then?"

"Oh, definitely not," he says. "So, you know Lloyd, huh?"

I look at him for a long moment, confused. I settle on an answer that's honest—maybe, judging by how dry my tone is, it's a little too honest. "Doesn't everyone?"

Will laughs. "Right. You're not his biggest fan, I take it."

To put it mildly.

Suddenly, I wonder if Will knows about me. Would Lloyd have told him about our kiss? Would he have talked to his twin about how angry I was when I realized who he was? It had sounded like they were close when he talked about Will before, but…Well, a lot of things that night sounded different from reality.

"What gave me away?" I ask Will.

"Well, you looked a little bit like you were going to either throttle me or dump your coffee over me when you thought I washim."

"I would never, " I inform Will, "waste such good coffee onhim."

"Oh, I don't know. I probably would." Will laughs, and I warm to him a little more. He opens his mouth, second-guesses whatever he wants to say, but then blurts in a rush, "Everyone here normally fawns all over him."

"They don't fawn over you?"

He's visibly surprised by the mere idea of it, and I suddenly feel kind of bad for him. I should have guessed Lloyd would be that sibling: the one stealing the limelight, pushing his twin out of the picture because he can't share. I mean, this is the same guy who let his brother get a tattoo of SpongeBob SquarePants on his bum but bailed out of getting his own.

Not to mention the guy who pretended not to know me to save his own reputation.

"It's kind of like you said," Will says at last. "I don't hang around here much. I'm just here to drag Lloyd away—we've got plans with some friends, and I know what he's like."

I scoff before I can catch myself thinking, Yeah, he's pretty egocentric, and don't I know it. Will starts to say something, then reconsiders, and I realize that's not what he meant at all, and I've messed up—again.

His mouth closes into a smile that at first I think is fond, but there's a sadness to the edges of his mouth that seems to weigh it down, and he lets out a quiet sigh. He pushes his glasses a little further up his nose and then tells me, "I know my brother can seem like a prat sometimes, but try not to hold it against him."

"Don't you have to say that? You're his brother."

"That's exactly why I don't have to say it. Anyway, I'd better go find him. I'll tell him you said hi?"

"Sure. Nice to meet you."

"It was good to meet you too, Annalise."

Will smiles broadly at me and then steps around me to head back to the lifts. He raises a hand in farewell, and it's only after he disappears behind the doors on the way to the twelfth floor that I realize what he called me.

Maybe Lloyd did tell his brother about me after all.