Chapter 5

Eloise

Cadence showed up the next morning with coffees for both of us, but also with two croissants that I hadn’t asked her to get.

“I couldn’t resist,” she said when she pulled them out and set them on two plates.

My class that morning had been brutal, and I kept wincing when I moved. Hopefully Cadence wouldn’t notice.

“I’m not much of a croissant person.” I’d had a custom blended smoothie from the Pilates studio after my workout and that was going to last me until lunch.

But now my new assistant had arrived with croissants. That I hadn’t asked for. A complication, a wrinkle. A minor one, but still.

Last night I’d been so rattled by the whole day. I knew that every single word I’d written was shit and would probably need to be deleted instead of salvaged. Having someone else in my office, in my space, had been jarring. Confusing. It wasn’t that she was loud or disruptive, but having anyone there with me was going to throw things off.

I could hear her breathing. I could hear her fingers tapping on the laptop keys. She also made little sounds as she worked and sometimes she hummed or even talked to herself under her breath. Not loudly, just…there. I was so aware of her there with me and it was going to take some getting used to. Hopefully today would be better. The arrival of the croissants wasn’t a good sign.

“If you don’t want them, I’ll take them,” she said when I took my coffee from her. I took a sip and was relieved that the order was right. I couldn’t handle my orders not being right. I knew I was overreacting, but something about it made me go from zero to homicidal in two seconds flat.

“No, thank you. It was a nice gesture,” I said.

She shrugged and didn’t seem all that perturbed. I took my coffee to the office and she followed.

“How was your Pilates class?” she asked, and I almost tripped on my desk in surprise. Were we doing small talk now?

“Fine,” I said, hoping that she would get the hint and drop it.

She nodded and pulled something out of her bag.

“So, uh, I got the impression yesterday that you enjoy quiet while you work. I’m, um, kind of the opposite? I like listening to music or old shows I’ve seen a million times or podcasts. Anyway, is it okay with you if I wear my headphones? I know I won’t be able to hear you, but you can always wave to get my attention.”

Was she serious?

“Wave to get your attention,” I repeated.

Cadence nodded. “Yeah, or like, snap your fingers or something.”

She was serious.

“I’m not going to do that,” I said.

“You could throw something at me,” she said, smiling, and my stomach lurched for a second. I guess the caffeine was hitting me hard today.

“I’m not going to do that either,” I said, sighing. “If I need to get your attention, I’ll send you a message.”

“You’re going to send me a message when we’re in the same room,” she said, as if that was more ridiculous than any of her ways.

“Yes,” I said.

She shrugged and pulled at the end of the croissant with her fingers. “Fair enough.”

There were now croissant crumbs on my office floor.

* * *

She was louder today.Not by much, but definitely noisier. The headphones meant that she hummed more often. A very small part of me wondered what music she listened to. Probably sugary pop songs that you could dance to. Or maybe not. She could have hidden music depths. This young woman was still a stranger to me.

I tried to think of myself at her age and it was all a blur. I’d been at the start of my career, my eyes singularly on the next book. The next bestseller. Movie rights. Banking as much money as I could and then obsessively tracking my spending and constantly checking my bank account to make sure the numbers in it were real. There hadn’t been time or energy for much else.

Cadence obviously had more going on than I had, and that was good. If I could go back, I wouldn’t have changed anything, but I still wondered who I might have been if my circumstances had been different. The years of making bad decisions and going to bars and dating and flirting and just…doing something silly for the hell of it. Who would I have been if I’d had the space for that kind of life?

There was a joyful energy to Cadence that I had never had, even when I was a child. I swallowed around a stab of envy and got back to my emails. It was much nicer to go to my inbox now and find the trash and spam deleted and the rest prioritized for me. Cadence had done that, which was what I’d hired her for. I responded to the most important first, and then worked my way down.

My agent and I were hammering out the contract for another movie, the audiobook had come in for the same book, and my publicist was working on the next set of appearances. I’d need Cadence to book me flights and hotel for those, so I forwarded those details to her in the assistant email box.

She was humming and bopping her head, so whatever she was listening to was a good song. I allowed myself to watch her for a few seconds. Her hair wasn’t as polished today, with little wisps escaping around her face and by her neck. Her outfit today was also less put together. Her pants weren’t perfectly ironed, and her shirt didn’t fit her exactly. Still, I wasn’t going to harass her about it. She’d worn the pumps again today, but I got the feeling that she would feel more comfortable in flats. Or even sneakers. If she got through the week, I’d speak with her about casual shoes.

Writing was a job and I had to treat it that way, so every time I pulled out my computer to write, I put on the kind of outfit I would have worn if I was going to an office. Early on, my clothing had been from the thrift store and most of it hadn’t fit me, but that didn’t matter. It could be three in the morning and I put on a blazer with shoulder pads and used shoes and typed on my laptop in my dorm room. My roommates had mocked me, but I hadn’t cared.

Cadence was so focused on her work that I had to send her a message when it was lunch. I tried not to order delivery every day of the week, so today I was going to make sandwiches.

She followed me into the kitchen and offered to help, but I waved her off.

“Eventually I’ll trust you with my meals, but we’re not there yet,” I said, and I watched her jaw clench for a second. “What would you like?”

I was a big fan of sandwiches, so I always kept tons of supplies on hand.

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she said, and I could tell that she was trying to be easygoing, but that didn’t really work.

I made up my own turkey sandwich with bacon, Havarti, avocado, tomato, and a sun-dried tomato mayo. I turned to her and held up two bags of bread.

“Which one?” I asked. She pointed to the sourdough.

“Turkey, ham, salami, bacon? None of the above?” She’d had fish yesterday, but maybe she was a pescatarian.

I assembled her sandwich and hers was nearly identical to mine.

“Halves or triangles?” I asked her before I cut it.

She raised both eyebrows. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” I told her, surprised that she didn’t know. “It absolutely matters.”

“Okay then, do whatever you did for yours and then tomorrow do the opposite and I’ll compare them.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It was entirely logical.

I cut her sandwich on the diagonal and presented her with the plate.

“You really don’t have to feed me,” she said.

“Consider it a perk,” I said.

We took our sandwiches outside again, and this time she seemed thoughtful and quieter.

My gaze drifted to her arms, which were covered by three-quarter length sleeves and I could just barely see the end of her tattoo peeking out.

“What made you get the tattoo on your arm?” I found myself asking before I knew what was happening.

Cadence’s eyes snapped to my face.

“I know you have a tattoo, relax. You didn’t think I wouldn’t look up your social media?”

Her eyes went wide and the color drained from her face.

“You looked at my social media?”

She looked like someone had died.

“Yes? Did you not think that would be part of the background check?” Why was this a shock to her?

“No, I know someone would, but I didn’t know you’d see it,” she said, her voice trembling.

“I only did a quick scan. Not a deep dive. I didn’t see anything incriminating, if that’s what you’re worried about, Cadence. Calm down.”

My voice was more forceful than I meant it to be, but she did need to get a handle on herself. “Do you really think I would have hired you if I’d seen something I didn’t approve of?” I asked her.

She opened her mouth to say something and slammed it shut and shook her head. “I guess not.”

“What were you scared I was going to find?” I asked, suddenly intrigued.

“Nothing,” she said, looking away quickly, her face going from too pale to brilliant red.

“Can I see it? Your tattoo,” I clarified.

She was quiet for so long that I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me, but then she rolled up her sleeve and turned her arm toward me.

The tattoo was delicately done with soft lines and blurred colors of a profusion of wildflowers that covered the upper half of her arm. It must go all the way to the top of her shoulder because I couldn’t see all of it.

“I got it a few years ago. I knew I wanted a tattoo, but didn’t know what I wanted to get. So I made an appointment to put the pressure on myself and still didn’t know until I got to the shop. I confessed to the tattoo artist that I didn’t know what I wanted, and they gave me a book to look through. I didn’t see anything and then I basically just told the tattoo artist to pick something for me. Yeah, I know,” she said when I let out a shocked sound. I couldn’t imagine agreeing to let someone put something permanently on my body like that.

“And then I came back an hour later and she showed me this book of illustrations and what she had in mind and I told her to go for it. I know it could have turned out bad, but it was exactly what I needed at the time. Just worked out.” She stared down at her arm and then pulled her sleeve down again.

“It is good that it worked out. You could have ended up with an embarrassing pornographic cartoon, or something even worse,” I said, and she choked on a bite of her sandwich.

“Yeah, that would have been bad. But I had her show me what it was before she inked me. I’m not that reckless.”

Reckless. Yes, she was. That was obvious. Normally I would have avoided her. My life was all about order and restraint. But something about Cadence’s kind of reckless drew me. Just hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

“No tattoos for you?” she asked, turning the question around on me.

“No, absolutely not. No offense.”

She shrugged her tattooed arm. “None taken. You can do what you want with your body.”

Her words made me feel warm and I fanned myself even though there was a chill in the air.

“Any plans for new tattoos?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not at the moment. Don’t feel the need for it. Maybe I’ll pierce something though.”

Now I was the one choking. Obviously she was talking about ears or nose, but for some inexplicable reason, my mind went to piercing other parts of the human anatomy.

Instead of answering, I went back to my sandwich.