Page 129 of When We Had Forever
Front and center, behind the receptionist, hangs the photo Grayson took in Millbrook. The same one that stopped my heart that night in his hotel room. The same one that went to print with the article I wrote, which garnered more views in its first week than any other story in the site’s history.
“Mina Drake?” says the boy behind the desk. He’s barely twenty, with dyed rainbow hair that makes me want to ask for his stylist’s card.
“Yep,” I say. “I’m here for my one-o’clock with Siobhan.”
“Absolutely. Right this way.”
He presses a bottle of water into my hand and leads me to a corner office. A slender Black woman in a gray-and-white geometric sheath dress rises to extend her hand over the desk.
“It’s so nice to meet you in person, Mina.” She waves me into a seat and settles back, her fingers tented.
I mirror her smile, then fight the urge to smooth my hair and pull at my white ruched dress shirt. Siobhan is stunning, with lush lips and the kind of bone structure people write poetry about. Her hair is cropped short, barely there at all, but somehow that only makes her beauty more obvious.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I say. “Thanks for inviting me. This place is amazing.”
For long moments, she sizes me up, her overt interest clearly more than just professional curiosity. I find myself wondering if she and Grayson ever...
Ugh. I twist off the bottle cap and swig some water. Jealousy is not a good look. On anyone.
“As you know, your story knocked it out of the park,” she says, her assessment apparently complete. “I’ll admit, I thought we were taking a chance on it, and I might not have agreed if your...colleague hadn’t offered to collaborate, but what you wrote seems to have hit all the right notes. We’ve had a flood of responses, and from what our readers have said, they’re hungry for a different kind of travel journalism. Not just where to go and what to do, butwhy. Why do we wander? What are we looking for out there? Is it more about something we’re looking for in ourselves?”
My pasted-on smile stabilizes into something more genuine. She gets it. She read my writing and she gets it.
“I think,” she continues, “you’d be exactly the right person to explore those questions.”
My breath catches. Is she saying...? “Well, I’d love to try. I’ve got plenty more where that first piece came from.”
“I’m glad.” Her eyes sparkle. “Because we’re offering you an ongoing position. But we’d like you to venture further afield, this time. We’d start by sending you to Greece, if you’d be open to it. Next month.”
Everything stops. Behind her, seagulls wheel between the skyscrapers, but I swear they’re flying in slow motion. “Greece?”
She measures my reaction with dark-eyed curiosity. “Yes. And I’ll be honest—that’s not an arbitrary choice. Grayson said it’d be the place most likely to get you to say yes.”
My throat works. Time seems to trickle backward. Warm, turquoise waves rearrange the sand beneath my feet while somewhere far away, a circle closes. I almost feel like I’m twenty-two again, staring the world in the face. Only this time...
“I’ll get on that plane tomorrow, if you want me to,” I say. “And thank you. This is... Well, in all honesty, it’s something I’ve dreamed about since I was a little girl.”
Siobhan’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “Grayson said you’d say that. He also said the photo collaboration would have to be a one-time thing, because you wouldn’t want to work with him going forward. Forgive my curiosity, but between that and the shared last name, I have to ask. Are you and he—”
“No,” I blurt, then reconsider. “And yes. Whatever you’re about to ask, the answer’s both no and yes.”
She taps her fingernails against the desk. “I see.” Oddly enough, I get the sense that she actually does.
I shift in the chair, emboldened by my victory. “If you’ll forgivemycuriosity, are you asking because this has...personal meaning for you?”
She laughs, silver and musical. “I have a bit of a soft spot for him, that’s all. I’ve always taken a shine to people with his kind of candor. Truth be told, Ihavetried to play matchmaker for him a few times, but I think I see now why it’s never worked.” With a smile, she moves on, asking if I have questions about the job.
I do, of course. Dozens. By the time I leave her office, we’re chuckling together like two old friends, and when I get back to the car, all I can do is grin like an idiot.
There is one downside, of course. Telling my parents. My mother, specifically.
But since August—and the anniversary of my brother’s death—has safely given way to October, I at least have the confidence to invite her over instead of letting her leave yet another casserole on the doorstep. She hasn’t seen my house yet, anyway, and I want to show her the transformation.
She arrives on a rainy Sunday afternoon as I’m putting the finishing touches on a late lunch. I greet her in the entryway as she shakes out her umbrella. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Hey, Mom. Here, let me take your coat.”
She frowns as I stash her jacket in the front closet. “You look...different. Are you okay?”
