Page 98 of Cut Off
“There isn’t a long one.”
“Zoe.”
“There isn’t.”
“Zoe.”
She hasn’t raised her voice. She doesn’t have to. Maddie has, since she was four years old, possessed the ability to simply wait until I crack. She sips her terrible coffee. She looks at me. She doesn’t blink.
I crack.
“I took this job offer,” I say. “The one I’ve been wanting since I was twelve, and I watched the news in our parents’ living room and decided I wanted to be the person who made it.” I wave my coffee around. “You know. My dream.”
“Right. I know because I’m your nanny replacement.”
“Right.” I glance at the pump. Still climbing. “But I was waiting.”
“For?”
“Him to ask me to stay.”
She just lets that sit as the wind moves through the parking lot and lifts a candy wrapper and sets it down again.
“It started on the countertop.”
“Jesus, Zoe.”
“I know. Then he threw me that networking party in the ballroom, and that whole night was a dream. Then, he came into my room after we put Eli to bed. He just—he knocked, and he came in, and he didn’t have shoes on, Maddie, which sounds silly, I know it sounds silly—”
“It’s not silly.”
“—and we, you know. We did the thing, but this time, it wasn’t animal.”
She groans. “Okay, I’m here for you because I love you, but can you never say that word, in that context, about you, to me ever again.”
“Sorry. It wasn’t a casual thing. He looked at me like—” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Like he was memorizing me.”
“Okay.”
“And it was, like. It was everything. His hand on my back so many times. The way he looked at me over Eli’s head one night when we were doing the Death Star. The Death Star, Maddie, like a four-thousand-piece Lego set. Do you understand how long it takes to build a Lego Death Star? We spent hours on the living room rug. And he kept looking at me like—”
“Yeah.”
“And I kept thinking, okay. Okay. This a real thing. And I told myself I was going to tell him about the job and see what happened. I was going to give him the chance to—” I stop. “I was going to give him the chance.”
“And.”
“And I sat across the kitchen island, and I told him about my travel vouchers and working remotely. Long distance could be doable. And his whole face just—” I close my hand into a fist, then open it. “Closed. Like a door. He said thatI needed to focus on work, but when I was in town seeing family, we could do lunch.”
Maddie scoffs. “Do lunch?”
“Exactly. Then he offered me severance and a bonus.”
“He offered you money.”
“He offered me money,” I echo.
“To leave.”
