Page 100 of Shades of Grey & Gold

I go back to the work in front of me.

Twenty minutes later, my phone buzzes again.

It’s not from Gio.

It’s a photo.

It’s Max in a dressing room mirror, her phone held up at an angle, looking at something just off frame. She’s wearing a tight, dark green skirt with no shirt, just a black lacy bra.

I groan out loud and feel my blood rush below the belt.

She is wearing the expression of a person who has been handed the nuclear codes and intends to use them. Her hair is down. She looks—

She looks like herself. Radiant and real and like everything good.

And God damn fucking stunning.

The accompanying text from her says:

Max: Maggie is very convincing. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I might buy this skirt. Thoughts?

I look at the photo for a moment longer than is probably necessary to answer the question.

I am sitting alone in a room full of folders and the weight of everything I’m managing, and she sent me a picture from a dressing room in a little shop because she wanted to. My whole chest goes warm and quiet, and I press a palm into the unfamiliar feeling before responding.

Me: buy it. then re-enact this exact scene from this dressing room with me later.

Max: It’s expensive.

Max: But yes to the other thing.

Me: buy it.

A pause.

Max: Fine, but you will have to now quite literally pay for your sisters having unsupervised authority to buy me clothes with your credit card.

I put the phone down. I look at the correspondence in front of me again.

I think about the green skirt and my favorite restaurant we have been going to twice a week and the beaming look on her face when she smiles. I just think about her; her safe; her happy; her sending me dressing room photos.

Then I think about myself. Here, managing this world so she can stay in it.

This is what I’m doing it for. Right here.

I pick up the next folder and get back to work.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Max

Thesunisdoingbeautiful things to this city today. Usually it’s colder in March, but it’s fifty-something and sunny, the perfect day that screams spring is on its way.

It hits the old stone of the buildings, glints off the windows and bounces back warm and gold, the kind of light that makes everything look like it was meant to bephotographed.

I tip my face up to it for just a second at the crosswalk and think about this morning—Maggie holding up two scarves and asking which one made her look like a ‘serious woman of culture,’ and Sophia folding herself over the counter of the shop laughing.

Every second of it felt so easy. So ordinary. So right.