Page 60 of Parallel

“To see Dr. Hottie?” he asks eagerly.

I swallow. “We’re meeting with another doctor but he’ll be there, I think.”

“Jeff and Nick in the same room?” he asks, eyes lighting up. “Can I come today? I’ll be your plus one. There’s bound to be punches thrown.”

I laugh begrudgingly. “I’m not sure you bring a plus one to a doctor’s appointment. And there will be no fight. I plan to tell Jeff he has to be civil.”

Trevor grins. “From what I saw the other day, I doubt it’s Jeff you need to worry about.”

I hand Trevor the proofs for Dee on my way to lunch. When I return, Dee is waiting in reception, clicking those nails of hers on the desk in a failed attempt at self-control.

“This is entirely wrong,” she says, handing me the pages I gave Trevor earlier.

My teeth scrape against each other. “That’s exactly what you asked for.”

“Just start over,” she says. “Start from scratch. It’s all wrong.”

I gape at her. She expects me to throw two weeks of work in the garbage and re-do it all five days before we go to print. “That’s not possible,” I say flatly. “We go to print on Tuesday. There’s just not time.”

She gives me a short, bitter smile. “Then it looks like you know how you’ll be spending the weekend, doesn’t it?”

There’s nothing wrong with the layout. She’s just punishing me. Maybe for the dress, maybe because of my infuriating insouciance all day. Jeff would ask me why I antagonized her in the first place, but Nick would ask me why I’m still here, and why the hell I ever let someone treat me so poorly. Questions I’m asking myself now.

I slide the layout back to her. “I’m not redoing this.”

Her eyebrows go to her forehead. “You seem to be forgetting who signs your paychecks.”

I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, but instead the end will be simple and absent any drama. “Then don’t sign them anymore,” I reply without emotion. “I quit.”

I’ve never seen Dee shocked into silence. I head toward my desk and she follows me. “You can’t do that,” she sputters. “We go to print next week.”

I grab my belongings, grateful that almost everyone is at lunch so I don’t have an audience. “Well, I’ve noticed that you’ve been playing around with the layout when I’m not in the office,” I reply, “so maybe you’ll be able to figure it out.”

With that, I head straight out the door. Late July in D.C. is miserable—air so thick it’s a struggle to breathe and heat that has your clothes stuck to you the moment you step outside— but right now, to me, it’s perfect. Right now I’m not Quinn, the twenty-eight-year-old who might die. I’m eighteen again. A girl with dreams, about to escape the farm and go to the city, with her whole future ahead of her. My father encouraged me back then. I’m not sure what changed when he got sick, what made him so desperate to keep me safe and small with Jeff. But I like this version of me better, and I think he would too.

I pull out my phone and make a call before I can change my mind. Nick answers on the first ring. “Quinn? Is everything okay?”

He sounds slightly panicked. I like, far too much, that he worries about me. “Yes, it’s fine, I just… Is this a bad time?”

“No, not at all,” he says. “Hang on.” I hear background noise, then a door shuts and there is silence. “Okay. I’m in my office. What’s up?”

My mouth curves into a smile. “Guess who just quit her job?”

“Are you serious?” he asks. I love him for sounding thrilled rather than concerned. “That’s fantastic. Was your boss pissed?”

“So pissed.”

He laughs. “God, I wish I’d been there.”

I lean against the wall, under the shade of an awning. “It was pretty sweet. I’d say it almost made it worth staying there as long as I did, but that would obviously be a lie.”

“I’m proud of you,” he says. “I just wish you’d done it years ago.”

“Yeah, me too.” Why didn’t I? Why the hell did I let Jeff decide what I’d do about school? My only answer is that I trusted my father’s opinion about things more than I trusted my own and allowed Jeff to assume that position once he was gone. “Anyway, I guess I’ll be seeing you in a while at the meeting with Dr. Patel.”

“Is Jeff actually attending this one?” he asks. There’s no mistaking the hostility in his tone.

“Yeah.” I sigh, brushing a hand through my hair. “But speaking of Jeff, I, um, haven’t told him I quit. So, if you could maybe not mention that, I’d appreciate it.”