“Oh, of course.” Charlotte tapped the side of her empty cup. “I should go get a refill anyway. And find Nina.”
“To be continued, okay?”
“Sure.” Charlotte gave him her best I do not desperately want you to stay fake smile.
As she watched Reece return to his friends, she chewed the inside of her cheek. Dewy heat gathered in her chest and spread through her limbs, just like it had when Reece looked at her a little too long in support group. Somehow the conversation she’d been dreading was the most enjoyable one she’d had all night. She could almost pretend no time had passed at all.
Almost, but not quite. She couldn’t figure out the vibe between them. Friendly, maybe even fond, but still cautious. Their conversation felt surreal, and it wasn’t just that they were surrounded by judgmental acquaintances at their college reunion, or that they were older, or that this wasn’t their real life anymore. Maybe it was that he was still Reece Krueger, the guy who wanted more from her at the end of senior year, and she was still Charlotte Thorne, the girl who wanted nothing from anyone at all.
Charlotte headed to the bar for a refill. Nina appeared at her side immediately, which only made her feel worse. The 3Ds must have watched their conversation from afar.
“How was that?” Nina asked, her curiosity at a low simmer.
Charlotte rolled her eyes and passed her cup to the bartender. “Another pilsner, please.”
Nina blinked. “That good?”
“That’s all you’re getting out of me.”
She patted Charlotte’s head fondly. “We’re about to head out for Amy’s panel. Want to come?”
“Amy’s on a panel?”
“English major thing at the career center. ‘Hein Voices in the World’ or something. They’ll probably have snacks.”
Charlotte wasn’t sure what sucked more: that she hadn’t achieved anything panel-worthy since graduating from college, or that she’d still go anywhere for free food. Or that she had botched, once again, another moment with Reece, whom she still owed an apology. Maybe Amy’s panel was exactly what she needed: an excuse to sit in silence and recharge her batteries.
“Fine. Count me in.”
TEXT MESSAGE FROM CHARLOTTE THORNE TO JACKIE SLAUGHTER, 7:08 PM: Reece is here.
(Message not delivered.)
Chapter 2
SLACK MESSAGE FROM ROGER LUDERMORE TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 7:25 PM: find out who Bezos’s trainer is ASAP
The panel did not have dinner, but someone from the English department had the wherewithal to at least put out cheese and crackers. While Nina scoped out seats at the back of the lecture hall, Charlotte loaded a paper plate with snacks.
She didn’t recognize anyone helping themselves to Vermont cheddar and Triscuits—most of their class was still at the reception. Hein seniors and a smattering of older alumni made up the audience. The only non-senior students still on campus were the ones who stuck around to work the long weekend as R&C staff.
As the girls waited for the panel to start, Nina sipped a glass of wine and scrolled through Instagram. Charlotte checked her work email on autopilot, her thumb opening the app out of habit. Unsurprisingly, panicked messages from Roger cluttered her inbox. She skimmed them for an emergency requiring her deft hand. Her after-hours autoresponder informed Roger to contact Aubrey in her stead. She savored the thought of Aubrey dealing with Roger’s ridiculous, contradictory requests.
Aubrey became Roger’s second assistant six months ago when one of Front End’s board members asked him to find his daughter a place at the company. She wasn’t Charlotte’s first choice as a direct report. In fact, Aubrey wouldn’t have made it past her cover letter, which misspelled Review, name-dropped Mila Kunis for no apparent reason, and listed no actual work experience (unless you count “Instagram micro-influencer” and “workout class participant”).
Aubrey was not the reason Charlotte hated her job, but she didn’t help. Roger’s interest in work had narrowed to developing his personal brand, which left Charlotte responsible for keeping the lights on at Front End. For nearly a year she begged Roger to hire an office manager to handle the administrative tasks requiring a dedicated professional. Charlotte already wrote his correspondence, presentations, and performance reviews for employees. She couldn’t also manage his floor of the office, send packages, log his expenses, and collect his laundry.
But when Aubrey arrived in a cloud of scented oil that probably cost more than Charlotte’s utility bills, she botched the simplest of tasks. She put oat milk instead of soy in his coffee and forgot to pick up his dry cleaning. Typos littered important emails. On one memorable occasion, she mistook a U.S. congresswoman for a job applicant and escorted her to an interview with the social media team.
When Charlotte appealed to HR about the nepotism involved in Aubrey’s hiring, she received the corporate version of a head pat. Pauline from HR told her it was an excellent opportunity to work on her mentorship skills.
Maybe this weekend Charlotte would finally get lucky and come back from Massachusetts to find Aubrey’s desk empty now that Roger had to deal with her incompetence on his own.
An executive assistant could dream.
At the front of the lecture hall, a woman draped in an elegant purple shawl stepped behind the lectern and welcomed everyone. “We’re just waiting for our final panelist to arrive. Apparently, there’s been a slowdown at the airport.”
Indeed, an empty chair sat between Amy and the rest of the panelists. Charlotte recognized the other two alumni: a Washington Post columnist who graduated from Hein in the nineties, and the founder of an indie publishing house that exclusively printed Black authors. They were both featured in the glossy Hein Magazine printed by the alumni relations department.
“Stacked lineup,” Nina said.
Charlotte swallowed a lump of cracker mush. “Amy must be nervous.”
Five years ago, she and Amy received their diplomas on the same stage. They left Hein with the same awful mortarboard sunburns. Now Amy was sitting up there beside real adults, considered important, while Charlotte sat in the audience. She didn’t envy Amy, and it wasn’t like Charlotte’s story of clinging to a job she didn’t like, in an industry on the verge of falling apart, would inspire new graduates. She just wished she knew when she had fallen behind.
“Last call to grab some refreshments before we get started,” the moderator called out. Nina took a cracker from Charlotte’s plate.
Working for Roger looked nothing like the exciting career in media she imagined for herself as a college student. Teenage Charlotte aspired to be a New Yorker cartoonist, or at least an illustrator for a local newspaper. She felt on track at graduation, having secured an art internship at ChompNews, a millennial-driven digital magazine that published both socially conscious pop culture criticism and reported feature stories. But that didn’t pan out the way Charlotte expected. Dream jobs were thin on the ground in the real world.
The assistant job at Front End allowed her to pay down her credit card debt and kept her in the industry, even if she wasn’t working on the magazine’s artwork. Every so often Charlotte considered quitting, but she never forgot how quickly financial security could disappear. Unlike her friends, she didn’t have family to bail her out in the event of another layoff. There was no childhood home to move back to, no emergency loan to cover rent. Not even a Christmas card with a twenty-dollar bill.
Amy sat on that panel because she worked hard at Bloomsmith Publishing. At twenty-six she crafted the publicity campaign for a memoir by a sexual assault survivor that helped make the book a New York Times bestseller. But Charlotte also knew that Amy could afford the low wages of publishing because her father was a neurologist. If he didn’t pay Amy’s rent directly, he at least offered a safety net. Amy’s good luck didn’t make her a bad person, but it gave her room to pursue her passion wholeheartedly and thrive.
How many young people Charlotte’s age—without generational wealth—had stability? She would be a fool to leave Roger. She would be ungrateful.
Besides, she had a plan. The project manager role in the art department would alleviate most of her stress, and it came with a significant pay bump. Once she got away from Roger, she could refocus on her career, maybe even take on freelance illustration projects on the side. By her ten-year reunion she’d have more to show for herself.
As if on cue, Roger barged onto her screen.
