Page 99 of One Last Thing Before You Go

She pulls away and takes a seat, motioning for me to do the same. “I have to tell you, Lottie. Part of me really thought you’d bail.”

A wave of guilt falls over me because I battled with coming up with an excuse to avoid this meeting up until five minutes ago. But I brush the feeling off, and slap on a smile. “Why would you say that?”

“Well,” she says, her smile dropping, gaze locked on her fingers as she fidgets with them on the table. “You disappeared from New York. Just into thin air. When I woke up this morning, part of me thought I’d made you up. If it hadn’t been for my boyfriend who saw you, too, I could’ve sworn it was a dream.”

“That’s a little…” Melodramatic. “Unfair. I quit my job, yes. But, I—I never disappeared.” Anger flares inside me, but my head’s too much of a mess to make sense of everything I felt at that time of my life. Frustration that my body didn’t work right, devastation that I had given up on a career I had worked so hard on, hope that it would be for the better only to have it be crushed a couple of years after that. “I was just… going through a lot at the time. I may have… disconnected for a bit, but not disappeared.”

Or did I? Was I the one who pulled away from my life in the city and not the other way around?

“Right,” she whispers, shrugging under my heated gaze. “It’s just… Well. I called. A bunch of times. And… I missed you. You never answered. At one point, I thought something had happened to you. I was kind of devastated because you know, you were my mentor. I respected you—still very much do—and felt a little lost when you were gone. It wasn’t until I overheard some girls in the marketing department talking about how they saw you at a restaurant the night before that I knew you were still alive.”

I laugh dryly, but she glares at me.

“I’m being completely serious, Lottie.”

I exhale. “I know. I’m sorry I left and just dropped off the face of the planet. I was going through some shit and… Well.”

“Was it because of Finn? Was it because you were getting divorced?” She asks softly.

“No. No, Finn and I weren’t there yet. That came a couple of years later. I quit because…” I sigh, already exhausted from this conversation when it’s only barely begun. “I quit because I was trying to start a family with him. And it didn’t work out.”

She raises a questioning brow before looking down at the table again. “I’m not going to ask for any details if you don’t want to give them to me. I feel like anything related to family planning is extremely personal and so many people don’t realize it. So… if you want to share details, I’m here. If not, it’s cool, too. No pressure.”

I smile, my heart growing about two sizes as I stare at her compassionate face, remembering how much I loved having her work for me. Madison was smart, hardworking, clever, and, more importantly, had an incredible ability managing people. She was only an assistant, but there wasn’t a person in the office she had to work with that she couldn’t handle. The second I interviewed her, I knew she was going far. By the looks of her radiating confidence and the way she carries herself, she has.

“Thanks,” I say with a genuine smile, glad I made myself show up this morning. “I really appreciate that. And yeah, people don’t really know when to not ask those types of questions.”

I don’t volunteer more information, so there’s a brief pause while she stares at me, wideeyed, and I watch her gears turn, wondering what to say next.

Madison clears her throat after another beat before speaking. “So, how are things, then?

What have you been up to since leaving the company?”

“Well, we covered the family planning and the divorce.” I laugh softly and shake my head, wishing I had at least a stack of chocolate chip pancakes to dig into at the same time as I dig into my life. I keep my gaze on the wall just over Madison’s shoulder, unable to look her in the eye as I tell her what I’ve really been doing these last couple of years. Something about the familiarity of Madison makes me open up.

“…After everything that happened with the divorce, I went back home for a bit and just… Took a break. Started working at a bookstore. Read a lot and did not much of anything else,” I say, a little bashful. “My plan had been to take a beat for a year to recover—financially, physically, and emotionally—and eventually come back to New York and get a new job, but it’s taken much longer than I expected.”

She sits up in her seat, a small smile tugging at her lips. “So you’re back in the city?”

“What? No, I—I’m not back yet. The project I’m currently working on is in my hometown. I hope it will be what helps get me back on track.”

“The same bookstore you mentioned?”

I nod. “I’m renovating and revamping the retail space and intend to use the cash from the sale to move back to the city, give myself a big enough runway of time to find a good job. I know I probably won’t find anything at the VP level since I’ve been out of work for so long, but⁠—”

“Wait, stop!” Madison waves her hands in front of me, a huge smile spread across her face, eyes as bright and excited as a child when they receive the perfect birthday present. “You want to come back to the city? To work in fashion again?”

“Uh… Yeah. I mean, yes. That’s the plan. I was thinking I’d⁠—”

“No. You were thinking nothing! And you don’t need to think of anything! Because… well,” she bites her lower lip. “I’m starting my own company and I want you to be part of it.”

“You ready to go?” Knox asks, leaning down to give me a quick peck on the nose, holding both our weekend bags.

Breakfast with Madison was yesterday, but I still haven’t been able to digest everything—and I’m not talking about the pounds of food I anxiously ate as she discussed her job offer. I mean the weight of her offer. How it could change my entire life. I waded through the crowds of people in the trade show afterwards, letting Knox handle the negotiations and sales all while I ruminated and relived my conversation with her. She handed me everything I was looking for and then some on a silver platter. It was more than I could’ve dreamed of, more than I had planned for myself, and I still don’t know how I feel about it.

“A COO role,” she had said before taking a sip of her coffee—though her excitement had her bouncing so much in her seat, I considered suggesting she lay off the caffeine for a bit. “Right now, it’s just me and one other person—Beka, an associate designer from where I’m currently at, who is just wasted talent at her level. She’s amazing and is going to be big one day, and I want to be the one to help make it happen. I’m currently wrapping up getting investors as start-up money, but it’s pretty much a done deal at this point. We’re both putting in our two weeks’ notice on Monday. Beka’d be Creative Director, of course, and I’m CEO, but we’ve been looking for a good COO, and…” She sighed happily. “It’s just fate, because I know you’re it.”

I know you’re it.