Page 3 of The False Flat

“Fuck you.” I shouldn’t have said it, but, I mean, seriously, how could I not? He deserved it. He deserved a lot more.

“For your sake, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” He stood, adjusted the dark-gray flap of his jacket across his gut, and sauntered over to me, then wrapped his arm around my shoulders and leaned in. “Now, suck it up and go grab us another client because, between you and me, you’ve got something they don’t have.”

“Breasts?” I jerked away from him and stomped back to my office.

From the hallway, I heard Houston call out, “We’re team players around here, Pen. You’d be wise to remember that.”

I should’ve been praised for my restraint.

I did not slam my door. I did not run outside and slash his tires.

A soft knock interrupted me midfume.

I said nothing, but the person came in anyway. Erin, Houston’s secretary, stepped into my office and closed the door.

“I’m really sorry.” She sat in one of the so-purple-it-might-as-well-be-black chairs across from my desk.

“You knew?”

“I heard them talking yesterday. It’s not right.”

“No, it isn’t.” My anger was morphing into anxiety.

“When I get back from Nashville, I’m going to do everything I can to find you someone else. I wouldn’t go, but I’ve got to help clean my grandparents’ house in Nashville. We’re selling it because they’re moving into an assisted living facility.”

As Erin detailed her trip, likely feeling the need to further explain why she wasn’t dropping everything to support me—she wanted to climb the corporate ladder—I stared out my crystal clear, single-paned office window. In the parking lot of the building next door, an extremely fit woman in a hot-pink yoga outfit and matching earbuds stood on tiptoe and kissed a tall, brawny man in a suit that screamed “high-priced lawyer.”

My chest started to hurt as the anxiety made its way up my body, like a disembodied hand clutching at my windpipe. I didn’t want Erin to see me have a panic attack, so I tried hard to focus on what she was saying. Her grandparents’ old house, the Nashville market, the boyfriend she’d moved to Minnesota for, how much cleaning she was going to have to do, how many repairs.

But my eyes strayed back to the couple, the woman reaching up to touch the man’s clean-shaven face, her finger tracing his jawline.

My phone pinged. I tore my gaze from the window long enough to see who the text was from. My mother. It didn’t even matter what the text said. The fact that it existed on my phone, along with everything else now crashing over me, made the thin threads of an idea knit themselves together: escape.

I looked back at the couple. “I want it.”

Erin paused, confusion scrunching her features. “You want what?”

My eyes remained laser focused on the public display of affection outside my window, something I would never do.

“I want your grandparents’ house. You don’t have to worry about cleaning it or repairing it.”

I was minutes away from putting my head between my legs. I needed the comfort of my bicycle before I broke in front of this woman and ruined my reputation.

“You can’t be—”

I held up a hand. “I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.” It was so much more than her grandparents’ house. It was freedom from a life that was suddenly suffocating. A career shift wasn’t enough change. I’d been kidding myself, distracting myself from what was really going on with me.

I stood, kicked off my heels, and shoved my feet into my sneakers, my heartbeat whirring in my ears. Then I grabbed my helmet as Erin repeated the word “but” over and over again.

“Listen, Erin.” Whir. Whir. Whir. “I’ve got to . . .” Whir. Whir. Whir.

Was I still speaking? I swallowed and glanced at the couple one last time, then looked in Erin’s direction, avoiding eye contact for fear that would be the last straw. At the sound of another ping from my phone, the whirring turned into a helicopter, and my vision tunneled.

“Gotta go. Want the house. Serious. Make it happen.” I think that’s what I said, at least, or something to that effect. I ran down the three flights of stairs and into the lobby, then pushed past a three on my way out the door. The three cursed.

My hands shook as I fumbled with the lock on my bicycle. The lock and key fell to the ground. I left them both. I needed to ride, and so I did, right past the PDA couple, past the high ponytail that swung back and forth as the woman teasingly turned her head, past the man who held her in his muscled arms, arms I knew well because they belonged to Chad, my boyfriend.

CHAPTER 2