“Adrian? ...Adrian, what do you think?”

My eyes snapped up. I looked across the big, glossy conference table, not even entirely sure who had asked me the question. I was in my first Terrance Hotel monthly management meeting, and for the first fifteen minutes, I’d been hopelessly spacing out. I’d gotten very little sleep the past few days.

“What was that?” I asked.

Brian, the financial director, repeated his question. “Do you think Beachson Technology is the right decision for the new reservation software? They are absolutely the more competitive price point.”

My mother and father were on the other side of the table, watching me as if this were some sort of test. I knew they had been waiting to see how I would fare in the first monthly meeting, and my dad was peering over his glasses at me. It was one of the only times I could remember him even looking my way since I’d been back in town.

“I think how you have it handled now is fine, Brian,” I said. “I have no changes to suggest.”

It was all I could offer at the moment. There was far too much swimming around in my head, and the truth was that I hadn’t even fully understood his question. This entire meeting so far had just been a blinding opportunity to show me how little I understood the general manager role I would soon be in. It was one thing to be the owner, but actually running the place was another story. I was so out of place, and so wrong for the job. If I didn’t have Mason and the rest of the team, I would have been toast.

Brian nodded, though, and the rest of the meeting went on without much fanfare. For an entire half hour, we talked about my parents stepping down, with my mom dominating much of the conversation.

And it was the worst week to have the meeting. It had been five days since I’d gone to the Richardson party with Josh, and five days since I’d talked to him at all. I’d glimpsed him a few times around the hotel, but I had ducked away, always on my way to another meeting or event. A heavy weight had lingered on me the whole week, like a grey fog I couldn’t get out of my head.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t avoiding Josh. Since the night we kissed, I had broken down, certain in the knowledge that I couldn’t possibly go any further with him.

I knew it had been terrible to leave so soon after we kissed. But when Josh had suggested I come up to his apartment, I had closed off immediately. For some reason, the thought of joining him was terrifying—a step too far, too real and too much.

None of the outcomes were good. Maybe I would go up to his place, we would kiss more, maybe it would lead somewhere. And then after we had sex, I would ice him out.

It was what I always did, after all. The only way I knew. I hooked up with guys, came, and then I shut myself off. I couldn’t bear to do that with Josh. God knows I had already hurt him enough for one lifetime.

And… the other outcome stoked a far darker fear inside me, one that I couldn’t even allow myself to think about. One that had made me lose sleep this week, had made me shake on that night with Josh.

It was the possibility that I could fall for him at all. Because sex and hookups with guys were one thing… but anything more than that, anything involving feelings, was incomprehensible.

And so I’d told him I had to leave. I had lied, saying I needed to get back. All night, I felt I might be sick, my stomach churning with guilt and worry and every self-loathing thought it could conjure. I knew that Josh had to be confused, he had to be wondering what had gone wrong.

But I couldn’t fix it.

Because I was the thing that had gone wrong. And it was better to leave after the kiss than it would have been to cause any more harm and hurt to the one person in my life who gave a shit about me.

And now, I was in this terrible meeting, thinking of nothing but Josh. Tonight I would be seeing him again. It was the night of the opening ceremony at the Sennheim Museum, and I had to uphold that promise to him. I wasn’t going to back out of it, no matter how ill I felt thinking of speaking to him again.

Luckily, the meeting was nearly over. We had ten minutes left, and my mother had finally stopped talking about herself long enough that other people were giving their briefs.

Arnie, the Logistics Manager, was speaking last.

“The final thing I wanted to address this afternoon is the downsizing in our future. We’ve talked about this in previous meetings, but to get Adrian up to speed: to increase efficiency, we are going to overhaul our maintenance department. We are one of the last hotels in the city to still have an in-house maintenance team. To modernize, we are focusing on hiring contract cleaning and landscaping teams, from companies that specialize in only these areas. We hope to be able to restructure this by the end of this calendar year.”

I blinked, watching Arnie flip to the next page of his notebook.

“Also, we—”

“Wait, just a minute,” I interrupted, holding up a hand. My voice was hoarse as I spoke, and I cleared my throat. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Every face in the room turned to look at me, shocked that I had spoken up.

Arnie flipped back a page in the notebook, then repeated most of what he said. “The main goal is just further efficiency. We can cut costs by twenty percent in the maintenance division if we cease in-house operations and simply contract the work out to a different company.”

“So… you’re saying that everyone on the maintenance and landscaping teams will be fired?”

Arnie looked over at Brian, then to my parents, then back to me. “Well, layoffs are always a necessary byproduct of restructuring. It will be a small disappointment, but the Terrance Hotel will thrive with the reduction in costs. It was a unanimous decision among the managers a couple months back.”

“But… isn’t the hotel doing better than ever the past few years? Aren’t we doing just fine? Do we need this kind of cut?”

Arnie nodded. “We are doing well, partly because of initiatives like these—overhauling some of our archaic practices. It’s important to be efficient in every sector of the business, Adrian. This will only help the hotel’s profits to grow.”

“And those profits go where?”

“Well, no small chunk of it will go to your salary and bonus, Adrian,” my father’s gravelly voice came from across the table. A few people around the table laughed as my father smiled at me. “Good time to become the boss, isn’t it, son?”

I felt the creeping sickness in my stomach grow stronger. I didn’t care how much money I made that year, or what my salary might be, as long as I could support myself and hopefully pay off my debts.

Because this only meant one thing: I would have to fire Josh.

“There has to be another way,” I said. “I’ll take a pay cut. We can’t fire the maintenance staff.”

“Take a pay cut?” my mother asked, her voice sharp. “You certainly will not. You’ll be starting a family someday, Adrian, even if right now you’re refusing to do so. Think about your future children’s college funds, their inheritances.”

Most of the people around the table were looking down, now, at their computers or tablets or notebooks. My mother didn’t really understand or care that some conversations were too personal to have in front of a table full of executives.

“I meant what I said,” I replied. “There must be another way.”

“This is a decision that was already made,” my father added, taking off his glasses and pushing out from the table. “I think that’s enough for this afternoon. Everyone can head on home.”

Soon there was a chatter that filled the room as everyone packed up, ready to leave for the end of the day. I stayed sitting in my chair, watching as each person filed out slowly. After a couple minutes, Mason and I were the only ones left.

“Did you know about this?” I said quietly, turning to look at him.

His face was downcast, but he glanced up at me. “Yes,” he said. “I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you hadn’t been informed—it’s difficult to remember what you do and don’t know—”

“It’s okay, Mason, you didn’t do anything wrong,” I said quickly. “But Jesus Christ. I will not be approving that decision.”

Mason hesitated for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s true—what your father said,” he replied. “Arnie has already signed a contract with the company who will be taking over in the new year. The company they’ve made a deal with belongs to Arnie’s brother. I can’t imagine Arnie backing out on his brother. He’s just been waiting to do the layoffs before Christmas.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, leaning back in my seat. “Fuck.”

“Adrian, is it…. you’re… friends with Josh Crane, right?” Mason asked quietly.

I nodded, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. I guess you could call it that.”

“I’m really sorry,” Mason said. “I know it isn’t my place to comment, but I was… sad to hear about the decision, too.”

I was truly powerless, even now that I was going to be the owner of the goddamn hotel.

“I’m going to speak with my parents privately. And Arnie too,” I said. “Can you find time in my schedule this week to do so?”

“Absolutely,” Mason replied, already tapping over to my calendar on his tablet. “I could try to snag a meeting with Arnie before he leaves for the night, if you want to speak with him now?”

“Unfortunately not,” I said. “I have plans this evening.”

“Ah, yes,” Mason replied. “Your date at seven. It’s here in the calendar. Hope you and the lucky lady have fun.”

I didn’t bother correcting him. I wasn’t about to tell him that it was another outing with Josh, the same Josh that I apparently would have to be firing by the end of the year. Right before Christmas.

Instead, I just thanked him, and went upstairs to get ready for the date.

I waited for Josh to show up, pacing around my suite. I knew I had an obligation to tell Josh about the layoffs as soon as I could—he was my friend, after all, and I owed it to him so he’d have time to find a new position.

I also knew that I unequivocally shouldn’t tell him. It was wildly unprofessional to announce the layoffs to one employee before the others, and it likely would jeopardize my entire inheritance. But how the hell could I keep it from him?

I walked back and forth across my living room, stopping every two minutes to look at the clock. I picked up one of the small paper cranes Josh had left on the coffee table. He’d started to leave one every time he came up to clean my room, and I thought of him in here patiently folding each crease into the paper, for no reason other than to please me. Every time I heard footsteps in the hall, I braced myself, but seven o’clock rolled around and he still hadn’t arrived.

Maybe he wouldn’t show. Maybe he’d already decided to quit this job, leave me behind, and never come back. Surely that would make everything easier.

But at five past seven, there was a knock. I opened my door and Josh was there, holding a big wrapped box. Already, I felt my stomach sinking—Josh looked so good in his denim jacket and dark pants. It was my first time seeing him since we’d kissed, and though I thought maybe all of my desire for him might have disappeared with the distance, it seemed it had only exponentially grown.

He looked gorgeous. I wanted to pull him in, kiss him hard, and take him straight to my bed. But instead of being able to luxuriate happily in a fantasy of throwing him over the back of the couch, all I could picture was having to fire him, just a couple months from now. And what the look on his face might be when it happened.

“Hi, stranger,” he said, giving me a half-smile.

“Guilty as charged,” I said, trying to force a polite laugh. “It’s ah… a shame we haven’t seen each other this week.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s just been… a busy week, I suppose?”

“Precisely,” I said, stepping back into the room. “Is it too late to back out of my inheritance? Something tells me this all would be so much better if I just ditched it all and lived in a tent in Oregon instead.”

“Maybe you should,” he replied. “Hell, if it’s what you want.”

I shook my head, letting out a long breath.

He followed into my suite and held out the box to me. “Got you this,” he said. “It’s not much, but I figured it could help.”

Christ. I had avoided him all week, and now he was giving me a gift? He was going to kill me.

I took the box from him. “What is this?”

“You can open it and find out,” he said, nodding at me. “Don’t get too excited.”

I peeled off the wrapping, uncovering a box of four Vino Diamantato wine glasses. They were some of the finest glasses money could buy. And they weren’t cheap.

“Josh… did you really buy these just for me?”

He nodded, shrugging. “Yeah. I know your last set got broken, and I know how important wine is to you… it’s no big deal.”

I put the box down gently on the coffee table and pulled Josh into a tight hug. It was a mistake, because I could smell him now, and all that clean scent did was remind me of the other night. His hair had been so impossibly soft, and his skin so warm….

I was a goddamn idiot. It was going to be unfathomably hard to be in any proximity of each other and not want every inch of him.

“Thank you so much,” I said, giving him one last squeeze before pulling away. “I… genuinely can’t remember the last time someone got me a gift for no reason.”

“It’s not just for no reason,” he said. “I also… wanted to apologize. For last week.”

My eyes snapped to his, and his gaze was unwavering.

I hadn’t expected him to bring up the kiss at all.

“Apologize?” I said.

He nodded, sitting down on my couch. “I… know we shouldn’t have done that. And I pushed too hard, too fast, and… I understand why you left. So, I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again. I promise.”

“Josh, you didn’t do a damn thing wrong,” I said, going to sit next to him on the couch. “You didn’t have to get me the glasses.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I mean it. I want us to be friends, though, and not have last week get in the way of that, okay?”

“Of… of course,” I said.

It was strange. Thirty minutes ago I would have said that this was the best possible outcome—that ignoring the kiss would be the best course of action, and Josh taking the initiative to just keep being friends was perfect.

But now… he was sitting next to me. So close that I could feel his warmth, and I could see the flecks of grey in his eyes. And something inside me crumpled, knowing that he just... wanted to forget about the kiss.

Because of course, I wished I didn’t have to forget it. I just wanted to live in another world, one where I could kiss Josh with no repercussions, no thoughts, no anything other than our bodies.

“We will be friends,” I said, nodding and forcing a smile. “Like we should have been back in high school.”

He laughed softly. “That would have gone over so well, I’m sure,” he said, sarcasm in his voice.

“What? It would have been great,” I said. “I always wished I had met you earlier.”

“No you don’t,” he replied, shaking his head. “The school would have eaten you alive. Being friends with a weirdo like me.”

“Fuck ‘em,” I said, letting out a sigh. “Would have been worth it to be friends with you.”

“You flatter me, Adrian,” he said, waving me off.

He had no idea how truthful I was being, though. My life could have been completely different if I’d met Josh a few years before I did. In high school, all I’d known was lacrosse and my family, and I wanted nothing to do with either one of them. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of another type of life until I’d met Josh, and by then, it was too late.

Now here it was, years later, and I was still trying to find a life that I could love.

But now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that. Josh was in front of me, and I was probably being strange and distant, when I owed him a good night out.

“Ready to go see some modern art?” I asked.

“You know, shockingly, I am,” he responded. “I haven’t been to an opening in at least a year. I used to go to multiple ones a week, sometimes multiple in one night.”

“Well, I’m glad one of us knows what to expect,” I said, “Because I’ve never been to an art opening.”

“Really?” he asked, his eyes going wide. “Tonight is your gallery opening virginity?”

“I’m as pure as can be,” I said.

“It’s mostly boring. But there is free food and free wine, and maybe a couple celebrities will be there, too. Though I don’t see you as the type to lose your mind over a Bjork sighting.”

“Sounds fun to me,” I said. “And, if there are any good art pieces, I’ve been given the go-ahead to put in an offer for them. Could display them in the lobby here.”

Josh raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” he asked. “I can think of someone who won’t like that one bit.”

I nodded. My mother had always been strict about what art we displayed in the lobby downstairs—it had to be old, firstly, because in her words, “no good art had been made after the year 1940.” She also always had the final say in every piece that was hung.

“Guess what, though?” I said. “She isn’t going to be in charge, starting very soon. And I get to decide what art looks good in the lobby.”

“Taking the reins, Adrian,” Josh said, giving me a slap on the shoulder. “You’re going to be running this place like a king in no time. Your way or the highway.”

I forced a smile again. Josh had no clue what those words really meant, what other changes were in the hotel’s future. I had all but forgotten about them since he’d given me his too-kind gift, but now it came rushing back, in full force.

When I looked at him, smiling and relaxed on my couch, though, I knew I couldn’t bring myself to tell him now. But I would tell him tonight. I’d tell him after the museum trip, and I wouldn’t ruin his entire night with the knowledge of his impending unemployment.

I pulled in a long breath and let it out fast. “You almost ready to go?” I said, standing up and pushing my hands through my hair.

His phone started to buzz in his pocket, and he slipped it out. “Yeah, we should get out of here,” he said, furrowing his brow at his phone. “I don’t recognize this number—mind if I take the call really quick?”

“Of course,” I said.

Josh answered his phone, stepping over toward the big windows. He was silent for a while, but when he spoke again, there was confusion in his voice.

“What?” he was saying. “Wait—he’s there right now?”

Josh’s face had fallen when I looked over at him.

“Of—of course—” he said, pacing across the room. “Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Everything alright?” I asked as he hung up the call. His face was wrecked now, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

“No,” he said. “My… an old friend is in the hospital. That was the nurse, telling me he’s currently unresponsive. I was… apparently still his emergency contact.”

Worry tangled in my chest in a fresh, horrible way. “Holy shit, Josh,” I said, taking a step toward him. “What happened?”

“I don’t quite know yet,” he said. “But I have a few ideas.”

“Jesus, how can I help? Can I get you—”

“I need to go—I just need to go—” he said, frantic, as he walked to the door.

I had never seen him like this. He was typically calm and collected, even when he was upset. But here, he was clearly unsure of what to do, and for once, not at all in control.

“I’ll come with you,” I said, picking up my blazer from where it was slung over a chair.

“No,” he said. “God, no, I wouldn’t make you do that,” he replied quickly.

“I want to, Josh,” I said. “Are you kidding me? I’m not going to just ditch you. Even if I just wait in the hospital lobby, I’ll come with you.”

“Adrian, don’t be nice just for niceness’ sake,” he said, opening my door. “I’m fine. Really.”

“I’ve made my decision. I’m coming with. And I can call a black car right now, and it’ll be at the hotel doorstep in less than a minute. Please, don’t refuse a ride, Josh.”

He looked back at me, his eyes dancing back and forth as he searched my face. “O-Okay, yes. A car… would really help,” he said, breathing a slow sigh. “Jesus Christ, I don’t know what to do.”

“Consider it done,” I said, already dialing the number on my phone.