CHAPTER TWENTY
That same Saturday, thirty minutes before the end of her shift, Patrick sidled up to her.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said, figuring he was just killing time.
“Doing anything after work?”
Reading a feng shui brochure . . .
“Not really. Finding something to watch on TV, I guess,” she said.
“Wanna grab something for dinner with me?”
Holy moly, is married Patrick asking me out?
“Um . . . ,” she started, searching for a clue in Patrick’s face to correctly interpret the invitation. It can’t be a date. They were just colleagues going for a drink after work. She’d occasionally done that with her Top Drawer staff. And it would be nice to hang out with someone besides Harvey.
“Sure,” she said.
“Excellent. Need a ride too?”
Skye had signed a twelve-month lease for a Honda Civic with no money down two days ago; she could hardly wait to pick up the car on Monday.
“That would be great, thanks,” she said. “I just need to text my roommate and let him know.”
Dammit!!! She caught herself the minute it slipped out.
“Him? You live with a guy?”
“It’s the twenty-first century, Patrick,” she said a little too defensively. Maybe because she also caught herself wishing she was more than Harvey’s roommate.
“No worries,” said Patrick. “Tell him you just saved him a ride.”
“OK.” She went to the break room and texted Harvey, who wished her a good time. At five o’clock sharp, Patrick was again at Skye’s side.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Let’s go,” said Skye.
Skye and Patrick sat opposite each other at a pub table in the crowded, noisy Jake’s Bar and Grill on the west end. He ordered a mountain of nachos, while she opted for the coconut-battered shrimp. They drank beers (first round on her as thanks for the ride), clinking their glasses in an unspoken toast.
“So have you made many friends since moving here?” asked Patrick.
Skye shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “Just haven’t had time. Too busy looking for work and getting settled and stuff. I’ve only been here a little over a month.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize you were that new.” Skye wanted to crawl under the table, as if she’d said or done something wrong. Not like she had to tell him about Vance. Patrick took another swig of beer before resuming the conversation. “What about your roommate? How did you two meet?”
“Would you believe on the plane to Billings? We just so happened to be on both flights out of Rhode Island.”
She did a mental replay of that first day—those first conversations with Harvey, revelations about Vance, being stranded, lost luggage—and she could see why Patrick was surprised she’d been here for such a short time. In some ways that first day seemed like such a long time ago, considering all that had happened since—moving in with and working for Harvey, getting the job at Devlin’s, signing the lease for a car. She realized how grateful she was, how much worse things could have been than humiliating herself on Vance’s doorstep.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s what I call bonding.” He messily broke a few nachos away from the sticky pile and stuffed them in his mouth, covering it with a napkin. Skye laughed. When he finally finished chewing, he asked, “So you never did tell me what fell through for you here.”
Skye decided to play coy; perhaps the beer had gone to her head. “Maybe I don’t want to tell you.”
He seemed eager to play her game. “Was it a job?”
She took a sip of beer.
“A house?”
Another sip.
“Relationship?”
Yeah, playing coy was a stupid move.
Skye took a third sip and coughed and switched to water and said, “I’m not going to tell you what it was. It didn’t work out, and I decided to make a go of it here rather than run back home with my tail between my legs.”
“Fair enough,” said Patrick. “But you should get out and make more friends, if you can. Billings is a great city with great people. Not all of them, of course, but I trust you to steer clear of the bad ones.”
No need. Vance already steered clear of me.
“It’ll be easier when I pick up my new car,” she said.
“I’m surprised you didn’t drive across country when you moved.”
“I sold almost everything I owned—including my car—so I could come here with as much cash as possible. Turned out to be a stupid thing to do. I was living paycheck to paycheck in Rhode Island, but I cleared all my bills. Thank goodness for Har—for my roommate. Splitting the expenses has really helped me out and makes the payments on the car doable.”
“I wish we could give you more hours at the store. Ditto for more money. You’re such a dynamo.”
Skye failed to suppress a smile and sipped from her beer in an attempt to hide it. Before he could pry further into her life, she asked him a question. “So what brought you to furniture sales?”
It was his turn to play coy. He leaned forward. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Skye.” She leaned forward as well, ears open. “I’m a Devlin.”
Because of the noisy bar, at first she thought he’d said he was a gremlin. Oh God, was Patrick one of those nutcases who somehow managed to fool society that he was normal? Was he like Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street? Or was he drunk?
“Say that again, please?”
“I’m part of the Devlin family. You know, Devlin’s Furniture? My mother is Anna Devlin, daughter of George and Carol Devlin, granddaughter of Arthur and Ruth Devlin, the founders of Devlin’s Furniture. My father is Richard Brody, vice president of merchandising.”
Skye followed Patrick’s lineage in her head, and finally connected the dots. “So . . . you, like, own the store.”
“The family owns it,” he clarified. “I’m only the store manager. I work for the same company as you.”
“Why aren’t you in corporate?”
“Our family believes that you work your way up to corporate. I started in furniture delivery and the warehouse. Then I worked on the floor in sales. Now I’m a store manager.”
“Wow,” said Skye. She decided to dive in with her next question. “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”
“I’ll be twenty-seven in two weeks.”
Twenty-seven! Skye resisted gesturing a facepalm. “You’re a baby,” she said.
Patrick laughed. “Really? And how old are you?”
“Thirty-six,” she said, and cringed, guessing he was about have the same sinking feeling she did.
“Wow, Grandma,” he said. “And you’re calling me a baby? There’s only nine years between us.”
“Think about it,” said Skye. “When you were in the fourth grade, I was in college. Whereas you only knew Ronald Reagan from your social-studies textbook, I remember him being in office. You were only eighteen when I was the age you’ll be in two weeks.”
“So?”
“So . . .” Come to think of it, what is my point? That they couldn’t be together romantically? That was obvious, considering he was married and she was in love with Harvey. “So you’re my boss, and you’re younger than me.”
“So what? Does the fact that I’m younger make me less respectable or credible or good at my job?”
“Of course not.”
“Does it mean we can’t be friends or have common interests?”
“No,” she said.
“Then who cares?” He leaned in again. “Look, Skye, I think you’re great. You’re an asset to our company, you’re fun to be around, and you deserve better than what we can give you. In fact, I’m going to tell you something that you can’t tell anyone else.”
Anxiety began to swell in her gut. “I won’t, I promise.”
“We might not be around much longer.”
Skye looked at him blankly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean our store location has experienced some losses, and we’re not sure we’re going to make it.”
She was in shock. “Are you saying the store is going to close?”
“I’m saying it might close.”
A flare of pain shot up her spine, as if a rug had literally been pulled out from under her.
“When?” she asked.
“That’s the thing,” said Patrick. “We don’t know.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“No. And I’m not going to.”
Skye shook her head in exasperation. Not to mention she was a little pissed off. “Then why are you telling me?”
“I don’t know. I felt like you deserved to know.”
“The others don’t deserve to know? They have families.”
“Of course they deserve to know. But they’ll be OK. They have spouses and—” He cut himself off. “You . . . I don’t know, I just felt the need to look out for you more than them. You’re the newbie.”
“Thank you for your pity,” she said. She started to collect her coat and purse when she remembered she had no car. Too bad they weren’t at the downtown location; she could have walked back to the condo.
“Skye, wait—I wasn’t pitying you. I just wanted to be helpful.”
“Why don’t you just make it easier and fire me now? That way it’s quick and easy. One bullet to the head.”
“Because all this might have been for nothing. We just don’t know yet. Look, it was stupid of me to tell you, OK? Forget I even said anything. It was completely unprofessional of me.”
“I am not a computer, Patrick. You can’t just delete a file or erase my memory. I have feelings about this.”
It wasn’t even six thirty yet, and she suddenly felt as if she hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. “Can we get out of here, please? I’m getting a splitting headache, and I need to process this. Plus, I’m going to have to get back on the job hunt.”
Patrick, remorseful and defeated, far from the upbeat, perky demeanor she usually saw, stood from his chair and said, “Sure.” He flagged the server and paid the bill while she used the restroom and buttoned her coat. She told him where she lived and he plugged it into his GPS, and they rode in that wormy, itchy silence all the way back downtown. When Skye pointed to the condo building, Patrick pulled the car over to the curb just outside the gate entrance. She extracted the keys from her purse and opened the door.
“Hang on just one more minute,” said Patrick.
She closed the door. “What is it?” she said, still unable to look at him. Why did she feel like she’d just been through a breakup?
He took a hard breath and exhaled it. “I’m really, really sorry for telling you anything. Please, you can’t tell the others.”
“I already told you I’m not going to tell anyone anything,” she said. Except maybe Harvey, who, as both her roommate and landlord, needed to know.
“Are we OK? Still friends?”
“We were never friends, Patrick. You’re my boss. See you next week.” And with that, she stepped out of the car, unlocked the gate, and entered the condo.
Harvey was in the living room watching an NBA basketball game. The Cleveland Cavaliers versus the Boston Celtics. Before moving in with Harvey, Skye had never cared much for basketball. Now, seeing the Boston home-gym floor made her homesick yet again. The Celtics, Red Sox, and Patriots were “home” teams to all the New England states.
“Hey,” said Harvey. “How was dinner?”
“Fine,” she said as she headed straight to her room. Her room? Ha. This wasn’t her room any more than Billings was her home. She closed the door and leaned against it and begged herself not to cry; she was sick of crying. Just when she thought she was making progress, just when she believed her life was on track and she was doing well and everything would work out . . .
Harvey knocked on the door, causing her to jump. “You OK?” he called.
“I’m fine,” she replied, her voice quavering. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, OK? I’m just . . . tired.”
“OK,” he said. “Sleep well.”
Next thing she knew, she opened the door and went into Harvey’s arms.