Hard Facts by Penny Clarke
27
Grayson
“You can wait here for the next interview,” says the Prescott Business Industries’ internship coordinator, as she shows me into an empty conference room.
I thank her, and she tells me to make myself at home with a smile and closes the door behind her. Setting my bag on a chair, I take a moment to survey my new surroundings. With a long table, swiveling chairs, and a lone potted fern in the corner, it’s the same as all the other conference rooms I’d filtered in and out of all day long. Except this one has a wall-to-floor window expanding the entire length of the room.
Loosening the knot of my tie, I pace over to the window to stretch my legs. It’s been a long day of sitting. Sitting and meeting with supervisors and department heads and groups of engineers. Several rounds of interviews and skills assessments tests, answering questions and asking questions. Talking to those who know exactly what I’m saying. Who pay rapt attention when I dive into the subjects I know. Impressing them with my knowledge and expertise, with the facts on my résumé and the ones in my head.
I’ve prepared for this day. Built it up in my head and worked through every scenario just so I’m not caught off guard. Now that it’s here, I find… I’m not nervous. Not one bit.
Because this is my comfort zone. What I know. What I’ve always worked toward. When I look out this large window, I see a world of Grayson Rowes. In different shapes and sizes. Skin tones. Some with glasses. Some without. All with one thing in common: we speak the same language. We all discuss facts, as simply as anyone else breathes in oxygen.
Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.
Silicon Valley. Sunny skies. Gorgeous weather. A world of people just like me. This could be my life, I realize while watching the people walk around the company headquarters below. I can literally taste it, in the complimentary bottle of mineral water they’d given me.
Rather than savor that taste, though, I watch out that window, at that campus full of all those other bright, intelligent people… and I long for the one I left behind. Another world. Of cool fall winds over a football stadium. Of a beer-soaked bar and laughter around a rickety wood table. Of bets and naked roommates and pool tables and pot brownies.
Of another window, smaller than this one. With a bench seat beneath it and a storm outside it. And a curving figure with a head of blonde curls, rolling her pewter eyes and smiling with red lips.
When it should be focused on the here and now, my mind’s miles away, longing for Summer.
I’ve tried to ignore thoughts of her. But it’s impossible. When I’m here. At her father’s company. Near her childhood home. Her mother’s grave. Answering all these interviews with responses we’d practiced together.
And fuck, every time I think of her, comes the swift reminder, straight to my gut—
Summer and Morris. Morris and Summer.
Fuck, and it makes sense, when I think about it. I don’t want to think about it. But the thoughts keep roaring back. Making all too much sense. Irresistible, handsome Morris. Alluring, beautiful Summer. Both so confident. So sure of themselves. Seeing each other at a party. Testosterone and estrogen and fucking dopamine and all those potent chemicals, flaring to life as they laid eyes on each other. Two yellow heads, meeting in a tight embrace. Summer, gasping and moaning in Morris’s arms. Saying things to him that I’d heard her say to me. How good it feels and to make her come and all those secrets that come out of her in the heat of the moment. Freshman year Morris returning from a party, a relaxed fluidity to his body. The scent of booze and sex cloying wherever he stepped, fouling the air of our shared dorm, enough that I’d tell him to hit the showers. What if one of those times—what if it had been her then, Summer’s rosy perfume all over him, and I hadn’t even recognized it, even after it had been all over me? And if they kissed, what if they kissed, if her lips touched his—
I take off my glasses. Rub the heel of my palm into my weary eyes. She’s had so many chances. So many opportunities to tell me. All those times I asked her to tell me her secrets, and she couldn’t have told me this one? When, really, she should have told me from the start. From the moment she realized Morris was my roommate. My friend.
And Morris, he’s kept this from me, too. But fucking hell, why the fuck didn’t I see it? How tentative he’d been around Summer. Fuck, I should have known from the very start, before we made that bet, when he’d originally been so concerned about me seeing her. Because he knew, even then, he knew, and he didn’t say a damn fucking word.
I haven’t spoken to either of them for the rest of the weekend. Haven’t even seen Summer since the night she told me. And Natalie, thank fuck, has Morris locked on bed rest for his knee. So I’ve had time and space to reflect. To instill reason into it. Levi slept with Meegan, and he and Spencer are fine now, right? So this will blow over. This will be fine.
Except Spencer doesn’t give a fuck about Meegan.
Fuck. Summer was mine. All her smiles, her curls, those gasps and moans, every question she’d ever asked me. I thought they were all for me, that she was all mine—
But she’d never been mine, had she? Not back then. Not even now.
Especially since, if she’d really been mine, she would have told me.
There’s this hideous feeling in my stomach. This surging ferocity making my hands clench into fists. And these deranged fucking thoughts in my head. How wet did he make her? Did she suck his dick? Did he come inside her?
“Stop,” I tell my reflection in the window. “You need to focus.”
Right as I remind myself of that, I hear the door click open. Quickly, I check my mirror image. Flatten my hair. Straighten my tie. I turn around to face my next interviewer, shoulders back and head held high.
Only to stop right in my tracks when I see the man entering the conference room.
I’d looked him up. Once. Briefly. To put a face to that famed name.
Really, though, there’d been no need.
That nose. Pewter eyes. That rounded bone structure. I’ve studied Summer enough to recognize her features in the face staring back at mine.
“Nolan Prescott.” One of his eyebrows raises at my flat statement. Probably noting my lack of a ‘Mr.’ Or that I stay right where I stand, unmoving to shake his hand or gush over his fame and wealth.
Because I’m too busy checking his hair. Blond. Straight. Not a curl in sight. So she got those from her mom, then. But those eyes. Those eyes are pure Summer.
No, I correct myself as he gives me a too-quick smile. One that looks hospitable and easy-going on the surface. But underneath, there’s a hint of frost. No warmth. No boldness. Just lukewarm dismissal as he looks over me.
“So, Grayson Rowe, is it?” he asks in a powerful voice. He gestures to a seat, and hesitantly, I take it, passing him a copy of my résumé from my bag. He flicks it in his hand, barely perusing the information before setting it back down. “Tell me about yourself.”
He crosses one leg over the other, and the pose is so reminiscently Summer, I almost don’t hear him. I shake my head and answer his question. Giving him the rehearsed answer I’d repeated several times today. And in the back of my mind, there are no nerves. Just a singular curiosity, wondering what the hell is going on.
Nolan doesn’t bother with interns, Summer had told me when I’d asked if I should expect to see him. Hell, he’ll probably be too busy sucking his investors’ dicks.
Then why is he here now?
The answer to my question comes quick enough, as soon as I finish detailing my credentials, all those things he could easily see on the paper in front of him. Nolan gives an inattentive hum. It hits me, then, that I could have been describing how the turbulence on the plane ride here made me upchuck in a paper bag, for all he cares.
“Well, those are some fine qualifications…” Surreptitiously, he checks my résumé again. “Grayson.”
His daughter memorizes someone’s entire life story within moments of meeting them. She knows everyone she ever meets.
In a handful of minutes, he forgot my name.
What a fucking prick. And I can picture it. That very first secret Summer shared with me. A tiny head of curls, distressed from a cluster of cameras photographing her every move. All the while, this cold, detached man, who just happens to share her features, her DNA, let it happen.
I think of him, in his office, in this fucking building. And Summer. Alone. In a hospital. Wearing an oxygen mask because she couldn’t breathe.
On the heels of that vision comes more. Memories. My memories. Of Summer. My Summer, at a sorority charity run. Showing up to a Halloween party in a Wonder Woman costume. Negotiating fake dating terms in a beat-up car at a drive-in. In bed, asking me to tell her about chemistry. My Summer—
In Morris’s arms. Her lips on his.
“Grayson Rowe,” Nolan Prescott leans forward in his chair, steeples a hand on the table. “I’ll be frank. My assistant told me you’d be interviewing for my internship program.”
“Yes?” I distractedly ask, still dazed from that nightmarish image.
“She tells me that Summer personally recommended you.” Those silver eyes cut to mine, cold and unimpressed. “That you and Summer are dating.”
Uncomfortable quiet stretches between us.
“Rowe—” Fuck, do I want him to stop saying my name. Any iteration of it. Because it’s not how Summer would say it. With teasing. With encouragement. With exasperation. With affection—“I’m sorry to have wasted your time, but when you leave here today, it won’t be with a spot in my internship program.”
Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.
“Why?” It’s all I can ask. All I can do. Since I’m frozen in place.
Nolan sighs. Not with sympathy. But like he’s bothered that I’m still here. Like he has so many other important things to do. Like I’m wasting his time.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here, Grayson. But my interns do hard work. Critical work.” He gives me an apathetic once-over. “I know the type of boys my daughter… dates. Irresponsible fraternity brothers still hungover from a night of partying, more concerned with adding as many notches to their belts than they are dedicating time to their books. No one that I would, under any circumstances, let work for me.”
Fuck, is he—is he fucking kidding me? Is he fucking serious? And I want to laugh. In disbelief. In his fucking face. He really hadn’t listened to me. Or checked my résumé. Otherwise, he would know, he would fucking know. And the way he—How he talks about his own daughter—About Summer.
“Thank you, Grayson,” he says, not sounding an ounce thankful at all. “But you can leave.”
I dig my fingers into the arms of my chair, before grabbing my bag and pushing back my seat. As I stalk around the table, clasp my hand on the door—I catch one last glimpse of myself in that window.
A distorted reflection. Of an insignificant nerd in glasses. Looking out at a world that’s right there, his for the taking. Being told by an overblown, egomaniacal asshole with a slew of riches at his disposal, that he can’t have it.
Every fucking minute I spent studying. Working out. Memorizing facts. Hours of dedication, focus, concentration. Ignoring every little fucking distraction because it would veer me off the path I’d ambitiously set out to pursue.
Only to be told I’m nothing. To find myself back in front of that social worker, a scrawny foster kid, talking about things he will never, in a million years, be able to reach.
Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.
I’m not a fucking statistic.
I work fucking hard.
And if I leave here now—what the fuck is waiting when I get back?
More disparity? A life of dependency and never having enough and living in a fucking broken-down, rust-bucket of a car?
More dishonesty? From a friend I thought of as a brother?
More secrets? Ones that disturb my gut and twist my thoughts and make me doubt every single moment I was with her?
Because it’s not real. It’s never been real.
Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.
The life outside that window. The one I’m looking at right now. That’s the life for me. Not the one I’ve been living. The one that’s been fake all along.
“What if…” Nolan Prescott glances back at me. “I told you that wasn’t the case?”
He observes me with those silver eyes. Cold. Calculating. Curious.
And he motions for me to sit.
With one last look out that window… I drop my hand from the door.