Saved By the Boss by Olivia Hayle
Anthony
I blink up at the indistinct crown molding on my bedroom ceiling, as if it will clear my sight. As if all I need to do is squint and I’ll see as clearly as I once did. Funny how the impulse hasn’t disappeared.
Is it worse than it was yesterday? Is it better?
Every day, I do the same fucking dance of monitoring my own deterioration, as if I’m a weatherman predicting a storm. But does it matter when it strikes? In a week or five years, the hurricane will hit, and the results will be the same. One day I’ll be trapped in darkness with no way out, and when that’s a reality, squinting won’t do a goddamn thing. The darkness will be the only color I’ll see. Or will I lose that, too? Blindness is the absence of sight, after all, and black is a color.
I close my eyes as the familiar wave of panic sweeps through me. Is this what it’ll be like? A prisoner in my own head, forever reliant on others. Led around or helped by paid assistants. Entirely dependent on their mercy, while they could do whatever they wanted, with me helpless to stop them. I press the heels of my hands over my failing eyes.
Any other body part, I think. Any other.
No one is listening to make the trade, of course. No roadside devil I can bargain away years of my life with to stave off the decline. Just me and my failing vision, the claustrophobia and panic rising with every second spent in blackness. I breathe through it until the pressure inside my chest grows unbearable, until needles scream beneath my skin.
Then I pull my hands away and blink at the faint sunlight streaming in through my bedroom windows.
Not yet, at least. Not yet.
Is it faint sunlight? Or does it just look that way to me? It shouldn’t still bother me that I’ll never know the answer to that, but even two years after the diagnosis, the knowledge burns.
I push out of bed, the heap of blankets a testament to my restless night. The diagnosis had taken sleep away from me, too, that day in the doctor’s office. Together with my girlfriend and my future. I’d like to report a robbery…
But this kind of theft is legal.
The hot water from the shower scalds, but I welcome the sensation. Let it sweep the clamminess from my skin. A cup of black coffee from freshly ground beans settles some of the darkness. Relegates it back to manageable levels.
There’s nothing coffee doesn’t make better.
Remnants of take-away boxes litter the kitchen table as I walk past it to my home office. Turn on all the lights, including the new spotlights I’d had to install just a few months ago.
My office is flooded by light.
Even so, the headache that hovered behind my eyes yesterday evening is still here, my sleep be damned. Reading the print on my computer is bound to bring it out in full force.
Time to dance with my demons.
I give myself ten minutes to scan the headlines of the news before moving on to my emails. Acture Capital employs several assistants, two top-tier accountants, a lawyer on retainer as well as a wealth manager. We regularly acquired companies, using our human and financial capital to turn them from struggling to successful. Just now, one of our four partners was CEO of one of America’s largest consulting firms. Another was negotiating the purchase of a multi-media company.
And I’d been put in charge of a fucking matchmaking company. The sheer humiliation of it makes my skin crawl. No doubt Tristan, Victor and Carter assumed I had other business projects ongoing at the same time. Save Tristan, all of them also assume I’m still involved in the family’s hotel business.
None of them know I spend most of my days holed up in this New York townhouse.
Or that I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family for two months.
I scan through an email from my financial advisor, recommending a few investment opportunities. Save them to read more thoroughly later. Pass over the one from my older brother before looking at it adds guilt to the cocktail of negative emotions pulsing through me.
My gaze snags on an email thread from my business partners. The email chain has devolved, as it so often has since I’d lost the fateful poker game that put me in charge of Opate Match. In one email, Carter asked if he could be taken on as a client at a discount. Tristan replied that I was the one who had to test out the wares. Victor ended the email thread by telling all of us he had better things to do than talk about this. Clutter up your own inboxes, he’d said.
But he’d always been an asshole.
I’m not about to tell them that somehow I’d already been roped into testing out Opate’s service by Summer Davis, because I still can’t quite believe it myself.
Dates? I’m going on dates?
It won’t amount to anything, but I can’t tell her that, not when she’d looked at me like I’m a puzzle she wants nothing more than to solve. She’d bet on the wrong man when she’d dared me to it.
I shouldn’t have gone along with it.
But her naive optimism and belief in love galled something inside of me, itched at the bitterness that sometimes threatened to choke me.
Summer Davis. Blonde, cutesy, with a matching golden retriever sidekick to complete an image fit for an advertisement.
I frown at the text on my computer. Had it been this difficult to read only moments before? No, I’m sure it had been clearer. It’s been months since I had to increase the size of the on-screen text. I enlarge it a few sizes more, and the text becomes clearer. Even if doing so makes me want to punch the screen, shattering the damn thing as well as my hand in the process.
At least my hand would heal.
I’d stopped working in the office soon after my diagnosis, preferring to sit here, where I can control the light source and the computer. Where I can shut it all down on bad days.
My phone rings, but there’s no one I’m in the mood to talk to right now. Right after the diagnosis, I’d interacted with the world regularly, but I’d learned soon enough that things just got worse when I did. I couldn’t conceal my rancor.
Call it black curiosity or restlessness, but I answer my phone. The number is unknown to me.
The voice on the other end is feminine, professional and familiar. “I have another date for you, Mr. Winter,” she announces, without preamble or hello.
I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. Her voice is interesting. Deep and soft, but with a distinct bubbliness to it.
“I hope you’ve found someone better this time,” I tell her.
“I won’t respond to that,” she says primly. “Isabelle is terrific, as are all of our clients. Some people simply don’t work together.”
And some people don’t work together with anyone. “Right.”
“Are you free Thursday for lunch?” she asks. “I think this one will be good.”
Why am I putting myself through this charade? I should say no, but the sound of her voice and this inane scheme is something, anything, to soothe my restlessness.
“Yes, I’ll meet your candidate.”
“Her name is Ciara,” she says. “Do you want to go into this blind, or with a bit of information?”
I grit my teeth. “Not blind, if I can help it.”
“All righty. She’s twenty-three and a model. Originally from Georgia, but has been in New York for the past few years.”
“Twenty-three?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“No, I suppose it’s not.”
“She suggested a Japanese place for lunch. Is that acceptable?”
It had been a long time since I’d rotated Japanese food into my takeout schedule. “Yes.”
She breathes a sigh of relief, as if she’d expected me to be prickly about that. “Okay, good.”
“I suppose you’ll want me to come to the office afterwards,” I say. “For the debrief?”
Summer’s voice is pleased. “That’s right. It’s such an important part of the process for us.”
Meeting with this model would be… well. It’d be quick. And then I‘d get to see Summer flustered again, her hopeless romantic idea of this job fighting against the facts she saw sitting right in front of her.
Me.
“I’ll see you then,” she says. “I’ll email you the restaurant details. And Anthony?”
My eyes drift closed at the sound of my name. “Yes?”
“I don’t want you to self-sabotage again.”
Here, where she can’t see me, I smile at her pointless optimism. “I won’t.”
As if anything I do could make my life worse.
* * *
I keep my promise not to self-sabotage.
I can’t, however, say the same for Ciara. She sits in front of me like she considers herself a piece of art to be worshipped, a woman who measures her worth in gold. Where Isabelle had been interested in having a conversation, Ciara’s focus is on seduction.
She rests her head in her hands and blinks in slow, deliberate movements that sweeps dark lashes over pale cheeks. It has to be a good day for my vision, then, if I can make out these details. And I’m wasting it by looking at her.
“Anthony Winter,” she says, like she’s testing the flavor of my name. It’s the third time she’s said it. “Why does that sound familiar?”
I put down my chopsticks. The food is good, and the restaurant is well-lit. It’s a shame the company is so poor. “It shouldn’t.”
“And yet it does.” Another slow blink, before her face shifts into a teasing, charming smile. “I’ll figure you out.”
“I doubt it.”
Her smile falters only for a second. In a top that shows off her midriff and a designer bag she insists on keeping on her lap as we eat, she returns to her sashimi. “I love Japanese food.”
“It’s great, yes.”
“I was in Tokyo recently, for Fashion Week. Pretty stressful, but… you know. Comes with the job. I work as a model.” The look in her eye makes it clear this is when I’m to be impressed. That I’m to make an overture of some sort. Fawn, perhaps. Or let my gaze rake down her body like she’d done twice to me already, the second more brazen than the first.
I do neither.
She asks me where I live less than halfway through the date. While she just nods and comments nice when I tell her, there’s a glint in her eyes at the words Upper East Side. Makes several comments about looking for stability, for a man who provides.
I pay the check and leave her without more than a polite take care of yourself, but despite my lukewarm interest, she insists on hugging me. My distaste notches up another level. At her. At myself, too, for putting myself in this position.
I’m not particularly gentle in extricating myself from her arms. Ciara has confirmed every single one of my suspicions about Opate Match and their clientele. Like so often when you market something for the elite, this is what you get. Shallowness and superficiality. Certainly not true love.
This was who Summer Davis thought I’d want?
I’m not set to return to Opate Match until tomorrow, but my feet carry me there regardless, and I open the office door with more force than needed. The lights in the reception are dimmed. Once you start noticing how rarely places are well-lit, it’s all you see. Or in my case, it means you can see even less.
The receptionist looks up at me with wide eyes. “Mr. Winter. If you’re here to see Vivienne, you just missed her. She’s at a client meeting uptown, I’m afraid.”
“Miss Davis?”
“She’s here, and she just finished with a client. Do you want me to… oh.” Her voice trails off as I reach the closed door to Summer’s office. Knock twice.
“Come in!” she calls.
I push the door open. Her drapes are completely pulled back and with that amount of natural light, it’s easy to make out the surprise on her face. The sunshine gilds her blonde hair, falling in waves over her shoulders. Yes, I think. Today really is good day, because I can even make out the shade of blue in her eyes.
“Mr. Winter. Back from your date?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” she says. “Judging from your expression, I’m guessing it didn’t go well?”
I pull the chair out opposite her and sit down, crossing my arms over my chest. “Oh, I think it went as well as could be expected.”
Her eyes narrow, as if she’s expecting a trap. “How well was that?”
I’m as unable to stop taunting her as I had been on the first day we’d met. “I’m offended, actually.”
“Offended?”
“Yes. You analyzed my personality and made the conclusion that Ciara is the kind of woman I’d be interested in?”
She meets my gaze for a few long moments before her shoulders slump. “It was a gamble,” she admits. “I knew it could go either way. And for the record, I’m not one to speak ill of other clients. I won’t.”
“I’m allowed to, am I not?”
“Yes,” she acknowledges. “Was it that bad?”
“Let’s just say she’d made her intentions clear before we’d ordered the food. A rich man who could keep her.”
“Oh,” Summer breathes. “Well, you said your last date was too serious, so I made sure this one wouldn’t be.”
The irony tugs at my lips. “Perhaps an overcorrection.”
“I gave you someone bubbly.”
“You gave me someone who still chews pink bubblegum.”
“So you’re saying I’ve drawn the wrong conclusions about you,” Summer murmurs, hands flying over her keyboard as she fires up her computer. There’s a look of excited calculation I recognize from my first visit to this room.
When she’d thought I was a client.
“Are we going back to me answering ridiculous prompts?” I ask, drumming my fingers along the armrest. Looking away from the bright lightness that is her. “How long would I last in a zombie apocalypse? What was the name of my first pet?”
She laughs, like I’ve made a good joke. “They were very informative last time.”
“I doubt that.”
“People say a lot when they think they’re being shallow. Now… this means I only have one more try.”
“Yes.”
She turns those sky-blue eyes on me. “And you didn’t like Isabelle or Ciara.”
“I did not.” If anything, they’d only strengthened my preconceived notions. I find myself holding my tongue on that score, though, as she looks at me with playful challenge.
“It might take me a bit longer to think this through,” she says. “As you’re not only a client but the co-owner of Opate Match, you’ll get the absolute best service I can provide.”
The emphasis on co-owner makes me snort. Acture Capital has a fifty-one percent stake in the company, negotiated at painstaking lengths.
“Good. Because you remember what you have to admit if it doesn’t?”
“Yes, I do. Matchmaking isn’t for everyone. But that won’t happen. I’m determined.” The smile she shoots me is one of triumph, even if she hasn’t won yet. She’s surprising. Naive, perhaps… but funny. Unexpected.
I doubt anyone else would have led me down this path, or gotten me to agree to the outrageous idea of three dates. Not when I hadn’t been on a date in over a year before this.
I bite the inside of my cheek and look away from the expectancy in her eyes. Toward the half-blurry images of couples on the wall. Smiling with false happiness in stylized poses.
I surprise even myself with my response. “How about I give you two weeks? There’s an event I’m attending on Friday the fourteenth. I could use a date to that.”
Summer’s eyebrows rise. “You’d be okay with that? Having a first date at an event?”
“Why not?” I shrug. It had been a foolish suggestion, but here I am, committed to it.
“No, no, that’s great. If the female client is amenable to that, it’ll work great.” She gives me another sunny smile. “Two weeks, then, to find your soul mate.”
“Good luck,” I say. “You’ll need it more than me.”