Lily considered this. Good nervous or bad nervous? Good, Viv said, and found that she meant it. Marcus was different outside the building, not different in personality. Still the same steady easy warmth, but without the slight professional correctness that the building environment imposed.
He was just himself. He told her about how he and Lily had gotten to Nashville from Memphis. Originally moved after Cheryl died, needed a change that felt like forward rather than just somewhere else. He talked about Cheryl without hedging, which Viv hadn't expected, acknowledging the loss as part of the fabric of his life rather than something to protect her from. "She would have liked you," he said at one point.
She liked people who had edges. She said edges meant you'd been through something. "What did she say about people who built walls?" He turned the compass over in his hand. She said, "Walls and edges aren't the same thing.
Edges let people in. Walls keep people out. A pause. She was right about most things. Viv was quiet for a moment.
I've been building walls, she said. I know, he said. I don't think you need me to tell you that. No, she agreed. I think I needed someone to not be afraid of them.
Lily, who had been coloring on the paper placemat with the crayons the diner provided, looked up without warning and said, "Daddy keeps the compass because it helps him remember which way is home. Maybe you need one, too. Marcus and Viv looked at each other across the table over the head of a seven-year-old who had no idea she'd just said something profound. She does this, Marcus said quietly. It's the surplus charm.
Lily said without looking up from her drawing. The story broke on Tuesday. Viv had known it would. You don't ask a company employee on a date in front of 30 witnesses without it becoming a story. She'd factored that into the decision, or she thought she had.
The actual experience of it was different from the theoretical expectation. The item in Nashville Social Pulse, a gossip blog that served the city's business community with the breathless energy of a tabloid, ran the headline, "Callaway CEO goes off script, power move, or unraveling." The article was careful to remain technically within the lines of legitimate commentary while implying that Viv's interest in a facilities worker was either a cry for help or a calculated PR move to humanize a CEO with a reputation for being unreachable. The comments were worse. They always were.
But the part that required Viv's full attention was the name in paragraph 4. Reev Callaway had apparently agreed to a brief comment. I wish Viven the best. The quote read, "She's always been passionate. I hope she has the support around her she needs during this.
He'd been on the board for 6 months. A late addition she hadn't fully blocked because he'd come in through a shareholder resolution, and she'd calculated that fighting it publicly would cost more than managing him quietly." She'd been wrong. Quiet hadn't meant harmless. It had meant patient.