She told him that evening not at the restaurant she texted him at 4:45 and asked if he could stop by her office before he left. He knocked at Fivton, still in his jacket, clipboard gone, which meant he'd already wrapped up and was on his way out. "You okay?" He asked from the doorway. "Come in," she said.
"Close the door," he did both. She slid her phone across the desk with the email open on the screen. He picked it up. He read it. He read it again.
She watched his face do that careful thing it did when he was taking in information that mattered. Very still, very focused. No reaction on the surface while something moved underneath it. He set the phone down. SVP, he said.
Yes. Full departmental restructuring authority. Yes. And a formal written acknowledgement. Yes.
He was quiet for a moment. When do they need an answer? 30 days. He nodded. Then he asked the same question she had asked herself.
The same question Denise had asked. The same question that had been sitting at the center of everything since 10 minutes after she read the email. What do you want to do? I don't know, she said. Yes, you do.
He said. She looked at him sharply. You know, he said. You're just not sure if what you want is the right thing to want. She stared at him across the desk.
This man who had known her for what, a few months outside of a professional context, who had met her on a highway with a water bottle and an apartment list, and somehow in the intervening weeks had gotten very, very good at seeing through her. If I go back, she said, I'm not going back as the person who left. I know that. I know I'm different now. I know I could do that job in a way I couldn't have done it before.
She paused. But part of me wonders if it's the right move for the right reasons or if it's just needing to go back to the place that broke me and prove something. Those aren't mutually exclusive, Marcus said. She blinked. Needing to prove something and doing the right thing can be the same thing, he said.
The question isn't why you want it. The question is what you'll do with it when you have it. She was quiet. You told me, he said, to think about what Lily would want for me. So, I'll ask you the same thing.