“Hey, Sylvia. Long time, huh?”

“Yeah. Hey. What’s up?”

“I saw the pictures of you and Cass. The ones that have been going around after you guys were at Westerfield’s. And, well, I’ve been meaning to call her, so I thought that was like a sign.”

I smile. Siobhan always said signs were bullshit.

“Anyway, I tried to call, but I think she’s blocked my number.”

“Yeah,” I say. “She did.”

“Oh.” I hear a clicking, and imagine that she’s tapping a pencil near the phone. “So I figure I have two options. I can get a new phone number, or you can ask her to unblock. I figure the second option is better, because I’m pretty attached to my number. And if I get a new one and she hangs up on me, I’m just going to be out the cost of a new number. Not that she’s not worth it, but it seems a little wasteful.”

Okay, she’s made me laugh. And that’s always a good sign.

“All right,” I say.

“Really?”

“No promises, but I’ll ask her. Wait a couple of days before you try again. She might have to talk herself into it.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “I’ll wait as long as it takes.” And she sounds so sweet and enthusiastic and just genuinely happy that I am grinning when I end the call.

“What’s up?”

“Cass’s old girlfriend wants to get back in touch. I told her I’d tell Cass to unblock her number.”

“This is a good thing?”

“I think so,” I say. “Siobhan and Cass always clicked. I mean, they fit together like watch gears, you know?”

He smiles just a little. “I do.”

“It blew me away when they broke up—it was for all the wrong reasons, too. Siobhan’s bi, and her parents were pressuring her to get back together with an old boyfriend.”

“It didn’t work.”

“Guess not,” I say. “But now I’m a little worried. I don’t want Cass to get her heart broken again.”

He rolls over and kisses my shoulder. “If they click—if it’s right—then Cass will be fine. After all,” he adds gently, “that’s what second chances are for. And you and I should know that better than anyone.”

twenty-three

I spend the entire next morning running around like a crazy person at work, and so I feel perfectly justified taking a small break in the early afternoon to bring my camera down to the graphic design department so that I can pull the memory card and print out a poster-size copy of my photograph of the pier.

Not that I think I’m Ansel Adams—or even Wyatt Royce—but I’m proud of it, and I think that Jackson will like it, too. Maybe it’s silly, but I want to surprise him with a present. Something unique. Something me.

Which explains why I’m about to use work resources for my personal gain.

Thankfully, no one in the graphics department has a problem with this. In fact, the manager, Joan, thinks it’s such a great idea that she offers to help me so that I’m certain to get all the various settings on the printer right.

She also offers to print off the rest of the images on my card so that I’ll have hard copies. Of course I agree, and while she copies my files, I hang out in the department talking with the artists and looking at the preliminary sketches of the proposed logos for the resort.

“I’ll have a messenger walk them up to you when the slew is printed,” Joan says as she hands the memory card back to me.

I thank her profusely, then head up for a meeting with Aiden followed by a telephone conference in Damien’s office with Dallas Sykes about that boutique that I’d mentioned at dinner. Turns out he thinks it’s a great idea.

I want to go down to twenty-six and see Jackson, but he dropped me at my car this morning before heading on to a warehouse in San Bernadino to look at samples of various building materials and won’t be back until late.

When I return to my desk, I’m pleased to see that Joan has come through. There’s a thick clasp envelope with my name on it lying on my desktop, and I can’t wait to see how the photos turned out.

I open the clasp, dump the contents on my desk, and then back away as quickly as if I’d been attacked by a snake.

I stand there, my back pressed to the fabric-covered wall of my cubicle, my stomach roiling.

These aren’t the photographs I’ve taken of structures around Santa Monica. Instead, the pictures are of a teenage me. Half-naked. Arching back for the camera. Touching myself. Arranged in all the poses that Reed dictated. And I’d complied, because that was the job—to do what he said. To get the money.