She erupts with laughter, melting away into the crowd, leaving Sawyer and I standing there awkwardly. He chortles along with her for a moment, but then returns to me, his gaze pinning me to the spot.
A moment later, the leggy blonde – Haley Palmer – materializes nearly out of thin air and is standing beside him. She favors me with the most perfectly dazzling smile I’ve ever seen before. I swear to God, does this woman have a single flaw? I’d be willing to bet she doesn’t even sweat.
“Berlin Roth, I’d like to introduce you to Haley Palmer,” Sawyer begins.
I give her an awkward smile and shake her hand. “Yeah, I saw your name in the tabloid article.”
She laughs, her voice rich and refined, sounding like elegant glass windchimes in a light breeze.
“Haley here is the director of Affordable Housing for All,” Sawyer explains.
And then it clicks. That’s where I know her from. The organization she heads does the same sort of work I advocate for. The AHA is committed to developing low-income housing for the poor and working-class families in New York. I have long admired their work and think they’re doing some amazing things. Why I couldn’t place Haley until now makes me feel the world’s biggest idiot.
“Actually,” Sawyer goes on. “I guess I should say the former director of the AHA.”
“Former director?” I gasp. “But you’re doing good work –”
She favors me with a gracious smile, and I bite off my words. “Sawyer made a compelling case and has lured me away from the AHA,” she explains. “I’m going to be the co-director of the new low-income housing arm of Compass Development.”
I hear her words but can’t quite comprehend them at the moment. They literally go in one ear and out the other without stopping to be processed by my brain. Sawyer and Haley exchange a look and laugh together as I stand there completely dumbfounded.
“I – I don’t understand,” is all I can manage to croak.
Sawyer steps forward and takes my hand. The expression on his face is gentle. Kind. And his eyes shine with nothing but the purest love I’ve ever seen, let alone felt before.
“I realized that if I want things to work between us, I needed to understand you better,” he says. “And to understand you better, I had to understand your passions. So, I came down here one day and spent the afternoon talking to some of the residents of the Jackson.”
“Y – you did?”
He nods. “What it made me realize is that I have been absolutely ignorant. I’ve taken so much for granted in my life,” he sighs. “I’ve never had to worry about losing my home or about whether to pay the rent or feed my kids.”
This is all so surreal that I am positive this has to be a dream. There can be no other explanation for it. This can’t possibly be happening for real. Maybe I had a stroke, and my body is actually laying on the floor back home, and I ended up here, in this dream land. That has to be it, right?
“But the thing I learned that’s had the biggest impact on me is that there are good people here,” he continues sheepishly. “Good, hard working people who are just trying to get by. I had a lot of preconceived notions of the people who live in places like this, and I realized how wrong I was. How ignorant and bigoted those beliefs were.”
Sawyer’s voice trails off. I can see the self-recrimination in his face. I can tell he feels guilty about the things he believed. Haley steps closer to me and smiles.
“That’s when he called me,” she picks up the story. “And together, Sawyer and I have hammered out the structure for an arm of Compass that will focus solely on building affordable housing for lower income people.”
Sawyer nods. “There’s still a lot that needs to be hashed out, but the basic framework is in place,” he agrees and then points to my satchel. “What’s that?”
“Oh, ummm – just something I’ve been working on,” I mutter. “Just a side project. Nothing big.”
Sawyer arches an eyebrow. I can see by the look in his eye that he doesn’t believe me. He knows that it’s not just a side project and is something that means a lot to me. I hate that he can see through me the way he does.
I clear my throat and give him a smile I hope isn’t as weak as it feels. It’s petty and selfish, and I’m ashamed of myself for even thinking it, but I can’t help but feel like some of my thunder has been stolen by the grand plan these two have hatched.
“I’ve, um, actually been working on a proposal to do what you and Haley have already done,” I admit, feeling a bit deflated. “I put together a package of potential tax breaks and write-offs, tax credits, government grants, as well as a framework for a low-income housing program at Compass.”
Sawyer and Haley exchange looks again. She asks to see my satchel. Reluctantly, I open it and hand the binder I put together over to her. I have to stand there and watch as Haley flips through the package I’ve spent the last two weeks slaving away over. I expect her to laugh it off as the work of an amateur. As somebody who has no idea what they’re doing.
But she surprises me when she nods along with some of what she’s reading, a thoughtful look on her face like she’s seeing things she didn’t think of herself. When she closes the binder and looks up at me again, her smile is wide.
“I need to go through this more thoroughly, but I’m seeing some pretty amazing stuff in
