Her eyes soften briefly before she looks down at her clasped hands. It only takes a couple of seconds, but I can feel it, when she registers what this means. We did the Dreyer job on behalf of GreenCorp, an environmental solutions firm. Getting Dreyer was a condition of them signing us for an exclusive recruiting contract. We lose Dreyer, we lose GreenCorp.
And GreenCorp is a huge part of our operating budget for next year.
Carol’s sweater blinks obnoxiously in my periphery. We lose GreenCorp, we’ll probably lose Carol, too. I think she knows, because she reaches into her sleeve and turns off the sweater.
“Okay,” Kristen says. “Okay. It’s only the fifteenth. You can get there Monday, spend the day. Change his mind.”
“Can’t. He’s off the grid until Thursday afternoon.” A hunting trip with his brother, he’d said, and I don’t think he’s lying, but I do think he’s relieved he won’t have to deal with me.
She nods, looks down at her tablet. “Friday, then. That’s still three days before Christmas. You’ll have time to get home to your—”
“I’m not going home.”
It’s so annoying that she’s said it. I don’t even really have a home back in west Texas. My family situation is a shambles, and maybe she doesn’t know why, but she knows that it is. Last year she’d FaceTimed me on Christmas Eve with a flimsy excuse about needing a software code for her phone, her face flushed with the pleasure of being with her family, and maybe with an eggnog buzz. We both knew she’d been checking up on me, alone in my condo. See you next week? I remember her saying, her eyes on me steady and a little sad. I miss you, I’d wanted to say, but of course I hadn’t.
She clears her throat. “Right, yes. I’m sorry.”
“Kris.” At the sound of my voice, she raises her eyes to me. “You know I can’t do this on my own.”
For a long second, we look at each other. In all the years we’ve worked together, we’ve come to know each other’s weaknesses, and mine has always been the human stuff. I can talk all day about where a recruit’s tech will land, give them stats about equipment they’ll have, but I’m garbage at selling places, experiences, people, and obviously this is where the Dreyer job has fallen apart. When Ben and I worked as a team, he’d always handle that side of things, and he was unstoppable. Now it’s Kristen who works these angles, and she’s even better than Ben was. Thorough and detail-oriented, but never robotic or distant. Approachable but not overfamiliar, genuinely excited but not frenetic in her energy. And so, so warm.
I fist a hand against the table. Don’t think about how warm she is.
“What if we set up a call?” she asks weakly. I don’t even have to say anything. Carol turns her head toward Kristen and raises her hand slightly, like she’s about to check her temperature. She thinks better of it and looks back at me with a question in her eyes. As many times as the three of us have sat together in this room, I’m sure Carol is thrown—not just at Kristen’s passivity, but at the cool awkwardness between us. Kristen does not want to go anywhere with me, and my stomach twists in dread.
It’s never been this way. Kris and I, we work as a team.
“A call isn’t going to do it,” I say grimly, and I realize that Carol might also be thrown by my somber delivery. I’m not a cheerful guy, but this problem—it’s exactly the kind of challenge that usually gets me focused, energized.
It’s doing neither for me right now.
“I’m supposed to go to Michigan on—” Kristen says. She raises a hand to her forehead, her full lips compressed and turned down at the corners, and my chest feels tight. Looking at her face like that, I don’t give a damn about the job, the firm. I’ll pay Carol out of my savings, find her a new job. GreenCorp can get fucked, so long as Kristen has what she wants.
“But I guess I’ll push it,” she says, just as I’m about to open my mouth. “Carol, can we do some travel rearranging?”
She turns the sweater back on. “My favorite! How long do y’all need?”
“A day,” I say firmly, even though I don’t know if a day will do it. Ben once spent six days in rural Oregon to get someone to sign off on some 3-D printing tech our old boss was pissing his pants over. “I don’t care what you do with my tickets, but Kristen needs to be on her way to Michigan Friday night.”
“Jasper,” Kristen says. “I can—”
“No,” I say, and my voice sounds so flat. “We’ll do it quickly. Treat it like a hiccup, and it will be one. A minor inconvenience.”
I see the flash of hurt in her eyes. Carol looks back and forth between us, twinkle lights glinting off her glasses. I am terrible with people. It’s only by some strange, inexplicable miracle that it’s taken me this long to be terrible with Kris.
She stands from her chair, clutching her laptop to her chest. On instinct, I stand too, and now the sense memory of last night is even fresher. My hands clench in my pockets.
“Absolutely,” she says, her voice curt, her eyes not meeting mine. “A minor inconvenience.”
This time, she leaves the conference room first.
Chapter Four
KRISTEN
December 22
The first fight—the only real fight—Jasper and I ever had was about a kiss.
But not one between us.
It was over two years ago, not long after he’d first come to me about leaving our old company to join him and Ben in the venture that would eventually become our current firm. Ben had been away for an extended leave, but was working a metallurgist recruit our boss wanted badly enough to let Ben and Jasper out of the non-compete that
