He reached Union Square park and sat down on a bench, looking around at the people shopping at the farmers’ market. Maybe his dream would become reality one day and he’d run into Lily. Right in the middle of the park. Somehow, she’d see him and immediately know who he was, and Nick wouldn’t need to explain himself. She’d forgive him and say she still wanted to know the real him anyway, that the real him was worth knowing.
But who was he kidding? They would never meet, and she would never say something like that. He’d rather think about her every day for the rest of eternity than actually insert himself into her life.
Since birth, so much about Nick’s life had always been up in the air, but this one detail was indisputable: good things crumbled in his hands. Just like with his father. He’d spent a long time trying to fight against this, but now he reluctantly accepted that it was just the way of things.
Lily was better off without him, wherever she was.
4
Lily’s phone vibrated on her desk, causing her mug of pencils to shake. She’d been in the middle of a Fine as Hell Neighbor daydream, in which she’d knocked on his door and asked if she could borrow some sugar. He’d grinned at her, rugged yet charming, and immediately whipped off his shirt and pulled her into his arms. Huskily, he’d whispered in her ear, I’ve got your sugar right here, and placed his hands on either side of her face with gentle urgency and kissed her so passionately that her knees gave out.
Unfortunately, however, Lily wasn’t wrapped in her hot nameless neighbor’s heady embrace. She was at the office. She hurried to stop her alarm, which signaled that it was six thirty p.m., aka time for her to go home. She was making a conscious effort to be out of the building before seven p.m. every day in an attempt to achieve the elusive work-life balance people were always talking about.
Her stomach grumbled, and she leaned back and stretched her shoulders and neck, looking around at her empty floor. Almost everyone else had already gone home except for Lily and Edith. They were the only members of Editorial on the sixteenth floor because Edith had refused to give up her corner office when the rest of the editorial groups in their division had moved to the fourth and fifth floors. Lily’s cubicle was smack-dab in the middle of Ad Promo and Copyediting. Her colleagues were nice enough and always greeted her in the morning, but they pretty much kept to themselves out of a sense of self-preservation. Everyone knew to avoid Edith’s corner of the floor, lest they incur her wrath for simply breathing outside of her door. When she was first hired, Lily used to go to lunches once a month, organized by a couple of the other editorial assistants but then those assistants were promoted, and the lunches stopped happening. It wasn’t like Lily was able to attend that many anyway. Edith always needed Lily, so she mostly ate lunch at her desk.
She could hear Edith mumbling to herself in her office now, mere feet away from Lily’s cubicle. For the last three hours, Lily had been hunched over, doing line edits on a manuscript about the various infections discovered during the Renaissance. She needed to hand the line edits in to Edith at the end of the week, though, so that meant she was taking this manuscript home with her.
She gathered her things and tried to ignore the state of her messy desk. Stacks of manuscripts in various stages. Advanced reader copies piled high, and boxes of foreign editions that needed to be opened. In a beloved corner sat a small stack of children’s books that she managed to snag from the free bookshelf in the hallway near the copy machine. She’d clean her desk soon. That was what she always told herself. Once they got through the summer launch presentation. Once she mailed out author copies. Once she tracked down some Lysol wipes. Once, once, once.
She grabbed her bag and switched out of her flats for her Keds, planning what she’d eat for dinner. Then: “Lily, I need you!”
Lily jerked and cringed at the sound of Edith’s high-pitched voice. She quickly walked over to Edith’s office and found Edith peering at her computer screen, palms pressed against her temples. Her dark blonde hair was cut into a short bob, and she wore a black button-up and a long black skirt. She always wore black, with the occasional gray sweater or slacks thrown in, which made her look even paler. She was like a distant and unpleasant cousin of the Addams Family.
“What’s wrong?” Lily asked, coming around to stand by Edith.
Edith pointed at the screen. “I can’t remember how to attach a document to an email.”
“Oh,” Lily said, fighting the urge to sigh. “I’ll help you.”