Tess in Boots (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

“Oh, Tess. That's…”
Annie stopped stirring her coffee and looked at me with equal parts pity and concern.

I
placed my cup down on the counter and glanced around the coffee shop to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “I know.”

“
Okay, maybe it's not as bad as you think.” She went back to stirring with a determined nod. “You caught him off guard, that's all. Maybe he needs time to think. Or maybe he's planning some big surprise and wants to throw you off the scent.”

“
Yeah. Maybe.” I was desperate to believe it, but deep down I knew the only big surprise Logan had up his sleeve was the cake, and I made a real mess of that one.
For years, he and I were perfect. How could I have blown things so much in a matter of seconds?

“What
about after dinner? How did the night end?” Annie asked.

“
There
was
no after dinner. He went home to pack. He's leaving today on a business trip to Europe. He’ll be gone for ten days.”

“
Oh.”

“
Yeah.”

“Excuse me.” A woman reached across me to grab a napkin from the counter where we stood fixing our coffee. Her hand passed through my line of vision, and I gaped at the large shimmering diamond she wore.

I guess she didn’t scare
her
boyfriend away. Must be nice. I wonder how he proposed. Probably on a white horse, or maybe a boat somewhere…

“Tess? Hello? Earth to Tess.” Annie waved her hand in front of my face.

“Huh?” My eyes came back into focus. The woman with the ring was gone, and Annie gave me an exasperated look.

“I
said
, what was the last thing Logan said to you?”

I fidgeted with my necklace. “Oh… h
e said he'd call.”

“S
ee there? He'll call.”

“
He hasn't yet.”

“
It's early. Give him a chance to wake up.”

I appreciated her attempt to make me feel better, but it wasn’t working. “
He left for the airport at six,” I said. “He always calls me first thing in the morning. Or at least texts.”

“
Maybe your phone is broken?”

“
I got your text.”

“
Maybe his phone is broken?”

My shoulders dropped. “
Maybe.”

“
Look, Tess. It’ll work out. Don't let it get to you. Not today. Today is your big day.” Annie held the door for me and we stepped out of the coffee shop, merging onto the crowded sidewalk.

She was right.
I needed to pull it together. Today was the day of the big announcement. Today, I would become Tess Dougherty, Director of Marketing. I’d technically been in the role of director for months, ever since my boss left for a VP position in sunny Florida. Today it would be announced to the entire company. Today it would all be worth it; all the years spent commuting into the city, all the late nights spent at the office, and all the vacations left untaken.

“
I knew it the day you walked into Stevenson.” Annie nudged me with her shoulder. “You’ve pretty much been running the place ever since. It’s about time they made it official.”

Annie had been the receptionist at Stevenson since a few weeks before I joined the team as a marketing intern. Well, a telemarketing intern, to be exact. Sure, it wasn't quite what I dreamed of as a fresh-out-of-college girl looking to take on the world, but in Lower Manhattan, the competition for good marketing jobs was as steep as the rent for a decent apartment. So I settled for working at Stevenson and living in Hoboken in a charming remodeled place that boasted a stunning city view from the fire escape.
I’d often sit out there in the evening, taking in the sparkle of the busy skyline and feeling content because I was building something solid, something real. A steady career. A long-term relationship with Logan: gorgeous, flawless Logan, who worked in the financial district and always wore just the right amount of cologne.

Over the years, Annie patiently listened to me in the break room as I debated over what type of flower arrangements we would have at our wedding. A wedding which, thanks to my big mouth, would probably never happen.

“Maybe I should call him,” I said.

“
Tess! Focus.”

We filed through the revolving doors of our building and Annie pushed the elevator button that would take us to the fourteenth floor. On the way up, I reapplied my lip gloss and checked my hair in the elevator mirrors. When the
ding
of the bell signaled our arrival, I waited for the doors to part and reveal the bright, bustling office like they had thousands of times before.

Annie was right. Today was my big day. Today, things would be different.

But I wasn't quite prepared for how different they would be.

As soon as the doors opened it was clear something
was wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

The entire office was flooded with an unsettling sense of urgency. Five or six phones were ringing, but no one bothered to pick them up. Every chair was empty as frantic people milled about, some pacing around with furrowed brows, others standing at their desks and tossing papers into wastebaskets by the armful.
Three security guards monitored the chaos from a makeshift post near the conference room.

Annie and I stood frozen outside the elevator doors, taking in the scene in disbelief.

I squinted and scanned the room. “What do you suppose…”

A
young-faced girl, I recognized her as a new hire in sales, appeared from behind the water cooler with mascara running down her cheeks.

“
What's going on?” Annie asked her.

“
You didn't hear?” The girl sniffed.

Annie leaned forward. “
Hear what?”

“
It's over,” she said.

“
What's over?” Annie threw her hands into the air.

“
Everything!” She hiccupped. “They’re closing down our branch. We’re all out of a job. They already sold the office space. We have an hour to leave before the cleaning crew comes in.” She broke into a fresh wave of sobs and darted off toward the bathroom.

“
This can't be happening.” I handed my coffee to Annie and walked to the oak door on the far side of the office. I knocked twice. A familiar voice called for me to come in.

“
Tess.” Jim sat back in his chair with his feet propped up on his desk. He had pulled the silver nameplate off his door and was turning it over in his hands. Fluorescent lights from above danced over the engraving:
Jim Pierce, Operations Manager.

“
Is it true?”

He grimaced.
“Yes. I'm sorry to say so, but yes.”

“
Did you know?”

He paused, and then nodded. “I haven’t known long. But, yeah… I knew.”

I clenched my hands into fists by my side. “And you didn’t
say
anything?”

He looked down. “I wanted to, but I didn’t have a choice. Not according to my contract. They backed me into a corner, Tess. What they did is wrong. It’s not fair, and it’s wrong. You don’t deserve this.” He gestured toward the door. “None of them do.”

“I don’t understand why they didn’t tell us. How could they
do
that?”

“They were afraid employees would steal information. Afraid someone would retaliate against the company in some way. They’re all a bunch of lowlife cowards.” He scowled.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. I couldn't look at Jim anymore, not until I pulled myself together. I stared out the window overlooking the busy city streets. The sidewalks below were packed with bustling crowds. Out there, life was going on as usual. But here, everything I worked for was gone. It was all for nothing. In an instant, my existence here was erased.

“
Your promotion.” Jim clapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, Tess. I'm so sorry.”

I nodded
and pulled my gaze from the window to meet his.

“
What do I do now?” It was as much a question for me as it was for Jim.

He shook his head. “
I've been wondering the same thing. What on earth am I going to do? I’ve been here for thirty years. This is the only place I know. I don’t know if I can start over. But you”—he stood and walked to my side, placing a hand on my shoulder—“you're so young. So talented. You'll find something incredible. You have your whole career ahead of you. Go be amazing.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Go be Tess.”

***

Two hours later I sat at my kitchen table staring at the cardboard box which contained my life at Stevenson. I considered burying it, like a time capsule. Perhaps someday, someone would dig it up and it would end up in a museum somewhere.

“
And here we have the remains of an eternally single girl’s tanked career,” the curator would say. “Our records indicate she died alone in a tiny apartment in Hoboken. Poor girl. She was going to get married. She was going to be director of marketing, you know. Such a shame.”

Better to save myself the embarrassment and burn it, I decided.

I pulled a stack of business cards out of the box, shuffling them like a poker deck and thinking about what Jim said: “Go be Tess.”

The Tess he was referring to had a great job. She had a boyfriend she was hoping to marry. This Tess had a cardboard box and a phone that hadn’t rung all morning.

Go be Tess.
It sounded simple enough. But I wasn't even sure where to start.

Sitting in my kitchen, staring at my sad little box of a career and remembering the awful events of the night before, I was at an all-time low.

I hadn’t prayed in ages, but I was desperate enough to give it a shot. I folded my hands and closed my eyes. The room was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming.

“What do I do now, God?” The question came out a clumsy whisper. I fumbled around for something more eloquent to add, but I couldn’t think of anything.

I opened my eyes and sighed. It was no use. I didn’t deserve an answer to that pathetic excuse for a prayer.

But I
did
get an answer. Or at least, it sure seemed that way.

In a matter of seconds, as if the Almighty Himself had me on speed dial for such an o
ccasion, my phone rang.

CHAPTER 3

The twin thing is
real
.

At least, that's what my twin brother, Jake, always said. He claimed to have an instinct for knowing whenever something was wrong with me. And he did have a knack for always showing up in my hour of need, so maybe there was something to it, after all. I wouldn't know because
I’d never had such an intuition.

Of course, nothing was ever wrong with Jake. He lived a worry-free, permanent vacation sort of lifestyle. This in itself worried me. Almost everything about Jake worried me. Besides having shared a womb, the only commonalities between Jake and I were double-jointed thumbs and a susceptibility to burn after too much time in the sun.

But different as we were, I loved my free-spirited brother. And the timing of his call was too strange to ignore. So, although I was in no mood to speak to anyone, I picked up the phone on the third ring.

“
Hi, Jake.”

“
Tessy!” There was a loud whooshing sound on his end of the line.

“
Jake, where are you?”

“
I'm on top of the world!” He echoed the last word several times, like an announcer at a wrestling match.

I rolled my eyes.
“Be serious. Where are you?”

“
I'm on a mountain, Tessy. I'm on my mountain.”

“
Your mountain?”

“
Yep, I own a mountain. Well, I own the land on the mountain. We own it.”

“
We who?”

“
Me and Sara.”

Jake and his wife of five years, Sara, met on spring break during
his third senior year of college. This time he was majoring in hospitality and tourism, mainly because he thought it would land him a job at a luxury hotel on a beach somewhere. He claimed the spring-break trip was a
hands-on educational experience.
Jake and Sara went to Vegas and got married on a whim two months after they met. I was alerted via text message at four in the morning on a Tuesday. When I got the news, I shook my head and went back to sleep. Jake had long since stopped surprising me with his impulsive antics.

The marriage itself
did
surprise me, though. Despite its spontaneous beginning, the relationship seemed to be flourishing, and I had to admit, Sara was pretty great. I couldn't help but like her. She was a sweet girl who put up with my brother. What else could I ask for in a sister-in-law?

“
You and Sara bought land?”

“
Well, no. We inherited it. From Sara's great uncle. And it's not land. It's a vineyard.”

“
A vineyard?”

“
Yes. A vineyard. You know, with grapes and stuff?”

“
I know what a vineyard is.”

“
You seem tense, Tessy.”

“
I'm… I'm fine. Sorry.”

“
That's why I called. Because I knew you were feeling tense. My twin powers were tingling. You need a vacation.”

“
I told you I'm fine.”

“
Okay, we can pretend you're fine, then. So let me put it to you this way: I need you.”

Oh here we go
. Here is where Jake tells me he's broke, and he needs to borrow a few bucks, but only for a little bit.
Like the time we were in high school and he convinced me to lend him five-hundred dollars for a junk car he found for sale in the paper. “It’s an
investment
,” he said. The car died after a couple months, and I never saw a penny of the money Jake promised he’d pay back with interest. But it wasn’t a total waste, because it gave me some leverage when he approached me about investing in an alpaca farm a few years later. I reminded him he still owed me five-hundred dollars for the 1976 Toyota Corolla, and he quickly changed the subject.

“
Jake—”

“
Let me finish, Tessy. I know what you're thinking. But this is not another one of my crazy schemes, and I don't need a cent. I need you. Your ideas. I want to try and make something of this place. It's a little off the beaten path and a little run-down, but it has potential. Serious potential. Come help me get the word out, oh great marketing genius. Come for a week, a month, the summer, whatever. Just come.”

I sat there listening to the wind whipping on the other end of the line.
I
did
need a job… Would this count?

No, Tess. Don’t be ridiculous.

“Jake, I can't pick up and go to… where are you anyway?”

“
North Carolina,” he said.

“
Right. Well I can't drop everything and head down there. I have a life here.”

“
With Britches?”

“
His name is Logan.”

Jake nicknamed Logan Britches after he spent a weekend with my family a few years back. Logan wor
e khakis to breakfast and Jake, who’d slept in his swim trunks and was still wearing them that particular morning, couldn’t get over why anyone would willingly wear khakis on the weekend, let alone before noon.

“
Right,” he said, “Logan. That's what I meant. Look, Tessy, come for a week. One week. I have a place for you to stay and everything. All you have to do is pack a bag and get in the car. Come spend some quality time with your big brother.”

Jake was three minutes older than me, but he never missed an opportunity to refer to himself as my big brother.

“What do you say, Tessy?”

I sighed.
“I'll think about it.”

“
Great! I'll put clean sheets on the bed.”

“
I said I'll think about it.”

“
I'll text you the address.”

“
Jake, I'm not—”

“
See you soon.” His end of the line went silent.

I let out a frustrated grunt and slid my phone across the kitchen table. It bounced off the cardboard box and clattered to the floor. I didn’t bother picking it up.

I rested my chin in my hands and debated Jake's offer. He was right; I did need a vacation.

For seven years,
I’d thrown most of my waking energy into my job. At the end of the day, whatever was left went to Logan. Tomorrow, I wouldn't wake up to the sound of my alarm telling me it was time to go to work. And Logan was out of the country for ten days. Our last moments together were so strained. It was obvious he’d been put off by my pathetic and desperate attempt to tie him down.

One week. I could go for a week and be back before Logan even knew I was gone. Because when he returned, I want
ed to be here waiting for him. I was sure he would come over and… and what?

And pretend nothing happened? Was that the best I could hope for? For us to go on indefinitely, like we had for years, while everyone around me got married and had babies and moved on with their lives?

I picked up the phone and stared at it. Logan said he would call, but he hadn't yet. With the way things ended, I'd be lucky if I ever heard from him again. Maybe it was time to shake things up. Maybe it was time to give him a little scare.

What if he
comes back and I’m not here?

The very thought made my stomach fizzy. Did I have the guts to try something like that? I always dreamed of being the kind of girl who was chased down by some handsome, lovesick guy in the movies. I
never dreamed of being this girl; the girl who tried to bully her perfect boyfriend into marrying her. And as much as I wanted Logan to call, I wasn’t looking forward to waiting around for him to make a move.

So what if I
did
disappear for a bit? Would he chase me? I hoped so. At the very least, getting away would help to keep my mind off things. It’s not like I had anything else to do.

I would go, I decided, but just for a little bit. Just long enough for Logan to realize what he was missing and beg me to come home.