She saw herself in the role to an extent she wasn’t sure what she’d do if he said no. So she hesitated. Waited. Surely Zane could see for himself she was the woman for the job.
Lexa gazed out over the common work area called the Think Tank. When she started with Zane seven years ago, they were in a crowded Canal Street office working around the clock to open the Forty-Sixth Street store.
With her husband in grad school, she had been the sole breadwinner, and she loved it. Loved doing her part to help him achieve his dream while living out hers.
Working for smart and savvy Zane was fun, if not wild. There were so many eleventh-hour wins in that first year, they created a Wall of Fame.
Most of all she loved being on a team. Moving eight times from first grade to twelfth, she barely had time to fit in before her air force doctor father would be reassigned.
Her parents and little sister, Skipper, were her best friends. Yet, how she longed to be accepted by the cool kids at school.
She glanced at Zane’s door. He was a cool kid. And he’d accepted her. Almost.
The trouble with longing for acceptance was inequitable conditions. What one considered acceptance, another did not. Lexa learned long ago to see her inclusion into her peer groups for what they offered, not what she expected.
She might see herself as CEO, but Zane might not. Then what? Did she just have to accept it?
“Lex, is Zane in yet?” Fatima from the test kitchen flashed a requisition form. “I need him to sign it unless you can.”
Lexa pointed to his office. “He just complained I don’t let him know what’s going on.”
Fatima laughed. “Doesn’t he know you’re the neck?”
Lexa raised her hands. I know, right? Seeing Fatima reminded her to text Quent.
See Zane when you get in.
What’s up? Just heading into the shower.
It was a quarter to nine and he was just getting out of bed?
Not sure but try to make it before lunch.
Gathering herself, she worked on the Zaney Days update for the meeting. But her attention landed on a meme she’d printed out a few months ago and taped to the side of her computer: “‘Courage!’ he said and pointed toward the land. ‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’”
The Tennyson poem had been a favorite of her dad’s every time they moved. Every time Lexa and Skipper started a new school.
“Courage isn’t the absence of fear,” he would say. “It’s going forward anyway.”
So why the big chicken imitation over asking Zane to make her CEO? It’d be a huge job-title change and enormous raise.
But could she make such a giant leap? A thin fear twisted in her chest.
No wasn’t necessarily a rejection, but it always felt that way to her. If he said no would it ruin their relationship? What if she didn’t want to be Zane’s executive assistant the rest of her life?
Besides her business degree with a focus on corporate governance, she knew ZB Enterprises inside out.
In the last seven years she’d hired and fired more than half the Think Tank, scouted vendors and suppliers, written the employee handbook, set the job titles and salary ranges, and created every job. Met with accountants and outside contractors. Even sat in on board meetings.
So . . . could she leave? Put herself out there and find a position as CEO or close to it?
The truth was, she’d envisioned an entirely different life for herself. But it didn’t pan out, and now she was twenty-nine. Time to get going. Move on.
Even Dad was encouraging her to raise her wings.
Last Christmas, as the fog of her divorce began to lift, old Dad sidled up to her with a cup of spiked eggnog.
“You can’t stop living, Lex. I know this divorce isn’t what you wanted, but it’s time to get a new plan.”
“I have a plan.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s a work in progress.”
He chuckled and hooked his arm around her shoulders. “I did you no favors dragging you, your mother, and sister around the world from post to post, but it made you a strong, independent woman.”
“It also made me an insecure woman. Will they love me? Will I fit in?”
“You’re a big girl now. Time to command your own life. Don’t get stuck, Lex. The time for mourning your marriage is over. Though I have to say, he surprised me. I thought he’d love you until his last breath.”
So did she. He pledged to do so in his vows and repeated it to her often in their first year of marriage, in the afterglow of lovemaking. Or over breakfast, or during a walk in the park.
Lexa handed over her heart the night he proposed and never expected it back. He was a man she could love and trust without fear or regret.
Then they imploded. In the quiet, between awake and asleep, her heart sometimes asked her soul, “What exactly happened?”
A new email dropped into her in-box. The cast of the Broadway hit Lost in Nashvegas agreed to appear for Zaney Days.
Outstanding. Zane would go nuts for this. The cast rarely made appearances and had turned down everyone from the governor to late-night talk-show hosts.
Lexa added the news to the Zaney Days robust agenda.
By nine thirty she had the data she needed and sent the agenda to the printer, then searched her desk for a loose dollar bill to feed the drink machine for a sparkling water.
As she rounded the corner for the employee kitchen, Quent zipped toward her in a wrinkled blue button-down splattered with drops from his dark, wet hair.
“I’m here.”
Lexa pointed to Zane’s office door. “Go on in. When you’re done, grab the Zaney Days agenda from the printer and take it to the conference room.”
At the drink machine, she fed the slot her dollar bill and selected a cherry-flavored water. Her ex liked cherry-flavored water. And pie. Ice cream. Pretty much anything with a cherry flavoring. Even her cherry lip gloss.
The reminiscing irritated her. She was over him. At least ninety percent. Maybe eighty-five. Eighty. For sure eighty percent.
Yet love was such a powerful potion. It made a girl dream of things she never wanted before. Like being a wife and mom, nesting in New Rochelle or a Long Island fixer-upper Cape Cod, where she’d raise three kids and a dog while proofing her husband’s manuscripts and secretly hunting for a vacation house on the beach in Florida near her folks.
Heading back to her work space, she peered into Zane’s office. He and Quent were sitting under the large picture window that framed a million-dollar lower-Manhattan scene.
They chatted like a couple of bros. Probably about football instead of work.
Lexa set her drink on a coaster, took a sticky notepad from the middle drawer, and wrote September 30 on the top sheet. Tearing it off, she stuck it to the bottom of her computer screen.
The date was her deadline to be ZB Enterprises’ first CEO. Or else.
Or else what? She had no idea but left the answer for tomorrow. For now, back to work. She might as well get the printouts. Quent would be in there until Zane left for the conference room.
It was then she noticed the plain, cream-colored envelope resting on the edge of her desk.
Bending back the flap, she tugged out a matching invitation.
You are cordially invited to the Fifth Avenue Story Society.
The Fifth Avenue Literary Society Library