1
Chicken, Thai basil, peanuts.
Rosie’s resolution for the year was less takeout, a nearly unattainable goal when one is single and lives in San Diego, where such restaurants are plentiful. Instead, she attempted one new takeout recipe each week. Learning to cook her favorite dishes gave her somewhere new to divert her energy. She couldn’t go to yoga anymore. Too much time to think.
She snagged the chicken from the meat counter and basil from produce, then headed for the bulk section. Cheery music played in the store and she found herself humming. Lately, life had started to feel sunnier. They’d landed a new client at work, a good one with an open mind and an eye for design. Her sister was five months clean. Elle, Rosie’s best friend, was finally back in California after four years working at a resort on a nameless island in the South Pacific.
The lucky duck had been offered a job at a space tourism company out in the Mojave Desert. Both girls had grown up in love with the night sky, spending many a late night on the hammock in Rosie’s backyard staring at the stars and talking about life. Rosie’s dad, a planetary scientist, fueled their imaginations with stories of how the solar system had formed: time and heat and gravity so intense that every wisp of stardust was swept up. Broken pieces remade.
A process Rosie was now intimately familiar with.
According to Elle’s text from the day before, OrbitAll was in need of an architect. Rosie, an architect, just so happened to be in need of more work. She and Elle might be two lucky ducks if tomorrow’s meeting with OrbitAll’s Chief Operating Officer went well.
She grabbed a small plastic bag and scanned the bulk bins for salted peanuts. Why were there so many kinds of lentils? And flour? A man rounded the end of the aisle. The tall frame and wavy golden hair registered in her brain with a jolt as anxiety spiked through her middle. God, had he seen her? Heart pounding, Rosie hunched her shoulders into a ball and slunk around the corner of the aisle as fast as her heels would allow.
Leaning against loaves of bread, she breathed through the pangs of panic. It’s just Jeremy. He didn’t even see you. And he’s one of the good ones. Still, in case her internal cheerleader was mistaken, she bolted for self-checkout and did not look back. She’d left that life, those people, behind her. Even the good ones.
* * *
Rosie’s therapist’s office was located along the Embarcadero, San Diego’s waterfront. She inhaled the scent of the sea as she climbed the stone steps lined with planters of cherry-red begonias. Inside, Selah’s office offered a view of the marina and undulating Coronado Bridge.
Selah didn’t have a receptionist, so Rosie took a seat in an uncomfortable knockoff Eames chair and tried to shove the lingering what ifs from her mind after running into Jeremy, a former co-worker. A former friend. She imagined instead what she’d wear to the OrbitAll interview the next day. Definitely a dress for springtime in the desert, paired with a blazer so she looked more professional than her twenty-eight years would imply. Many architects weren’t even licensed at her age. Rosie was licensed and owned her own firm. Still, she looked young. She was young, and she’d hustled to win the projects in their portfolio. She supposed she should be proud to still be swimming. Or so Selah said.
She had one client follow her from her old firm. The rest didn’t know what had gone down there. She hoped nobody knew. But, two years later, with a sluggish client list, she couldn’t help but wonder if word had gotten out about Rosie Flynn. Her past had been feeling less constrictive lately, but then Jeremy’s profile had popped into view.
Selah appeared in the doorway, head tilted to the side and a genuine smile on her face. “Come on back, Rosie.”
Rosie followed her to the sunny office full of green plants and gauzy curtains. The beige couch beckoned. She sank into the sofa with a sigh.
“Happy sigh or unhappy sigh?” Selah settled herself into the armchair in the corner. She tucked one leg underneath her before pulling out the colorful journal she used to take notes.
“Both.”
“Yeah? How are you feeling?”
“Well, I hid in some loaves of bread at Sprouts today after running into a coworker from my old firm, so…the same?” She couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped. “I’m so glad he didn’t see me.”
“Hiding behind bread, or in general?”
Way to ruin her little joke, Selah. “Both.”
“Who was the guy?”
“His name is Jeremy. We worked on a few projects together. He listened when I talked, you know? And he was really creative.” And the most important point? “He never liked Chad. I could tell.”
If Rosie hadn’t known Selah most of her life, she would have missed the subtle lip curl. Physical revulsion was her own response to that name as well. Affection for her therapist surged through her, a much more pleasant rush of emotion than the panic she’d felt at seeing Jeremy. Not that the situation at her old firm was his fault. Or hers, for that matter. Selah had helped her see that.
“Sounds like you liked Jeremy.”
Rosie nodded. She’d enjoyed working with him.
“Do you think you were hiding from something besides Jeremy?”
Discomfort rose like bile in her belly.
“Probably.” She frowned. “I don’t even want to think about that job or those people. Hiding next to some whole wheat seemed like a better idea at the time.”
“And now? Are you happy with your response to seeing Jeremy?”
Rosie shrugged. “Eventually, I’d like to hold my head high again no matter who I see. Even if I saw Chad himself.”
Selah mimed clapping. “That covers the unhappy part of your sigh. What about the happy part?”
“Elle got me an interview with a space tourism company called OrbitAll. I head out to the desert tomorrow to meet with the COO. She says he’s the handsomest man on the planet.”
Selah smiled. “Elle’s always had an eye for beauty.”
Or always been boy crazy. “Elle told me that Tate, the man I’m meeting with, was waiting at her house on the island when she got home from work one night. She said he was a perfect gentleman, even in the jungle with no one around. There was alcohol involved and he never even looked at her boobs.”
She didn’t know why the “perfect gentleman” comment of Elle’s had stuck. Despite her own experience getting screwed over by a guy, Rosie acknowledged that not all men were untrustworthy scum. Look at her dad. Elle’s dad. Levi, the guy Rosie had dated in college. The men she employed at Abode. Jeremy, even. All decent men. But the one bad apple had ruined the bunch.
“Has that story influenced your decision to interview there?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Not consciously.”
The term space tourism held the stuff of dreams, and a global client like the Geier Group, OrbitAll’s parent company, would open doors for Abode that Rosie could scarcely imagine. However, she couldn’t forget that opportunity all hinged on a man. Sure, Elle painted Tate Geier, the COO, as a gorgeous, perfectly behaved billionaire, but could such a mythical being exist?
Influenced by the reputed perfect gentleman or not, Rosie did know that tomorrow’s interview could impact her life. That one meeting could change her entire future.