She dialed Griff’s number and plugged her ear. She could barely hear the phone ringing. She thought she heard Griff answer, but after a second or two, she realized she’d gotten his voice mail. His recording was talking to her.
She hung up the phone. She had bumped into Griff so many times by accident that she hadn’t anticipated having a problem finding him.
When she dialed again, he picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Griff?” she said. “It’s Margot.”
“Who?” he said.
“Margot,” she said, feeling like an imbecile. “Margot Carmichael.”
“Oh,” he said. “Hold on.” Margot could hear bar noises—music, and people laughing. He was probably sitting at the Boarding House, talking to some sexy blond advertising executive, telling her he missed having someone to talk to at night, someone to tell the stupid stuff. Since he didn’t believe in love anymore, anyone would do.
Suddenly Griff’s voice was clear and strong. “Hey?” he said. “Margot?”
“Hi,” she said.
“Sorry, I just had to step out. What’s up?”
Margot said, “Where are you? Are you someplace I could meet you?”
“I’m at the Boarding House,” he said.
Margot and her perfect instincts. She was probably right about the blonde, as well. “Are you busy? I don’t want to interrupt.”
“Not busy,” Griff said. “Nothing to interrupt.”
Margot felt a surge of relief and something sort of like happiness, even though what she was about to do was going to suck eggs.
“I’m coming down there,” Margot said. “I’m at my house, I’m leaving now.”
“No,” Griff said. “I’ll come to you.”
“I’ll come to you,” Margot said. “I’m leaving right this second.” She heard the oven timer beep, and one of the caterers moved her gently aside so he could slide out a hotel pan of fragrant sweet-and-spicy pecans. When Margot and Jenna had pored over the after-party menu selection, Margot had imagined herself sitting around the fire pit with her sister and her brothers, munching on those yummy pecans and washing them back with an ice cold Cisco brew from the keg. She had imagined the guitar player singing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” She had imagined a peaceful ending to a drama-free wedding. She had not imagined anything like what was now happening, but oh, well. Margot hung up the phone and took a handful of warm pecans for the road.
She bumped into Griff on Main Street. Margot thought, Men never listen! I said I would come to him! But it was nice to have someone meet her halfway for a change.
He grinned. “Nice dress,” he said.
She was still wearing the grasshopper green. She should have changed, she realized—but after she told him what she had to tell him, it wasn’t going to matter what she was wearing.
He touched her arm. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“Can we sit?” she said.
“Sure,” he said. He led her to the bench in front of Mitchell’s Book Corner. The shopwindows up and down the street were lit, but there were only a few pedestrians out, and the occasional taxi rumbling up the cobblestones, taking people home to their beds, Margot supposed, or to the Chicken Box to dance.
She said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said.
When Griff had first come into Miller-Sawtooth as a candidate for the head of product development at Tricom, the applicant pool had been unparalleled by anything Margot could remember seeing in her whole career. The slate she had compiled was all Princeton undergrad and Harvard Business School; everyone was a potential superstar. Margot had overseen all the interviews; she had been the one, along with the associate principal, Bev Callahan, and with occasional consult from Harry Fry, the firm’s managing partner, to winnow the group down to five, and then to three candidates, which she sent to Tricom.
Griff had looked good. He had fourteen years’ experience at a comparable company called the Masterson Group, although with an unexpected, abrupt departure. He had attended the University of Maryland as an undergrad, then Wharton, and there had been a curious gap—when, he explained, he’d spent two years on the PGA tour. All of this was very good, including the gap—Harry Fry loved golfers, and Griff told a charmingly self-effacing story about rooming with Matt Kuchar and Steve Stricker and the hazing he’d had to endure. (They had made him drink warm beer that they’d run through the dishwasher.) Griff presented very well in person. The whole room was nodding at Griff, eating his words up. Harry had loved him, Bev had loved him, Margot had loved him.