Nights With Him(111)
“Should I take it?”
“It does sound like a great job,” Sutton said as they walked past noontime crowds scurrying around the city.
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “So, tell me the truth. How badly do you miss Reeve when he’s on a shoot?”
“Terribly,” Sutton said with a pained sound in her voice. But then she softened. “Except, it’s lessened because I know he’s coming back. If you take the job, it won’t just be for a few weeks here and there. You’d be gone. You’d be living there, and he’d be living here.”
Michelle nodded. Her heart felt so damn heavy. “That’s the issue, isn’t it?”
Sutton stopped at the corner, and placed her hands on Michelle’s shoulders. “You love your job. You’re going through a rough patch right now. But the question is—which will you regret more? Will you look at him every day and see him as the man who took your career away?”
“No!” Michelle said quickly, taken aback.
Sutton shook her head. “I don’t mean like that. I know it’s not his fault. But if you don’t take this job, what will it do to your relationship with him? Will he simply become the man who got in the way of you taking another step in your career? Will you look at him and see only the lost opportunity?”
Michelle gulped, wishing her words didn’t sound so damn insightful. “Are you the shrink now?”
Sutton laughed as they crossed the street at the green light. “I’ve just spent enough time with you to be able to see all these sides. And hell, I suppose you could try to make it work. Have a go of it. Be a Paris-New York couple. You wouldn’t be the first, you won’t be the last,” she said, then tipped her chin down the street. “I’ve got to run.”
She planted a kiss on Michelle’s cheek, and took off for her casting call.
Michelle stood in place on the corner of Fiftieth and Broadway, watching her friend march with a purpose down the street, her silhouette mingling with a sea of other New Yorkers, all coming and going, heading in and out of revolving doors, to work, to meetings, to lunch.
All with purpose. All with a plan.
Except her.
She huffed out a defeated sigh, then shrugged. Maybe Jack was free. Maybe he could come out and play. Entertain her for a spell. She dialed his number, but it rang and rang and rang. Clutching her phone in her hand like a lifeline, she walked towards Times Square. Perhaps she could people-watch for a while. A few minutes later, a text popped up.
J: In a meeting. Thinking of you. I’ll call you back soon, OK?
She wanted to kick herself for having been so needy, for having bothered him during the day.
Somewhere in this gigantic beast of a city was Jack, sleeves rolled up, chin down, focused on running his multimillion-dollar business. Meanwhile, she had nothing to do but stare at everyone else, and hope that someone, somewhere would need her.
* * *
“Take ten and then we’ll go through the scene one more time,” Davis said to the trio of actors on stage at the Belasco Theater on Forty-Fourth. After an hour of wandering, she’d found her way here and was waiting for her brother in the back of the Broadway theater where he rehearsed the play he was directing. As the actors walked off stage, he joined her in the seats.
Row P. Seats 101 and 102.
He ran a hand gently across her shoulder, then asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Should I take the job in Paris?” she blurted out.
He didn’t need details. He didn’t ask for them. He had his answer. “Yes.”
“But wouldn’t I just be running away, then?”
“You need a breather, Michelle. You need time and space to recover from this. Go to Paris, take the job, and let this all blow over.”
“I’ll miss him,” she said softly.
“I know,” he said, his voice soft and kind too. “But you spend your whole life taking care of people, and it’s what you love. You’ll be unhappy without it.”
She flashed back to how she’d felt in Paris. On stage. Delivering the keynote. Talking to her colleagues. She had been energized, alive, and firing on all cylinders. Here, without her anchor of work, she was drifting.
They talked more, and soon Davis gestured to the stage. “I need to get back to work. But join me later. Jill’s back in town. We’re all going to meet for drinks.”
“Sounds good,” she said, and as her brother rejoined the cast at the edge of the stage, she returned to a blank day, knowing as hard as it was, and as much as she’d miss Jack, she really ought to say yes to the job in France.
Work had made her happy. Work was her solid, steady, constant. It had never let her down.