I remember her. “Kim Anderson. She was a swimmer. I was a fan.”
“Obviously.”
“She came up to me and—”
Violet puts her hand up. “I don’t need to hear the details. The point is you left the party with her even though you arrived with me. I had to call an Uber to get home.”
I see. Now it all makes sense. Violet hates me because five years ago when I was at Wharton—which feels like ancient history now—I took her to a party and I left her there.
Do I have an excuse? No. I was frustrated with her because she was being a cocktease. I had a case of blue balls. Then I met Kim. She was nice. She was willing. I took her back to my apartment. End of story.
Did I feel even a twinge of guilt for leaving Violet? I did. I tried to talk to her after one of our classes, but she avoided me. Then I saw her with some guy and I just assumed she’d moved on, and I did, too. It turns out she never did.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “But that was ages ago. We were students.”
“Grad students. We weren’t teenagers, so you can’t blame hormones for your behavior.”
“But we’re professionals now.”
“Apparently, that doesn’t stop some people from sleeping around.”
I roll my eyes.
“You haven’t changed,” Violet says. “I saw how the women in this place look at you.”
“That’s my fault?”
“They wouldn’t look at you like that, with that hunger and that hope, unless they had some kind of encouragement. You still sleep with one woman after another and then throw them away the morning after, don’t you?”
“Not as much as I used to.”
Violet laughs. “Like just three women per week?”
I don’t answer. “If you go out with me, I won’t sleep with anyone else. I promise.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Not falling for that again.”
I sigh. “Violet, that was years ago. Can’t we just forget about it and start over?”
“No,” she answers firmly.
“I already said I was sorry. What do you want me to do? Kneel? Give you a foot massage? Buy you flowers? Whisk you off to the beach and write ‘I’m sorry’ a hundred times in the sand?”
“Wow.” She sits up and clasps her hands on her desk. “Maybe you should quit being CFO and write a book called 101 Ways to Apologize. I bet it would be a hit.”
“Do you want me to give you my job? Is that it?”
Her expression turns serious. “No. I don’t want you to give me your job, Mr. Hawthorne. I’ll take it myself. In fact, I don’t want anything from you.”
“So you’re just going to keep hating me for the rest of your life? Is that it?”
“No,” Violet answers. “That would be too exhausting. I already stopped hating you once, you know. When I was in Switzerland, I forgot about you. But you showed up and here I am hating you again. But I’ll stop eventually. I’ll go back to just pretending you don’t exist, to not feeling anything at all for you.”
“So you admit you still have feelings for me?”
“Hate. Disgust. All that ugly stuff.”
“Damaging stuff,” I say. “Why not just let them go and give me a second chance?”
Violet puts her hand on her chest as she snickers. “A second chance?”
I shrug. “Why not? Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“Bullshit.” Violet stands up and narrows her eyes at me. “If you think I’m going to give you another chance to make me feel like a fool and a piece of trash, you’re dead wrong.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“No. You’re not. End of conversation.”
Violet sits down. I draw a deep breath.
“Can’t we at least be friends?” I ask her. “We are going to be working together.”
“Which is something I never asked for. Do you think I want to work with you? But like you said, we’re adults and professionals, so yeah, I’m going to do my job and I’m going to do my best. And one day, I’m going to be CFO. It’s that simple.”
I scratch the back of my head. Really? She thinks all this is simple?
“I…”
Just then, I hear a knock on the glass door. I turn my head and see Stella stepping in. She stops as our gazes meet.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Asher. I didn’t know…”
“Can I help you?” Violet asks.
Stella looks at her. “You must be Violet Cleary. I’m Stella Quinn. We met in Zurich.”
“We did?” Violet asks as they shake hands.
“Right. You probably don’t remember me because I was in the background. I’m Ethan’s… Mr. Hawthorne’s assistant.”
“Oh.”
“He asked me to show you your apartment, so when you’re done here, you can—”
“Oh, I’m done here.” Violet stands up and looks at me. “We are done here, aren’t we, Mr. Hawthorne? Or is there something else I need to make clear?”
“No,” I answer. “You were very clear.”