Happily Never After

SOPHIE STEINBECK.

Sophie was FaceTiming me.

It was only 7:20 a.m. and no one was around yet on my side of the building, so I answered on my Mac instead of my phone. “Good morning, sunshine.”

And . . . there she was in full color. Wavy blond hair, red lips, black glasses, and a pin-striped button-down that was incredibly businesslike.

I was staring at an executive, right down to the leather-banded Apple Watch, yet it was tough to think of her like that when I knew the way she looked after a hot three-mile run.

And what she looked like drunkenly tossing Twinkies from a balcony.

And what she looked like after being thoroughly kissed.

“Are you wearing glasses, Maxxie?” she asked, sounding shocked as she smiled at me through the screen.

“Do I really have to answer that question?”

“Okay, obviously you are, but I didn’t know that you wore glasses, too.”

“And now you do.”

“And now I do.” She picked up her cardboard Starbucks cup and said, “So the craziest thing happened to me on the way to work.”

“Tell me,” I said, and wondered if this was fake, all part of the plan—which would be moot since no one was even near me right now—or if she was about to share an actual event.

“Larry asked me to drive his van today, because he’s going to the barber shop and wanted to borrow Nick. Said he’d like to ‘roll up in a hot roddie.’ ”

I fucking loved Larry, even though the old guy didn’t seem to like me. “Okay . . . ?”

“So I’m driving his full-size conversion van, AKA the creeper van, and the shocks are making a weird noise when I go over bumps. Or the wheels. Something just feels . . . off, right?”

“You seriously agreed to drive a conversion van to work?” That seemed very generous, to be willing to be seen getting out of something like that in public.

“Yes, now pay attention.” She gave me a look and continued. “So something feels off, right? But everything is still going along fine until I go over a speed bump in the Burger King parking lot.”

“You got Burger King?” I asked.

“No, I was cutting through their lot to beat the slow drivers to the Starbucks drive-through.”

“It connects?”

“Yes.” Another look.

“And you use it to cut people off?” I could absolutely see that about her.

“Stop judging and listen.”

“Listening.”

“I go over the speed bump, and I hear this loud noise and then kind of a grinding sound. As I’m freaking out about the noise, I see a wheel roll past me and down the parking lot’s incline.”

“A wheel?”

“A wheel. My wheel. The wheel to Larry’s van came off while I was driving it.”

“Are you shitting me?” I asked, trying hard not to laugh but failing. I looked up, and my dad was in the doorway, his eyebrows raised to ask if he could come in or not.

Well, shit, might as well do this milking thing.

I gestured for him to come in as I said, “Are you okay?”

Sophie said, “Yes. And don’t laugh yet—it gets better.”

“Impossible,” I said, and then my dad walked around to stand behind me and look at my computer.

Apparently my gesture to come in meant he was invited into my call.

“Sophie, this is my dad, by the way,” I said, and gestured over my shoulder with my thumb. “Dad, this is my friend Sophie.”

“Great to meet you, Sophie,” he said, so pathetically happy that I wanted to immediately disconnect the call.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she said, her cheeks getting a little pink as she smiled at him. “I can let you guys go—”

“Don’t you dare,” he interrupted, and I shook my head at Sophie as my dad said, “I heard your story when I walked by in the hall, and now I need to know how it ends.”

“Yeah. Lay it on us, Soph,” I said, giving her a this-was-your-idea smile.

“Cute.” She rolled her eyes and launched back into it. “I went to change the tire, because I knew his spare had extra lug nuts. Only the frame of his van is so rusted that every time I get it up on the jack, the frame crumbles and the van drops.”

“Sophie.” I leaned closer to the computer, no longer amused. “The van fell off the jack?”

“Multiple times, but don’t give me that dad look; I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t under the van while I was lifting it.”

I glanced back at my dad, and he looked incredibly smitten with my friend Sophie.

“So I had to have the van towed because the tire couldn’t be changed, and now Larry is so mad he won’t talk to me.”

“Who’s Larry?” my dad asked.

“My roommate,” she said, which made him frown.

“Larry’s seventy-five,” I added, and the smile was back.

“He’s seventy-seven, for the record,” she said, smiling fondly. “But he tells everyone he’s sixty-seven. Shaves ten years off his birthday every time.”

“Where is your office building, Sophie?” my dad asked, leaning a little closer to the Mac monitor. “Is that Miracle Hills behind you?”

She tilted her head. “How did you know that?”

“We built half of those office buildings outside your window.”

“I work in the Nesbo building. It used to be—”

“DataFirst.” My dad looked very proud of himself when he said, “We built your building.”

“Shut up,” Sophie said with wide eyes, looking amazed. “Seriously?”

“Hundred percent. What floor is your office on?”

“Technically I have a supercube, not an office, but it’s on the east side of the building and I’m on six.” She held up her phone and did a slow turn so my dad could see the interior.

“Did they ever knock down the wall on the west side and make it bigger?”

“I don’t know—do you want to see?”

“Yeah, I’d love that,” he said, grabbing one of the guest chairs and sliding it over to my desk so he was sitting beside me. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all.”

As she walked through the building, talking my dad through the different areas, I felt a weird burning in my chest. I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, but something about this situation was making my insides buzz.

After five more minutes, when Sophie said, “Aaaand we’re back at my desk,” I said, “We’ll let you get back to work now.”

“No, this was great. I cannot believe you built this place.” Sophie looked genuinely impressed as she smiled at my dad.

“Did Maxxie tell you we’re building the new Hawkins headquarters up the street from you?”

“No, Maxxie did not,” she replied, giving me a reproachful look, as if I should’ve told her. “He just said he had a project in the area.”

“You should come by during lunch and take a look around. He can pick you up on his way over. It’s literally on your block.”

I expected her to politely decline, or to lob the ball back to me, but she didn’t even pause before replying, “I would love that, if Max doesn’t mind picking me up.”

—

I texted: I’m here.

I still couldn’t believe she’d said yes. Not only was I surprised she had time for this, but I was certain this meeting between her and my dad was going to screw me over.

Because there was no way he wouldn’t love her.

I mean, objectively speaking, she was gorgeous and smart and funny.

What’s not to like, right?

But as much as I wanted to lead him to the idea of me being “taken care of,” I didn’t want him to have expectations for something that was never going to happen, either.

“Hey,” Sophie said as she opened the passenger door, grinning like she knew I hadn’t seen her coming. “Why did you let me say yes?”

“What?” Her long, tan, smooth legs looked really good in my front seat.

“I was being nice to your dad,” she explained, smiling like she found the situation funny, “because I knew you’d jump in and get me out of this.”

“I didn’t know what the hell you were doing,” I said. “You need to blink in Morse code next time or something. Now the old man’s going to think it’s serious.”

“Or something,” she said, buckling her seat belt. “And I’ll act super platonic.”

“Good. And I’ll try to speed it up and move it along. Unfinished buildings are hardly exciting.”

“You don’t think so?” she asked as I pulled out of the parking lot.

“Well, actually, I fucking love them,” I admitted. “But normal people do not.”

“So do you like your job, then?” she asked. “I mean, obviously it’s the family business, but do you like it?”

“I actually do.”

“Ooh,” she said, apparently pleased with my answer. “What’s your favorite part?”

I glanced over. “Of my job?”

She nodded earnestly, as if she really wanted to know.

“All of it,” I said, not even hesitating. “I get to do a little of everything in my role—design, drafting, construction, finishes, furniture—so it’s this very tangible reward I get when a project is completed. I get to actually see every step in its final form.”

“That would be rewarding.”

I pulled in front of the building, and as if he’d been waiting for us, my dad came out the front door with a wave.

“Christ, would you look at how excited he is?”

There was a smile in her voice when Sophie said, “He is adorable.”

We spent the next half hour being given the tour guide treatment by my father.

Sophie followed him around the building in her shiny black pumps, fitted suit skirt, and a tailored blouse, rocking the hell out of a yellow hard hat. She genuinely seemed to be interested in all the details my dad shared with her, which was a little surreal because it was my project.

Seeing Sophie all over my work made me feel some sort of something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

The beams were up and the exterior was set, and after spending months poring over the plans, I could squint my eyes and visualize how it was going to look when it was finished. Break room over there, vestibule on the north side, conference room upstairs; the nearly there potential always got me.

I fucking loved it.

As we walked back to the entrance when we were finished, I showed her the 3D renderings on my phone of what it was going to look like when complete. She smiled up at me with dancing eyes and said, “I’d be so excited, if I were you, that I don’t think I’d be able to sleep until it was done.”

I leaned down a little, so only she could hear, and I said, “Don’t tell anyone, but I come here at night all the time, just to sit in the dark and imagine it.”

“Aren’t you afraid of falling and breaking your neck?” she asked around a laugh, her shoes clicking on the cement floor.

“No,” I said. “Because I know this building better than I know my own face.”

“As someone who reads workplace safety data on a daily basis,” she said, looking at me over her glasses, “your behavior terrifies me.”

“Such a buzzkill,” I teased.

“A buzzkill who is starving. Are you going to feed me or what?”