What We Choose novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Interview

Nash

I woke up in room twelve with Sienna's hair in my mouth.

The Harborview's foghorn was going out on the point. Same as every morning in this room.

Sienna lived here now.

Dessa's landlord had called me Friday.

The other name on the lease had asked that "the unauthorized guest" be removed. He'd recited the phrase flat.

So Sienna had checked into the Harborview with her suitcase and her garment bag, and asked for twelve.

"For old times' sake," she'd told the girl at the desk.

The girl at the desk had looked at me.

Everybody looked at me now.

After the pie tent, my phone had gone quiet.

Not one text from the guys. My mother called a dozen times, and I let every one go.

My father hadn't called at all.

I lay there and stared at the water stain on the ceiling.

I'd stared at that stain the first night, too.

June ninth.

Sienna had called me in Boston a week before. Out of nowhere, after ten years.

Bayline needs a PM. Colter will hire whoever I tell him to. Come home, Nashy.

Nobody had called me Nashy since high school.

The interview was at four, in Colter's office over the boatyard.

Colter asked about schedules and change orders.

He shook my hand at the end and said, "Sienna says you're the best. Don't make her a liar."

Then Sienna said she'd buy me a drink to celebrate.

The Harborview bar. Two drinks. Four.

She told me I'd been the best thing in her life, and that her husband talked about drywall in his sleep.

She had a key to twelve already in her purse.

She'd planned it. I knew that even then, and I didn't care.

At eleven I went into the bathroom and called Dessa and told her the interview ran late and I'd found a motel off the highway.

Keep reading free with an account. Start What We Choose from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.