Chapter 4: The Footage

"You slept with the owner," said Benji, holding a spatula like a gavel.

"Keep your voice down."

"We live in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment. Who is going to hear me, the radiator?"

It was nine at night, and I was sitting on our counter in my coat with a plate of eggs I had not asked for.

Benji cooked in a diner on Milwaukee Avenue ten hours a day and then came home and cooked for me.

"I didn't know he was the owner," I said. "I knew a man in a mask."

"Who then became your boss."

"Who then asked me this morning to find the woman he slept with."

Benji put the spatula down.

"He wants you to find you."

"He wants me to find her."

"Noelle. Tell him."

"I can't."

"Why not? He's looking for you. This is the easiest meet-cute in the history of Chicago."

"He doesn't know it's me," I said. "He looked straight at me on Monday and nothing happened."

"So he's an idiot."

"He's the owner of the company that pays my team. Paulette keeps a spreadsheet of people she wants gone, Benji. Four of them are mine."

"Okay."

"If I walk in and say, surprise, I'm the girl from the hotel, what do you think Paulette tells the entire building by lunch?"

Benji thought about it.

"That you slept your way into the gala."

"Exactly."

"But you got the gala by yelling at her in front of two hundred people."

"Nobody will remember that part."

"I will." He slid the eggs closer. "Eat."

I ate.

They were very good eggs.

"You're not wrong," he said after a minute. "I just hate it. You deserve to get the guy without a secret."

"I don't deserve anything," I said. "I'm trying to keep four jobs."

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