Billionaire Completes My Bucket List novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Back of the Card
Told she has nine months, Dinah finds her boyfriend in her bed, quits her toxic job to her boss's face, and a stranger reads her bucket list in the elevator and asks for a fiancee.
The resident said nine months, and then she said it again more gently.
I was sitting on a paper-covered table with my cardigan in my lap.
"Most likely pancreatic cancer," she said. "The biopsy will confirm it, but I'd plan for months. Nine, if you're lucky."
She slid an appointment card across the counter for the biopsy on the seventh.
I took it and thanked her, because I am the kind of person who thanks people.
I thanked the elevator, too, all the way down.
It was a Monday, and the sun was out, and nobody on Chicago Avenue knew anything.
I walked home with the card in my fist.
Lyle's white sneakers were on the mat outside our door, and a pair of red flats sat beside them.
I knew the flats.
I had helped pick them out in a sale at the mall, and I had said they were a great price.
I opened the door without making a sound.
My bedroom door was open, too.
My work friend was in my bed, the one I had paid half of, with my gray quilt pulled up to her chin.
Lyle was sitting on the edge of it in his boxers, laughing at something she'd said.
Then he saw me, and his face went through three different expressions.
"Dinah, it's not what it looks like," he said.
"It looks like my bed," I said.
My work friend started crying and reached for her shirt, and I noticed my locket on the nightstand.
It was my mother's, a gold oak leaf the size of my thumbnail, and I had left it on the bathroom shelf.
I did not scream, because I did not have it in me.
I walked to the closet instead, took down my laptop bag, and put in my laptop, my charger and my passport.
"What are you doing?" Lyle said.
"Packing," I said. "The lease is in your name, so you can keep it."
"You can't just leave. We need to talk."
"I went to the doctor today," I said. "I'm going to die, probably by summer."
He opened his mouth, and nothing came out.
I left both of them in my bedroom with that.
I wrote the list in my car, on the back of the appointment card, because it was the only paper I had.
Number one took me a second, and then it was easy.
Quit Strickland to Honora's face.
Number two was eat dessert first, and I put three beside it, because I wanted three.
By midnight there were ten lines, and the card was nearly full.
I did not sleep.
At nine the next morning I walked into the glass conference room on the nineteenth floor.
Honora Strickland sat at the head of the table in her black blazer, her silver bob perfect.
Five of our people sat along one side, and across from them sat the most important client we had.
Holloway Hotels had sent its chief executive himself, Jasper Holloway, a very tall man in a navy suit who didn't touch the coffee.
He had a crooked nose and short sandy hair, and he looked like someone who had been listening for a while.
"Dinah, you're late," Honora said. "We'll let you present the campaign now."
She said it as though she were handing me a favor.
The campaign was mine.
I had written it over five weekends, and she had changed the title page to her name.
I looked at the deck on the screen with Honora's name across it.
"No," I said.
The room went quiet.
"I'm not presenting it," I said. "I'm quitting."
"Don't be dramatic," Honora said. "Sit down."
"I wrote this campaign. You put your name on it, the way you did with the last four."
"Dinah."
"I answered your calls at three in the morning for six years. You called it loyalty."
Somebody near the window stopped breathing.
The man from Holloway Hotels put down his pen.
"You will never work in this city again," Honora said, very softly.
"I'll be dead by summer," I said. "I think I'll manage."
Nobody moved.
I picked up my bag and walked out, and I didn't look back at her face.
I was at the elevator with my thumb on the button when I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned around, and it was the tall man from Holloway Hotels.
He was holding my appointment card, which I must have dropped.
He read the back of it, all ten lines, standing very still.
"Item six," he said. "Take one thing I want and not apologize."
"That's private," I said.
"Eight is adopt a dog."
"Give it back."
He looked up, and his eyes were blue and very tired.
"I need a fiancée by Saturday," he said. "I'll pay for everything on this card."
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