Page 8 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

A dozen other present ideas raced through my mind, alongside all the reasons why they didn’t work.

I could have at least added a travel voucher for them to go to Paris, so the macarons would have made more sense. City of love and all that. But Axent, Beck’s company, probably ran half a dozen hotels in Paris and he had a private plane. So what would they use a voucher for? Disneyland? I couldn’t imagine Beck wrinkling one of his crisp suits on Hyperspace Mountain.

“Do you think Beck would voluntarily ride a rollercoaster?”

“If Del asks,” Victor replied without missing a beat, but his eyelids twitchedjust so, and his pupils zeroed in on the macarons. I’d skipped a few thoughts ahead and he was trying to piece them together.

I didn’t even bother explaining, because Beck and Del were about to land in Boston after just having spent a week in England. They were hardly going to jet off again just to ride a rollercoaster and meet Cinderella.

“It’s good,” Victor said after a moment of silence.

I turned around to face him fully, and this time his undivided attention was on me. He gave me a small nod to reiterate hiswords. Victor didn’t talk much unless he needed to. And over the last few years, he needed to less and less, as I understood even this small affirming tilt of his chin, and it eased some of the tension in my chest.

“She won’t hate it, right? She won’t think I’m a bad friend for just getting her glorified French cookies? She won’t think I’m a bad roommate because I just barged into her room?” This stupid tremor in my confidence wasn’t new but it had lain dormant for a while. I’d never been good at maintaining any sort of friendship. Even as a little kid. But I also hadn’twantedto keep a friendship for over a decade. Now that I did, the worries were back.

“It’s good,” he repeated.

“They are very good macarons,” I said, more to convince myself than him.

“Let’s go eat something.”

“Good idea.”

Eating somethingwas more than just a quick snack.Eating somethingwas Victor whipping up cheesy chicken pasta and setting my afternoon meds out on the counter for me. Protein and Adderall.Eating somethingmeant feeding my body the chemicals it needed to slow my thoughts and, by extension, ease the anxious ones.

Before I could actually eat something, my computer chimed in the next room. That was my sign that my lunch break was over. I had spent most of it on Del’s present. I could technically set my own hours, but I had a meeting to get to.

“I'll have to eat later," I said.

Victor pulled an unimpressed brow at me, but didn’t say anything when I sprinted from the kitchen to silence the incessant ringing in my office. Fitzi blinked at me from his spot on the windowsill before turning back around to watch the street. When Del had moved in last year, she had brought thefluffy gray cat with her. More often than not, he followed me around like a shadow when Del was out.

“What’s so interesting out there, huh?” I asked as I dropped into my chair. I glanced past his huge body at the gray skies, wet pavements, and the leafless magnolia in front of my house. It usually provided a nice extra bit of privacy. My spine stiffened as a passerby looked up at my windows, even though I was hardly visible from here. Maybe I should look into planting an evergreen out there instead.

My computer started chiming again, ripping me from my tumbling thoughts. I clicked on the scheduled meeting. Monica’s face filled my screen, a second later Amani’s camera came to life, too. I closed the preview of my own webcam. As much as I was getting better at letting others into my house, physically or digitally, I didn’t want the visual reminder.

“Good morning, ladies,” Amani sing-sang.

Her chipper voice immediately brought a smile to my lips. “Good afternoon,” I brought a window for meeting notes up on the side of the screen, “how’s the west coast?”

“The absolute west.” She drummed her fingers against her keyboard. “Badum-Tss.”

Monica just chuckled and slightly shook her head. Amani was 28 years old, overflowing with confidence and positive energy, and ran our small marketing and comms team. Monica was the opposite. She had been working for various charities, boots-on-the-ground, for almost forty years. If there was a practical problem, she was the one we turned to. As the founder of the Theresa Montgomery foundation, I was responsible for all the executive decisions. There was a much bigger team behind the foundation, but these Friday meetings were just us.

“Defineprofessional,” I said a few minutes into the meeting after Amani had announced that she needed a professional photograph of me for the website.

“Not taken on someone’s phoneandtaken by someone who has some sort of professional experience behind the camera.”

I grimaced.

“Do you want me to find you a photographer?” Monica asked, not voicing what she actually meant. A safe photographer. A discreet photographer. Someone in and out of my house in ten minutes.

I had no doubts that she could find one, or even had a few in her old rolodex, but she wasn’t meant to spend her time and resources on assisting me. “No, I’ll manage,” I said, “thank you.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I’m sorry,” Amani said, “but people don’t trust us enough. At least not the ones we need to reach, the ones who aren’t chronically online and don’t follow the high society pages. They hearMontgomery, and they think of your father. And I’m sorry, but your father sucked. I saw that interview from 2002, where he…”

My attention drifted away from my screen to Victor filling the doorframe to my office, all height and muscle, holding a small tray. He raised his brows as if to ask for permission and I gave it to him with a small nod.

Victor knew exactly how the camera was angled and kept himself safely out of the picture when he placed my lunch on a stack of folders on my desk.

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