Tangled

Chapter 27

EVERY NEW ASSOCIATE at Kim, Cha and Jeon gets to redecorate his or her office. We're not the only firm with this kind of policy. It's good business. Makes employees feel comfortable, like a piece of the company belongs to them. The choices of paint colors and furniture patterns aren't unlimited—but at a firm like ours, the pallet is pretty vast. That's how I got my inspiration. How I was able to figure out what Jennie prefers.

She's not into florals, and I thank Christ for that. She likes stripes, paisleys, and earth tones. Why am I telling you this, you ask? What does it have to do with anything?

You remember the Bat Cave, don't you? My home office. My firstborn. My strictly dickly, men-only region? Well, it's gotten a sex change. No, that's not really accurate. It's more of a hermaphrodite now.

Watch.

I turn the light on and bring Jennie to the middle of the room. Then I untie the scarf.

Her eyes widen. "Oh, my..."

The once burgundy walls are now a majestic blue. The English leather couches are history. In their place are two sofas, striped in warm tan and the same deep blue as the walls. My desk is shifted to the left—to make room for the lighter cherry one that sits next to it, side by side, like a bride and groom on their wedding day. The picture window behind them is framed with drapes in the same material as the sofas. And the poker table's still in the corner. But now it's got a stiff brown cover over it—to support the large, leafy plant that sits on top. I don't usually do live plants. My thumb's about as green as Morticia Adams's. But the interior decorator said women were into them. Some shit about the nurturing instinct.

Pretty amazing what you can accomplish in a short time when you've got an interior decorator with a team of workers at your disposal and money isn't an issue, right? But curtains are a real bitch to hang. I did those myself—wanted to personally add a few touches. And I almost put the rod through the frigging window a dozen times before I got them straight.

I watch Jennie's face closely. But I can't tell what she's thinking. She's blank. Stunned. Like an eyewitness to a double homicide.

I swallow hard. And start the most important pitch of my life:

"I watched The Notebook again."

It's still so fucking gay.

However...

"I get it now. Why Noah put that art room together for Allie. It wasn't because he was a vagina; it was because he didn't have a choice. She was it for him. No matter what he did, there was never gonna be anyone but her. So all he could do was set up the room and hope to God that one day she'd show up to use it. And that pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about you. So I did this—" I gesture around the room "—because I want you in my life, Jennie. Permanently."

Her eyes settle on me. And they're shining with tears.

"I want you to move in here with me. I want to fall asleep with your hair in my face every night. And I want to wake up wrapped around you every morning. I want us to spend whole weekends without any clothes on at all. I want to have clean fights and dirty makeup sex."

She laughs at that one. And a single tear slips silently down her cheek.

"I want to talk to you until the sun comes up, and I want to bring you cereal in bed every Sunday. I want to work long, endless hours in this office, but only if you're here next to me."

Her voice is barely a whisper. "Like a partnership? Fifty-fifty split?"

I shake my head. "No. Not fifty-fifty. You don't get just half of me. You get all of me. A hundred percent."