He nodded. For a moment he looked at the floor, at his own shoes on the carpet of an office, as she had asked, and she thought he was going to do it again: say something clever, apologize in a general way, leave.
"The Friday we were supposed to have dinner," he said. "At about three o'clock, Farrow called me into his office. He told me the Creative Director job was mine. He'd been planning to announce it in two weeks. He was very kind about the work. And then he said that he'd heard, from someone, that you and I had been seen in the stairwell on Wednesday night. He didn't say who. He said he wasn't going to have his creative director involved with one of his senior account people. He said he'd seen what that does to a shop. He said I'd have to choose, and he said, 'I'd rather you didn't make me choose for you.'"
Margot sat very still.
"I could have told him to go to hell," Wes said. "I thought about it. I sat in his office and I thought about it for what felt like an hour and was probably ten seconds. And then I said I understood. And I went back to my desk and I texted you. And on Monday I asked him to take me off your accounts, because I didn't trust myself to be in a room with you every day and keep the deal I'd made. And I never told you why."
"Why?" said Margot. Her own voice surprised her; it was quite calm. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because if I told you, you'd have had to decide what to do about it. Whether to fight him. Whether to risk your own track. You'd only just made senior lead, Margot. You'd been talking for months about Group Director. I thought if I took the hit and made it look like I'd just—gone cold—then it'd be my mess and not yours. You could be angry at me. That seemed—cleaner." He breathed out. "And because I was ashamed. I'd chosen the job. Telling you would have meant saying that out loud."
She stood up. She did not know she was going to until she had. She went to the window and looked at Bettina's paper snowflakes, which were taped on the inside of the glass so that from here you saw them backward.
"Do you know what I thought?" she said. "For a year and a half? I thought you looked at me on Friday morning and realized you'd made a mistake. I thought you were embarrassed. I thought you asked to be moved off my accounts because you couldn't stand to look at me. I thought I'd made up the whole thing on the roof. I went over every word I said that night, looking for the one that made you run."
"There wasn't one."
"I know that *now*." She turned around. "You decided what I could handle. You decided for me, and you called it protecting me, and then you let me carry the version of it that hurt the most because it was easier for you to be the villain than to be a man who'd made a bad deal. That's not noble, Wes. That's just another way of leaving."
He took that, too. She watched him take it.
"Yes," he said.
"And you're telling me now because of a photo booth."
"I'm telling you now because you said, in the booth, that disappointing people was my specialty, and you were right, and I've known you were right for a long time, and I'm tired of it being true." He hesitated. "And because I'd like to take you to dinner. Someday. When you want. If you ever do."
"No," said Margot.
He nodded.
"Not no forever," she said. "No now. I'm not something you get at the end of feeling bad. I'm not a prize for good behavior." She sat back down. Her hands were not as steady as they'd been in the booth. "And it isn't just me. You know it isn't just me."
"Anil," said Wes.