Sitting crisscrossed on Deepa’s jewel-blue velvety couch, Nora sipped her wine and shrugged, affecting a posture of nonchalance that did not, perhaps, entirely match the range of feelings she’d wrestled with over the course of this long and stressful week in San Diego. Surprise and frustration, excitement and anxiety, certainty and also a fair bit of sadness. Inside her, it all swirled, a soaking-rain sort of thunderstorm that somehow felt welcome for all the things it was washing away.

“He might,” said Nora. “But it won’t change my mind.”

As of today, Nora had made the decision: she was leaving Verdant, too.

Not right away, not until she’d wrapped up work on all her current build-outs, and not until she’d helped Austin bring on someone new.

But soon.

It wasn’t that being back in the office had been awful. In a way, it’d been comforting: friends she hadn’t seen in months other than through videoconferences, favorite snacks from the cafe on the building’s first floor, two in-person bathroom mirror meeting debriefs with Dee, who was taking all the news in happy stride, given that she had already found a new and better gig at a marketing firm back in Berkeley. Even the time Nora had spent with Austin had been comforting: however frustrating he could be, it was good to remember how well they’d always worked together, how he trusted her expertise and valued her input, even on projects she wasn’t all that enthusiastic about.

But it had also been clarifying. In person, there was no denying the way Austin had changed, the way his priorities had shifted. And now that he’d revealed the full extent of his plans—the move to LA, the shift away from sustainability alone, the pivot to celebrity and influencer brands—Nora had known there was a reckoning coming for her and Austin. After the full team meeting in the afternoon, he’d pulled her aside and practically begged her to come back to California. “More money,” he’d said. “A new title, whatever you want. But this will go smoother if you’re with us in person.”

He’d left that if there as a concession—not quite telling her that remote work was off the table, but definitely not pledging his ongoing support of it, either. Certainly not if she wanted more money, or that new title.

A few years ago—a few months ago, really—she would have felt that tug of loyalty to him, would have genuinely considered it: a move to a city she wasn’t overly fond of, an uprooting of her life for someone who’d always been firmly in her corner.

But now, Nora was different. She knew, deep down: she didn’t want to leave Chicago.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.