by Alexa Woods
Arabella’s attention fixed on the stapler on the edge of her desk. “But
what if someone finds out that it’s more than that?”
June wished she could reach across the desk and touch Arabella’s hand or
gather her up in her arms and hug a heavy dose of reassurance right into
her. “It’s not a secret, remember?”
“I do, but I guess we should maybe talk about how we want to tell
people. The when and the if. If we had a plan, it might make things easier.”
“Definitely. Alright. At lunch? Or tonight?”
“Whenever it feels right.”
June gave Arabella a look that she hoped conveyed all of her joy, her
hope, the whole wild elation she felt at this—them—being real. She wanted
to reach that next step where it was more than just them who knew. She
wanted Arabella to meet her parents. She wanted a real dinner with
Arabella’s parents too, with Arabella’s sister there as well.
What June really was ready for was the whole world to know about them.
Not just because she was simply ready, but because she couldn’t contain all
the wonderful sensations inside her anymore. If the road got rocky when
people found out they were dating, and she was sure it really wouldn’t, but
if it did, she’d be more than ready to get out the patching equipment and
start smoothing over those holes and flattening bumps. She was ready to
work for it, to fight for it if she had to.
“So, what were you thinking for lunch?” Arabella asked shyly.
“I was thinking whatever you were thinking.”
“Oh good. We’ll spend the entire hour trying to figure out where to go
and come back here starved.”
June stood up and snatched out her phone. “Actually, there’s this little
place I’ve been dying to try.”
“Great. I’m in.”
“Just like that?”
“I’m not fussy. You know that.” Arabella paused, then with even more
shyness that was completely adorable, she added, “As long as I’m having
lunch with you, I could eat anything, even chocolate-covered bugs.”
“What about if they weren’t chocolate covered.”
Arabella gulped. “I guess I would try, but I don’t think they’d go down as
smooth. Doesn’t chocolate make everything more appetizing?”
“So does a deep fryer.”
“Eww. Okay, I hope it’s not really bugs.”
“It’s not really bugs. It’s actually this food truck that opened up. They
have the most amazing sandwiches, or so I’ve heard.”
“Then we should try said amazing sandwiches.”
June knew she should really get back to her office to tackle the crazy
amounts of paperwork she had stacking up, but she paused after walking to
the door and walked back to Arabella’s desk. Arabella stood, glancing at the
door and the front of her office yet again.
“I was just going to ask if you thought there was anything off with Beth
at that meeting?”
“Oh, I-I don’t know. I didn’t really notice anything. Why? Did you?”
“I don’t know. I guess she’s just stressed. She just looked…I don’t know.
Different? It’s maybe just because I’ve known her for a long time. I was just
going to talk to her and make sure she knew that it isn’t her fault if this
thing crashes and burns.” Arabella looked panicked. “I mean, it’s never
going to crash and burn. Sorry. It’s an amazing idea and I know people are
going to love it. Beyond love it. I could just see that Beth might be taking a
lot of this on herself and it’s normal to have doubts about anything that’s
brand new that we’ve never done before.”
“You notice everything,” Arabella whispered. Her eyes locked with
June’s. “That’s one of the things I love about you.” She seemed to realize
she’d used that word only after she’d said it. It was casual, something
anyone would say, but it wasn’t that way when Arabella said it.
June softened. She glanced behind her this time, then she grasped
Arabella’s hand tightly, just for a second before she let it go. “Thank you.
There are many, many things I love about you too. At lunch, I hope I can
tell you a few.”
Arabella’s face lit up. “I can’t wait.”
June left Arabella’s office feeling like she was floating. She had so much
work that she bypassed Beth’s office and decided to work on an email
where she could properly write out everything she wanted to say. She’d
have a few days to complete it, then she’d send it and book a meeting with
Beth privately right after. They’d talk it out and everything would be fine.
The new shoe line was going to be amazing.
Even more amazing was that they’d both just used that word. That crazy
four-letter word that was so hard to say. While it wasn’t I love you, it was
always a good idea to encourage your partner and starting with the things
you appreciated and loved about them was a great place to begin using that
word.
She’d said it to precious few people in her life who weren’t related to her.
Yes, she used it all the time, like everyone else did, but just thinking about
using it with Arabella, when the time was right, made her feel like she was
floating even higher, so high that the spectacular shoes she had on, that so
many people had worked so hard on to make a reality, her favorite pair ever,
felt like they were miles and miles above the ground.
Chapter 20
Arabella
Beth’s face was ashen when she stumbled into Arabella’s office. Not
walked. Stumbled. She didn’t knock and she hesitated, the door hanging
open. Her skin was white, not chalky, but waxy. Arabella jumped out of her
chair as soon as she looked up and saw Beth.
“Oh, my God, are you okay?”
Beth moved her hand to signify something, what exactly, Arabella wasn’t
sure. She tried to make eye contact, but Beth’s eyes strayed away, darting
around the office. “I-I-I need to…”
“I think you should sit,” Arabella said when Beth trailed off. She wasn’t
being impatient when she pointed at the chair in front of her desk. She
actually thought that Beth might fall over. She looked truly and utterly
terrible and it was alarming.
Hadn’t June just asked her a few days ago if she thought something was
off with Beth? If the stress was getting to her? Yes, yes, she had. Arabella
knew June had booked a time to speak with Beth soon. She’d been so busy
lately, but she was writing her an email. Yes, she certainly remembered June
telling her that she was writing something, and she was going to meet with
Beth in person after she’d had time to digest what she’d written and make
sure everything was okay.
Beth extended a hand that looked like a claw. She grasped for the arm of
the chair and pulled herself into it, not so much sitting down as collapsing.
Arabella watched her, her skin so milky white that the vein throbbing in her
forehead was nearly visible. The pulse pounded at her neck, leaping in time
to the amount of times that Beth swallowed.
Arabella’s first instinct was that Beth had just found out she was sick,
and it was something terrible
and terminal and she’d come in because she
needed someone to talk to. She didn’t look well at all. Arabella clenched
her teeth against the outpouring of questions she wanted to ask. She told
herself to be patient and wait for Beth to talk to her. She didn’t want to
stand over her, so she forced herself to sit back down in her chair. She
nearly missed it and gave an anxious little laugh when it skittered out
behind her, and she caught it at the last second before she fell on the floor.
Beth stared at Arabella. Arabella tried to maintain eye contact, but it was
getting unnerving. Beth hadn’t blinked once, she swore it. She stared,
silently willing Beth’s eyelashes to flutter. She even blinked a few times
herself, dramatically, hoping that Beth would follow suit, but she didn’t.
“I-I did…”
Arabella leaned forward. She tried to smile softly, calmingly,
encouragingly, but that sentence started with I did, not I am. Not, “I’m
sick.” Not, “I just came from the doctor.” Not, “The doctor just called me.”
What had Beth done that was so terrible that she looked like she didn’t have
a drop of blood left in her face?
Beth’s eyes flooded with tears, and then she did blink, so furiously and so
many times that Arabella grabbed the edge of her desk. She felt like
something was coming at her. It was like sitting in the driver’s seat of your
car, knowing you’re about to be in a wreck, but being virtually powerless to
stop it from happening. It was a terrible feeling. She hated the way her heart
slammed over and over again, drumming out a sick rhythm that made her
whole body feel numb and shaky.
Whatever Beth had done, she was here to tell her, not June, not anyone
else. What did that mean?
Beth swallowed thickly and brushed at her tears. “I—Arabella, God, I’m
so sorry. I did something and I don’t know how to undo it.”
Arabella didn’t think she was an overly good problem solver, but Beth
had come to her, and she would do what she could to help, even if she felt a
disgusting hollowness in the pit of her stomach. It felt like it was growing
with every second that Beth didn’t say anything. The suspense was a gross
thing, a shadowy monster waiting to devour them both.
“Why don’t you just try to tell me what it is, and I can help,” Arabella
said. She gave Beth a watered-down smile that was supposed to be much
stronger than it was.
Beth looked away quickly, as if shed been chased by Arabella’s gaze,
which wasn’t a good sign at all. “I’m sorry. I never meant it to get so far. I
thought we could still beat them to market. I thought the designs would be
useless for them then. They weren’t far enough along in the planning stages
to actually execute something like that, but they have. They are. They did.”
“What are you saying?” Arabella’s heartrate was painful now.
“I sold your designs,” Beth gasped out.
“Sold my what?” Arabella was so confused that it was like Beth’s words
hadn’t even reached her. She felt like she was in another room or standing
outside the glass of her office and it was noise-canceling glass and whatever
Beth said never reached her.
“Your designs,” Beth whispered. “I sold them. To another company. I
only did it because I thought I had time to undo it. I needed money for
Amelia. Shannon found this incredible private school, but it’s expensive
and none of us have that kind of money. It would be a great opportunity for
Amelia. I want her to succeed and be happy more than anything. Public
schools just have too many kids and not enough teachers. Even if people
care, there just isn’t enough of that care to go around.”
The sky was crushing her. Or maybe that was the office ceiling. Arabella
flicked her eyes up anxiously, actually afraid the tiles would be pressing
down on top of her head, but nope, it was still up there where it always was.
She was suffocating. The air in the office was in short supply. She
realized she was holding her breath. The oxygen in the place was just fine.
The crushing sensation she felt wasn’t the ceiling or the sky. The building
wasn’t falling down around her. It was dread. Terrible, aching dread that
curled up inside of her like a feral animal digging its claws into her belly.
“How did you get them?”
“That meeting. Where you had to leave early. You left the folder in the
middle of the table with the designs in it. I had all your notes and research
from the shared marketing folder.”
“But everyone signs an NDA when they start here.”
She realized how dumb that was. It was like saying that no one was ever
allowed to cheat on a test because there were consequences for doing so.
People still took that chance and rolled the dice. If they didn’t get caught,
their deception would pay off. If they did, maybe they hoped they’d still get
out of it. But what about Beth? Wouldn’t she have known that she’d get
caught? It would have been so obvious if another company came out with
all of their designs.
But who would have suspected her?
No one.
So why was she in Arabella’s office, confessing what she’d done?
“I did,” Beth whispered.
“June’s going to find out. I don’t know how to fix this.”
“She already knows. The ad for the new shoe line came out this morning
and she saw it right away. She called me to ask me what the heck was going
on. I told her I didn’t know. She said that she was going to come talk to you
as soon as her morning meetings were over. She’s away from the office this
morning, which is why I’m here, talking to you now, before she gets here.”
Arabella’s throat closed up again and she lifted a hand and thumped
herself there like she was choking. “What?” she squeaked. “She knows?”
Suddenly, it made sense. It made sense why Beth was there, confessing
what she’d done. It made sense that June knew, but that she didn’t know
what Beth did. Those were Arabella’s designs. Designs no one else had
access to because she normally kept them locked in her filing cabinet with
all the other paperwork. It was an old habit, from working at places where
sensitive information was just about always a thing. June wouldn’t
remember that Arabella had left her folder the day her dad had been taken
to the hospital.
June thought Arabella had sold the designs. That she’d sold them to
another company for more money. Ultimately, June thought she’d betrayed
her. Not just in the sense of the whole working together, business side, but
that she’d betrayed her. Betrayed her as a person. Betrayed her hopes and
her trust. Betrayed her personally. No one knew they were dating. Beth
didn’t know. She couldn’t realize what a big blow she’d just delivered.
It really sucked to feel like she was drowning. She couldn’t focus on
Beth, even though it wasn’t like she was trying to not look at her. She
wanted to look at her. She wanted to search her face for some clues, for
something else, for a way out of this.
“I’m sorry,” Beth said again. Th
e shitty part was that her voice was
breaking, and her eyes were tearing up. She honestly sounded truly sorry. “I
thought we could get there ahead of them. Or put something better out
there.”
“But you couldn’t have got much for them.”
“I didn’t.” Beth laughed harshly. “That’s the worst part. I got a little bit,
but not much. I have lots of friends that I’ve met over the years who work
in other companies, and I had lunch with one of them last week. She
mentioned how they’ve been trying to do a kid’s shoe line for ages.
Something fun and unique. I told her I might have some designs if they
were willing to compensate for them. I don’t know why I said it. It just
came out and then it was out and done and they liked the designs. They paid
me more than enough. They’re not even a shoe company. They do clothing
for kids. It’s all for kids, but I still thought we’d be so much further ahead,
we’d blow them out of the water.”
“By putting out the same designs and sending their whole production into
a funk?”
“They don’t recycle anything, so it wouldn’t have been the same.”
“But similar enough that June could have gotten sued.”
“I-I thought I could change them enough that maybe that wouldn’t
happen. We would have put ours out first anyway. In my head, I was going
to make it work,” she moaned. “I thought I could work it all out, but I didn’t
have time.”
Beth wasn’t a dumb lady. Arabella knew that. She was very smart and
very capable. If she said she thought she could have worked it out, then she
really did think so. She wasn’t being malicious. She wasn’t trying to hurt
anyone. She knew that she could, but she had hoped she wouldn’t.
Arabella didn’t understand why Beth had taken the risk, but she did
understand one thing. The love that one person could have for their family.
That love made people willing to do anything, even if it was crazy or bad or
underhanded.
“So, June thinks I did it?” Arabella asked again, just to confirm. She
desperately wanted the answer to be no and was actually disappointed all
over again when she watched Beth nod.
“She does.”
Arabella desperately wished she could erase the last few minutes and
rewind the words Beth had just said. Even if that wouldn’t do any good, she