by Penny Aimes
He couldn’t get back to Austin soon enough. He needed her, not just for a night or for a scene. He needed her and he needed her to know.
October
When he got back, he and April saw each other at Frankie’s about as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately, they’d had a bit of a fight—she’d called him out for being insecure about her giving clothes away, for projecting his past with Sonia onto her. She’d seen right through him, God.
He thought it had resolved cleanly, though. He’d apologized and explained, the most he’d ever told her about Sonia. She had relaxed and talked a little about the things on her own mind. She’d been having a nasty time at work, something she almost never spoke about, and he thought he’d been appropriately sympathetic.
Next time, he told himself. Next time there would be no fight and no ugly work drama, and he would tell her he couldn’t go on without her any longer.
But since that night, she hadn’t responded to email or text. Well—that wasn’t quite true, was it? He had a text from Sunday, a response to a meme he’d sent her. If “lol” was a response. But nothing since then, and most of a week had passed. He’d even sent a couple of follow-up messages, which wasn’t usually his style. Nothing. Dread began to nibble at his toes.
It wasn’t a great week, anyway. He didn’t enjoy firing people, had almost entirely lost his stomach for it after the Help Desk bloodbath, and he’d had to fire one of the lead developers when he got back. He’d warned them that he wasn’t joking, that they were going to have to start using proper Agile project development with real two-week sprints and daily Scrums or he was going to lay down the law. They’d had months to get it together.
Bob Flowers had been on a Performance Improvement Plan, and at this point was openly defying Dennis’s direction. He’d had to go. It hadn’t helped Flowers’s case that his file was full of warnings for both inappropriate behavior and technical mistakes, even by the rather lax standards of the pre-Dennis era. But he’d been well liked by some of the developers, and Dennis had picked up some grumbling.
Fatima Nayeem had brought him cookies, though.
He’d seen Graham and the man had been gruff, if not openly hostile. He’d made an oblique reference to Dennis rescuing his project data, but Dennis couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a parting shot at the migration for putting it at risk in the first place or a rather clumsy attempt at a thank-you. It certainly hadn’t stopped Graham from fighting viciously for more than his fair share of the budget in the 6Q budget planning meetings.
He’d had to leave the contractors unsupervised at his house for six weeks. He had come back to the wrong cabinets and other projects on hold until he could give his opinion about one meaningless thing or another, most of which he’d already specified somewhere in the endless correspondence. Sometimes he had fantasies of burning the place down and buying a prefab McMansion in Leander.
Mostly it was April, though. He’d followed up a few times, with no response, and he was beginning to genuinely worry. Thursday morning his phone buzzed with a text, and he snatched it. It wasn’t her; was an unknown number. He almost didn’t read it, but the teaser line from the app caught his eye and dragged him. If you don’t know it, April is...
He opened it.
Unknown Number: If you don’t know it, April is getting electrolysis in Dallas today and she’s having a pretty bad time. I imagine you don’t know because she’s stubborn as a mule. Someone should be there with her.
He froze for a long moment, then texted back.
Dennis: Who is this?
Unknown Number: I don’t want to get in the middle of it, but I thought you should know.
Didn’t want to get in the middle of it?! He called the number. And very faintly, heard a phone ringing nearby.
What the fuck?
He followed the sound out of his office, and whoever it was hung up, but he just called them again. He could hear it better now, and followed the ringtone to—
“Fatima?” He was not normally a fan of appearing over the wall of people’s cubes like an angry giant, but there were times it was called for.
“Shit,” she said, and dropped her phone. Cleared her throat. “Good morning.”
“What the fuck is going on?” he asked. He was honestly pretty proud he kept his voice under control.
“Maybe we should talk in your office?” she said.
“That’s probably wise.” His mind was racing. Was he going to have to fire Fatima? How in hell was she texting him about April? How did she even know April, and how did she know he and April were connected?
What the fuck was going on?
In his office he closed the door, settled behind his desk and exhaled. She’d been back more than a week, but it was still odd seeing her not-pregnant; she’d practically been pregnant as long as he’d known her. Without ten pounds of baby she was tiny. She looked embarrassed but not afraid.
“Fatima,” he said again, meaningfully.
“April is a good friend of mine,” she sighed. “She didn’t tell me you two were an item until a few days ago, though.”
“I don’t know what she told you,” he said, wincing, “but I doubt she said we’re an item.”
“No, she’s silly that way, isn’t she?” Fatima agreed. “I think she just can’t believe anyone would ever choose her.”
“...how much did she tell you?” he demanded. This could be...disastrous. He was struggling to process it, to even absorb the fact that someone he saw every day was also in April’s life. What were the odds on that? It didn’t quite seem real yet.
“Not very much,” said Fatima soothingly. It did not soothe him. “But enough to make it clear you’ve been a big part of her life these past months.”
“April’s not answering my calls, Fatima. I’m sorry if she’s having a bad time with electrolysis, but if she wanted me there, she’d tell me.”
“No, that’s the very last thing she’d do.” Fatima shook her head. “You tipped your hand, you know. She knows you really care about her now and she’s scared. Now she’s in Dallas having a very bad day and she’s stuck there overnight, and the one person she wants to help her she thinks she can’t tell.”
He barely heard the second part of her statement as darkness descended in his head. She was scared. She ran away. April had run away from him, was trying to escape him. “If she doesn’t want to talk to me, I won’t force myself on her, Fatima. I don’t chase women.” Not anymore.
She shook her head at his foolishness, at the foolishness of all men. “Well. I tried. Am I in trouble, Mr. Martin?”
“You’re not—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, you’re not in trouble. How the hell did you get my cell phone number?”
She shrugged. “It was on your resume.” Ah.
“Please go,” he said wearily.
She looked like she had more to say, but for a blessing she held her tongue and left. A moment later, though, his phone buzzed with the address for the clinic.
He wanted to put his head down on the desk and scream. This was the third of these appointments since he’d met April and he knew approximately what went into them. The only clinic in the state that did all-day, full-face electrology was in Dallas, a short flight away, so April got up at 5 am and flew to Dallas and usually came back the same day. She didn’t usually complain about it, but he knew it was painful.
Was today worse than usual? April had never hinted she wanted him there—had in fact been adamant he not see her before or after. She had to grow out her facial hair in advance and for days after, she said, her face was a mess. He’d always respected her sensitivity around it.
He had to do that now. He wasn’t going to chase her. He didn’t chase women. He was cured of that.
He tried to take deep breaths. He tried to center himself back in the present, not in the past or the future. He tried to r
emember what Tony had told him.
The thing about making mistakes is they teach us lessons, but they aren’t always the right ones. Every sub is different and if you’re always reliving the last mistake, you’ll make new ones.
Was that what he was doing? She didn’t want him there, did she? What if she did? Damn it. Damn it.
He had another budget meeting at three o’clock.
His phone told him there were hourly flights to Dallas on Southwest.
Damn it.
Between driving to the airport, waiting for the flight, flying, renting a car, driving in Dallas—all told it was 4 pm before he walked into the clinic. Lots of time to stew and stress and fret and wind up back at the same decision.
The lady behind the front desk looked up when he entered and asked if he had an appointment. He could hear someone sobbing in another room.
“No,” he said. “I’m...here for someone. I’m her ride.”
Part IV: April, Dennis
April
When April got to work on Monday and discovered Bob Flowers had been fired, her first reaction wasn’t one that made her proud. It was brief, flaming, vindictive joy, a primal feeling of victory. You fuck with me, my man will fuck you up.
Except that was barbaric, and regressive, and anyway, he wasn’t her man. And a person, a real flesh-and-blood person, was now out of work because of something she said to a third person, and in fact maybe she kind of wanted to throw up.
I shouldn’t have that kind of power! No one should have that kind of power, but especially not me! Yes, Born-Again Bob was awful, but...maybe he had kids. Maybe he did prison ministry or...or something. And even if he was just as awful as he seemed and deserved to be fired, he should be fired because of a policy or a rule, not because he pissed off a powerful man by causing problems for his...
Fucktoy, whispered the cruelest part of herself. It was a word it had begun wielding recently to describe her relationship to Dennis. Dennis who dressed her up and played with her and then put her away while he ran off for months. Dennis who could hire and fire regular people like her and Bob Flowers without even thinking about it. It was terrifying. It was...
Kind of hot?
No! No, no, no, no.
And how did Dennis know she was talking about Bob Flowers, anyway? How long had he known they both worked here? Had he been keeping tabs on her work life?
She felt like she was having a panic attack, something that hadn’t happened in years. She thought she had some emergency medication at home, but that didn’t do her a lot of good right now. She tried to do the breathing exercises her therapist told her to do, but she couldn’t remember how it went.
She went to therapy weekly, she loved her therapist, she carefully cultivated a good relationship with her therapist because he controlled the letters that determined her access to health care, and only now was she realizing that maybe she should have told him about Dennis, or Frankie’s, or her kinks at all.
Thank God Fatima was back from maternity leave.
AFrench: I know it’s way too early for lunch but I have to talk to you.
FNayeem: What’s going on, hon? Is it hot gossip? Please tell me it’s hot gossip.
“That,” said Fatima, her mouth hanging open, “is some hot gossip. Damn, girl!”
It was twenty minutes later, and they were in the windowless room where Fatima went to pump milk several times a day. With no one else to see her, April very nearly had her head between her knees. In her bewildered and numbed state, she’d spilled everything. Everything. Fatima hadn’t seemed shocked, exactly, but she did seem to have become the physical manifestation of a gif of a woman eating popcorn.
“What am I going to do?” April hissed.
“Well, what is there to do? Born-Again Bob is gone—too bad, so sad, no one is sorry—and now your secret is out. He’s obviously not mad.”
“He could still be mad. He could be mad at me and at Bob. He’s chivalrous like that.”
“Chivalry is holding the door for you, girl. This is...something else. Still, though. Good for you.”
“No!” April said. Almost shouted. “Not good for me! This is the opposite of good for me. It is...scary.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Why is it scary?”
“Because...” She gestured vaguely, clawing the air. “Because if he can fire Bob for upsetting me, what’s stopping him from firing me if he gets sick of me?” Even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t the real reason.
Fatima rolled her eyes as she switched breasts. “That’s silly. Because first, you work for Leo Graham, and those two hate each other. If Dennis wanted you fired, Graham would probably promote you. Second, you really think he’s going to do that?”
“Well how should I know! I didn’t think he’d fire Bob.” She didn’t really think Dennis would fire her. But everything had just turned upside down. She couldn’t think straight. He wouldn’t. And he couldn’t. So why couldn’t she breathe?
“He fired the whole Help Desk,” said Fatima pragmatically.
April glared. “How does that make this better?”
Fatima shrugged. “You trust him, don’t you? I mean, you let him tie you up and all this, you must trust him.”
“I...yes, I trust him,” April said, more quietly. “He wouldn’t hurt me.” Her mind was racing with a lot of paranoid thoughts, but she knew that, really. It wasn’t being punished she was really afraid of. It was the inevitable conversation, the terrible admission, the humiliating apology. The impossible wait for him to shut her out of his life. And she’d deserve it this time, wouldn’t she?
“Then why would he fire you? You’re not making sense, honey. You’re spiraling.”
“I lied to him,” she said, finally spitting it out. “I kept this from him. For almost six months. And now he knows. God, how long has he known? I...”
She shook her head. “I can’t face him. And, and...it’s not just at the club or in my phone I can’t face him. He’s in the building. Oh my God, what did I do?” Every day for six months she’d painstakingly built this time bomb, and now it had finally gone off in her face.
She drew her hands down her face; felt her makeup smear and cringed internally. She couldn’t do this. She had to get out of this situation—and incidentally, wouldn’t it be great to never attend a Scrum meeting again? “I think I have to quit.”
It sounded incredibly appealing...right up until she said it out loud. As soon as it was out of her mouth, though, she was visualizing walking into a conference room for an interview with someone she’d never met and asserting, yes, my name is April, I do use she/her pronouns, no, this isn’t a joke. No. No, no, no.
“Except... I can’t quit. Because. I can’t go on an interview looking like this. And a Texas company won’t be required to cover my trans stuff. And...” She was definitely hyperventilating.
“Hey. Hey. Hey. Look at me.” She trained her terrified eyes on Fatima, who locked gazes and gripped her hands. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go home. I will tell John you went home sick. After work, I will bring you your laptop. You were going to work from home most of this week anyway, because of your electrology appointment, right?”
She nodded. She never wanted anyone to see her while she was growing her facial hair out.
“That’s the rest of the week. A week from now, you will be able to breathe, and we will find a solution. I promise. You are not alone, April. You are going to be okay.”
“Okay,” she whispered. She couldn’t imagine what that solution would look like, but she clung desperately to the idea that if she got through this week something would present itself.
She tried her best to not think about, to put it entirely out of her mind and pretend life was normal. She tried to ignore the texts from Dennis. She tried to get work
done. It was one of the worst weeks in her life.
And then on Thursday, she’d flown to Dallas, into what became the best day so far.
It didn’t start that way. It started badly. Extremely badly. By 4 pm she was sobbing in the electrology clinic while the technician stood by awkwardly. That was when she heard a voice in the waiting room.
In a deep rumble, it said: “No, I’m here for a patient. I’m her ride.” And it said, I’m here. And it said, You’re safe. And it said, What if?
And she said tentatively, “Dennis?”
Dennis
Hearing her voice, Dennis began to walk towards the room, moving at a deliberate pace. The urge to rush to her side was fighting with his fear; he didn’t know how he was going to be received, after all. There was a part of him that was certain chasing a woman was never the right decision, that her eyes would hold the same fear that Sonia’s had.
In fact, he didn’t see any expression on her face, because she was hiding inside her shirt, the neck pulled up over her nose so only her enormous eyes peeked out. She was in jeans and a plain, baggy T-shirt, with ratty sneakers he couldn’t remember ever seeing before. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that also disappeared into the shirt at the moment.
“Dennis?” she said again, still laced with disbelief and a thousand other emotions. There were tear tracks on her face, disappearing into her collar. She looked forlorn and wounded, and it tore something in him. Did she go through this every two months, alone? That was...unacceptable. Not ever again, he told himself. Never again alone.
The scrub-clad young technician seemed professionally sympathetic, but also like she saw this kind of thing a lot. Her expression lightened when Dennis entered. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she said, and vanished.