by Sherie Keys
Alice stood up with her and together they walked to the door.
"Let me know if anything comes up, and let me know what the wife says when you give her your answer, okay?" Alice said earnestly.
Brandy nodded. "Alright. I will." Then she reached her arms around her friend and hugged her tightly. "Alice, thank you so much for being there for me and for being such a good friend. I love you."
"I love you too. I'll always be here for you,” Alice told her with a smile, and the two of them waved goodbye to each other as they parted ways.
When Brandy reached the school, there was a line of students ahead of her, so she had a lengthy wait and a lot of time to think things over. When she reached the front of the line, she spoke briefly to the woman at the desk and explained that she needed to drop her entire semester of classes.
The woman immediately called a financial advisor over to try to talk her out of it, to share the school's programs, and to help her try to find a way to stay in school. There was no way to do it, and the advisor finally gathered all of the paperwork she needed to drop the entire semester and get a payment system set up for her to repay all of her financial debts to the school.
When she left the school, she was both saddened and relieved. She went home and when she got there, she settled herself in with a hot tea and decided that it was time to call Kyle's wife.
She picked up the phone and dialed the number, and waited. There was no answer and she felt funny about leaving a message, so frowning, she hung up, biting her lip.
Ten minutes later, the woman called her back and she answered right away, seeing the number that was calling her.
"Hello?" she answered.
"Yes, is this Brandy Keller?" the woman asked.
"It is. I just tried to call you."
The woman scoffed slightly. "Well, thank you for calling me back. I've given you plenty of time to think over my proposition. What do you have to tell me?"
She sounded cold even on the phone. It amazed Brandy that Kyle, who was loving, thoughtful, and kind, could ever have married this woman.
"I have thought about it, and I have an answer for you. I'm going to refuse the money," she told her quietly.
The woman gasped and she could hear fury ignite in her voice. "So your choice is to try to keep in contact with my husband, then?" she asked in outrage.
"Well, to be honest, I don't want to keep in contact with him, but I do feel like it wouldn't be right to take the money from you. There are a few things that you don't know about, that have influenced my decision, and it's those things that have made me make up my mind the way that I have.
“I will need to talk to Kyle again at some point in the future, and that's the other reason why I didn't take your offer. I am not at a point where it would really work for me to stop communicating with him altogether. I hope you can understand that." Brandy tried to sound as nice as she could.
Veronica's voice grew colder and angrier as she spoke. "So what you're telling me then is that you're going to keep on screwing my husband?"
"No!" Brandy tried to jump in to tell her. "I'm not sleeping with him anymore. Things aren't like that between us now. They were, but that is over. Long over. We don't even talk anymore at all." She tried to tell her at least that much to assuage the furious woman.
Veronica would not hear it. "I don't care what you tell me about not screwing him anymore. I know you're lying! I know you want to keep seeing him so you can have an affair behind my back and try to steal him away from me! You're a rotten little whore, and I told you what I was going to do if you didn't let him go.
“I warned you. I told you that it would cost you your career. Well honey, since that's what you've chosen, that's exactly what's going to happen. In the meantime, you stay the hell away from my husband. He is mine! You can't have him!"
Brandy grew angry and decided to fight back. "I'm not going to sleep with him! That's pretty ironic coming from you anyway; demanding that I don't sleep with him, because you sure as hell don't sleep with him, and that's how he wound up in my bed in the first place. He was tired of being lonely and used. He wanted to be loved and be with someone who cared about him!" she raised her voice back at Veronica.
The other woman laughed at her. "Don't you dare try to tell me about my marriage, little whore. He loved me enough to marry me. The only thing he wanted from you was a romp in the hay. That's all you're worth to him; just some cheap sex from a tramp, and he got it and that is all you're ever going to get. Don’t think you can come after him and try to steal him away, because it won't happen. He is mine and he is always going to be mine and there's nothing you can do about that!"
"I'm done with this conversation." Brandy told her. "You can keep your deal." She hung up the phone and when it rang again a moment later and she saw that it was Veronica, she didn't answer it. She had another thing to consider, she realized then; if Kyle did want to spend time with his child, she was going to have to work out some sort of system where Veronica wouldn't be left alone with the baby. There was no way that Brandy was going to put up with that. She took a warm shower and then went to bed, hoping that the next day would be better for her.
The next day started out with a bump as the landlord let her know that her rent was going to be increased and it wasn't a small amount. She would have to start looking for a new place to live; something cheaper and more affordable, but in the meantime, she was going to have to go ask Hannah for more hours. Even at the amount of rent that she was already paying, she'd have to be making quite a bit more money if she expected to be able to make it with a baby.
She called the doctor's office as she promised Alice that she would, and when they found out that she hadn't been in at all, the nurse told her to come in that day and they would take her blood and at least get her set up and going on vitamins and do a fast check on the baby.
She agreed and a short time later, she was sitting in the doctor's office filling out enough forms to fill a short novel. After a lengthy wait, she was taken back into the office and weighed, measured and seated in her own room. The nurse came in and took several vials of blood from her, as well as her pulse and vitals.
She had told her on the phone that the doctor would not have time to see her, but she poked her head into Brandy's room anyway, and when she talked with Brandy for a few minutes, Brandy was able to have some questions answered and get a better idea of what was to come.
"You're going to have a December baby,” the doctor told her. "So far everything looks and sounds good. Come in next month and we will do your next appointment."
She gave her a prescription for prenatal vitamins and some advice for morning sickness, and Brandy went away glad that she had taken the time to see the doctor, and relieved that she had gotten at least that done.
After that, she went in to work and when she saw Hannah, she went to her and asked her if they could talk.
Hannah frowned deeply at her and told her that they needed to go into her office.
Brandy's brow furrowed a little and she followed Hannah into her office.
The moment that Hannah sat down, Brandy began speaking.
"I wanted to talk to you to about some changes that have been going on in my life. I need you to put me on full time so that I can make more money. I dropped out of school this morning, so there won't be anything to keep me away from working for you as much as you can have me here,” she said with a half-smile on her face and hope in her voice.
"Well," Hannah said to her with a serious tone and a deep frown, "there is something else that we have to talk about. Please sit down."
Brandy sat and folded her hands in her lap, and for the first time, noticed the deep lines of strain and stress creased in Hannah's face.
Hannah looked at her and lowered her eyebrows. The thin hard line of her mouth opened and she spoke in a tone that narrowly withheld her anger and disappointment with Brandy.
"We've received a phone call from one of our most affluent customers, and
she has filed a complaint against you. She tells me that she is taking her complaint all the way to the state level. Whether or not she does remains to be seen, but the most significant aspect of her complaint against you is the association of you with this facility.
“I run a reputable business. I can't have someone with the status she has and frankly, the social pull, spreading rumors and telling other people things about my business that put this spa in a bad light. I refuse to let your unthinkable indiscretions cost me my reputation or my business, and the livelihoods of the other employees here!"
Brandy stared at her in disbelief. Veronica had done it. She had called the spa just like she said she would, and now Brandy was facing the repercussion of that. She felt her chest tighten and her stomach clench as she began to panic over what was happening. It couldn't be happening.
Brandy blinked back tears and told herself to just listen and try to focus on not showing any emotion while she was sitting there listening to her boss. She couldn't break down there.
Hannah's face grew harder and her voice deeper. "You have behaved in a completely unprofessional manner. Having sex with clients in your massage room? What in the world were you thinking? You certainly weren't thinking of anyone else who works here, or of me, or of the profession you entered into.
“You were only thinking of yourself, and now your immoral acts and unprofessional behavior are coming back to hit all of us very hard. I absolutely will not stand for what you have done! Your job here has been terminated, and you will not get a reference out of me for a position at any other company.
“As a matter of fact, you have acted with such reprehensible immorality that I have already warned every other spa I know of in this town about what you have done so they won't hire you, realizing what someone like you might do to their business or their reputation, or even, God forbid, their clients.
“You are through in this city, young woman. There is nothing else I can do but end your job this minute, but if there was anything else that I could do to stop you from working in this industry, believe me, I would do it. I have not worked this hard, for all of these years, just to have a little tramp like you come along and pull it all out from underneath me so you can work as a prostitute behind closed doors in my own business! How dare you!"
Brandy's throat was tight and her palms felt warm. Her heart was thudding wildly against her chest as she listened and sat there in utter shock. Veronica had driven the blade in deeply, and had twisted it hard. Brandy should never have done what she did with Kyle, but now his wife was getting her own retribution, and Brandy felt like she was on a train going down the side of a mountain, off the rails and out of control.
There was nothing she could do, and it took everything in her to hold her emotions in and try her best to keep herself calm. She could not stop the tears from coming, but she managed to cry silently, and that at least was some show of her strength, she felt.
Hannah stopped herself short, as her voice was growing louder and louder, and Brandy's eyes were shedding tears in rivulets down her cheeks. She knew that everything Hannah had told her was right. She knew that she never should have acted the way she had right there at her job, right there in a place of business. The spa had a fantastic reputation and she had been lucky to be hired on there, but now her choices had taken her down yet again.
"Your final check will be prepared for you within five days. Let me know where you want it sent, because I do not wish for you to ever darken my doorstep again, so I don't want you coming back here to claim it. I would be ashamed for your face ever to appear here again. Let me know an address, and I will mail it to you as soon as it is ready,” she said with finality.
Brandy's mind was a tangled mess of thoughts, but she tried to think as quickly as she could about what was going on. She had no job. She had no likely prospects of getting a job at any point in the near future, and she was certain that she wouldn't be able to keep her apartment without a job. She had a lot of scrambling to do and she would have to figure something out quickly. She looked at Hannah through her tears and wiped her cheeks as dry as she could.
"Send it to my parents. Here's their address." She wrote it down on a piece of paper and slid it across Hannah's desk toward the woman.
"Do you have anything to say for yourself? Anything at all?" Hannah asked, and Brandy felt quite sure that Hannah did not really want to hear anything that Brandy had to say, but she couldn't leave without a word.
"I'm sorry that I let you down, and that I let this business down. You've been good to me and I should have treated you and this place better than this." She meant it. She knew better. Acting with morality was an enormous aspect of being a professional masseuse, and she had taken that far beyond the measure of acceptability in her actions with Kyle.
Brandy had no problem owning up to her mistakes. She should not have agreed to anything with him at all, but especially there in the spa. She didn't know how Veronica knew they had been intimate at her job, but she wasn't wrong about it, and now Hannah and every other reputable spa in New York knew about it. Brandy was horrified with herself.
She stood up and sighed. "I'll go pack my things."
"That's already been taken care of for you. There is a box at the front desk waiting for you. You may pick it up on your way out and do not come back here again. There's nothing for you here,” Hannah said, leaning back in her chair and looking coldly at Brandy.
Brandy nodded and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. She didn't want to stay in the spa a moment longer than necessary, so she went up to the desk and the girl there saw her and her eyes grew wide. It was obvious that she knew what had happened. She reached down and lifted a box containing all of the things that Brandy had kept at work.
Brandy leaned over and took it, and then walked out of the door, and that was the end of her employment at the spa. She took the train home and walked into her apartment. The moment the door closed, she let the huge well of emotions she had barely kept in check wash out from her in a river of tears and heart breaking sobs.
Her time with Kyle had cost her everything. She had was no longer in school, she was no longer employed and her professional reputation had been shot. She had a broken heart and a baby on the way. She had never been in such a dark place in all of her life, and it felt as if everything in her had been ripped apart.
She looked around her apartment and she knew that there was no way she could stay there longer than a month. The savings she had managed to gather and keep tucked away from her time with Kyle would need to be used for the baby who would be in her life in no time.
If she stuck it out, stayed at the apartment, and tried to get a job at another salon, she would spend a good portion of her savings just getting by for the month. Then she would have to leave, because her savings would be so far gone, and if she wasn't able to find a decent job, she would have wasted the month and the savings, and she would have nothing to show for it, other than being worse off than she was just then.
There was only one other option for her and it made her sick to even think it, but she had no choice. She knew she was going to have to call her mother and father and go home to them in Boston. Defeated and broken, used, and now she would have to be a burden to them. It was a horrible situation for her. She wept all of her sorrows out and fell asleep.
She slept soundly for a long while, and when she woke up it was very early the next morning. She felt subdued and rested, and she got up to make herself some tea. She was going to have to make a couple of phone calls. The first one was to her parents in Boston.
Her mother answered the phone. She was one of those early morning people who were up and running before the sun came over the horizon.
"Hi, baby!" her mother answered her call.
"Hi, Mom,” Brandy said sadly. She felt a flood of security and relief when she heard her mother's voice. It was so profound that she realized that she had needed it without knowing it, and even the sound of her mother's voic
e was an enormous comfort to her. It gave her a peace that she hadn't really noticed was missing from her life, or that she needed as much as she did.
Her mother made a worried noise. "Uh, oh. Something is wrong. What's got you down, baby?" she asked with concern.
Brandy sighed. "Well Mom, I’ll be honest. This isn't going to be the proudest moment of either of our lives. I've kind of gotten myself into a mess and I need to ask for some help."
"What happened? What's wrong?" her mother asked worriedly.
She didn't know how to say it to make it sound any less bad than it already was.
"I had to leave school. My grades weren't good enough to keep my scholarships and grant money." She began with the easiest thing.
Her mother sighed sadly. "Oh no, honey, I'm so sorry. Maybe you can go back next semester. At least now you'll have time to work more, so that's good, right?" she asked hopefully.
Brandy sighed and covered her face with her hand. "Well, that's what I thought I would do, but I lost my job yesterday."