by Lindsey Hart
She didn’t, because she couldn’t. The truth was, she loved him. She loved him and she really always had and she knew that the best thing for him was to let him be happy in ways that she was certain she could never make him.
“Please.” The word came out as little more than a hoarse whisper. She blinked back the stinging tears that threatened to spill over. She was not going to let herself cry. She had plenty of time to do that later when she was alone.
Jesse’s shoulders fell. She almost hoped he’d stand there and fight for her a little harder. She might have given in.
He didn’t. And she told herself she was relieved when he palmed his phone and dialed it like she’d asked him to.
It didn’t hurt to lie to yourself as long as those lies were to protect the person you loved. As long as you could make yourself believe them.
CHAPTER 16
Sydney
“Where’s the monthly report on the McKinnon file?”
Stewart burst into her tiny cubicle in a panic, just like Sydney knew he would, considering it was the end of the month on a Friday morning and he had a big board meeting in an hour. She normally handed him his spreadsheets, all neatly done up for each client, so it looked like he actually gave a fuck, by end of work on Thursday. She’d never failed to send them along over email so that he was prepared for the next morning.
“Oh. Right.” Sydney leaned back in her piece of junk office chair and crossed her arms behind her head, a casual gesture that was so at odds with Stewart’s red face and his shiny bald head. His too-tight dress shirt strained over his paunch and there were sweat stains forming at the collar and wet circles gracing the armpit area.
How classy.
While big shots like Stewart got a huge glass office with plushy chairs and an expensive desk, she got something that looked like it had been pulled out of the dumpster behind the building. Her entire workspace consisted of a five by five cubicle that backed the rest of the shitty other five by five cubicles where the rest of the lowly office staff worked.
She felt like a peasant in the land where kings ruled and the rest of them had to lick their boots and do their dirty bidding.
She used to just dislike her job.
That was ten years ago. Now she hated it with a passion.
She’d hoped, once, that something else would come along. That the opportunity of a lifetime would just be dumped in her lap and she could leave the shithole marketing and accounting firm she worked for.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that opportunity had come and gone and there she was, still sitting there.
Nearly a month had passed since she’d spent that day with Jesse. It was just a day. Not even a full one, but it changed her in ways she always knew it would if she ever ran into him. She was sad. Sad and tired. Exhausted by the life she’d made for herself.
She’d vowed to dig herself out, to find a semblance of happiness now that she could finally close that door on her past for good. Before it had been left open, just a quarter-inch, but it was enough so that she’d never been able to properly move on. She’d slammed that door in Jesse’s face and now…
Now it was time to make some changes to try and make her life bearable, if not all the time, at least some of it.
“Where are the reports?” Stewart formed his demands into something that should have been a question but didn’t sound at all like it, as though she hadn’t heard him the first time.
Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, over his jowls and down his thick neck. His nose was a florid red since he liked to keep a bottle of whiskey in the top drawer of his desk and sip at it all day long when he thought no one would notice. He also chewed breath mints neurotically, to try and disguise the whiskey on his breath.
“Yeah, about that… I didn’t do them.”
Stewart’s jaw nearly hit the floor. An angry purple hue crept up his neck to replace the tomato red already staining his face. “Why? Why the hell would you not have them ready? My meeting’s in an hour!”
“Well… mostly because they’re your responsibility. Everyone thinks that you do them and that you do them well. I believe you won an award last year for being so organized and on target. They called it customer service. I call it bullshit because you never did those reports once. I’ve been doing them for nearly a decade. I’ve been doing your bidding for ten years, Stewart, and you know what my reward is? Ridiculous demands for coffee. Oh, and you staring at my tits every chance you get.”
Stewart’s mouth flapped open and shut like he was drowning and gasping for air. Yeah, he was drowning alright, floundering in the waters of her righteous indignation.
It might have come a decade too late, but hell, it finally arrived.
“You- you- you…” Stewart spluttered, and she decided to save him the trouble.
“Don’t worry, Stewy, you don’t have to say anything. I know that I’m fired. Thank fuck. It’s about time.”
She stood and grabbed the box off her desk, filled with the personal things she’d already packed, a stapler she’d bought herself because the department was too fricking cheap to get her one after hers broke, her lunch bag, a water bottle, and a small potted succulent. That’s what her ten years amounted to.
She brushed past him, careful not to touch him because she was sure that his shirt was wringing wet at this point. “Good luck with everything, and by everything, I mean finding an assistant who can take on your whole workload for you so you can sleep for an hour every afternoon in our office behind your computer, so it looks like you’re working in there. Good luck finding someone who covers for you when you’ve had a little too much to drink and you’re worried it will show and someone will notice and you’ll get your ass canned. Good luck with finding someone who does like, all of your reports. And good luck covering the gap until then.”
“You can’t walk out on me like this,” Stewart blustered behind her.
“Yes, I can. I’m not under contract. I’ve given this place ten years of my life and I’m sure as hell not going to give it a moment more. Oh, and, Stewy, I only spat in your coffee once. And seriously, if you try and bring me up on charges for it, I’ll let everyone know that you’re screwing Bill’s wife. Though what she could possibly see in you, I have no idea.”
“Sydney! You get back here this minute. Get your ass in that chair and finish those reports. We can talk about this another time.”
She felt her eyes go wide with astonishment. Even now, he thought he could control and intimidate her into doing what he wanted. She wanted to laugh, but not at him. At herself. At herself for being so stupid that she’d actually stuck around all those years and put up with all the crap, the after-hours work email, the frantic last minute reports that needed to be done. God, she’d done this man’s dry cleaning for years. Got him coffee every single morning. Decaf. Fucking decaf. What was the point? What was the point of any of it?
“Yeah, about that… no thanks.” She balanced the box in one hand and with the other, she flipped off the asshole she’d been flipping off in her mind for a very long time.
She kept the bird flying high as she walked through the entire office, her head held high.
As she pushed out the front door, into the warm morning sunshine, she took a few confident steps, testing out what freedom felt like.
Turned out, even if she couldn’t have what she’d really always wanted, starting fresh was the next best thing. Freedom… it felt pretty dang good.
***
Too bad her mom didn’t agree.
When she’d called her over to her apartment, she wanted to sit down and have a heart to heart. She thought it was time. It was just another step in her reinvent yourself after thirty plan. She wanted to get on the right track and lying to herself and her mom wasn’t going to help her any more than sticking it out in a job she hated was going to put her on the right path to happiness.
Instead, her mom looked at her like she’d just sprouted a third nipple the size of a dinner plate on her for
ehead.
“You did what? You quit your job?”
“Yeah. I quit my job.”
They were sitting in her small kitchen. She’d poured her mom half a glass of red wine, the last bottle she had left in the apartment. She’d even gone to the trouble of cutting up some cheese and put out a few slices of salami and some pickles on a plate like they were having a classy girl’s night out.
It took her mom a second to pick her jaw off the tiny glass table. “Well- I mean- if you weren’t happy there, but don’t you think you should have waited until you found something new? How are you going to pay rent?”
“That’s the thing. It’s really expensive here. I came because I didn’t know where else to go. Everything costs a lot. You followed me here because it’s always been just us girls and we wanted to stick together, but hell. We should find somewhere cheaper to live. Somewhere that’s just as nice. I’m sure other places exist. We don’t have a ton of friends here. We’re not in relationships. It’s easy for us to just… leave. Maybe that’s what we both need.”
“I- Sydney…” her mom took a huge pull of wine, nearly draining half the glass, and started over. “I mean, this is great and all, but- well- aren’t you a little young to be having a mid-life crisis?”
“Mom! This is not a mid-life crisis. I just wanted to do something new. I don’t want to stay in a job I hate for the rest of my life. All of that time I spent working my ass off just went into paying for this place. I don’t even really like it.”
Her mom pushed out her lips in a pout. “You never said you were unhappy here.”
“I really didn’t know I was until now. At least to the point where I had to make a change, but now I do. I want to be honest with myself and I want to be honest with you.”
Her mom’s hand slapped down hard on the glass surface, her fingers clawing at the edge and clinging to it like she needed to brace herself. Sydney winced.
“Honest? I don’t know what’s worse. Surprises or honesty.”
“Well- you know. You know about that thing with Jesse.”
“Of course, I know!” Her mom’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “The whole world knows.”
“Yeah, well, the story was that we were dating in secret for a year. That we’d never really lost touch. He covered for me after I screwed up. That wasn’t how it went at all. The real story is that on the last day of college, I got hammered. I slept with him. I slept with Jesse, and I knew it was wrong and I couldn’t take it because it felt really right, so I left.
“I…”
“Just let me finish before you say anything.” She held up a hand and her mom fell, thankfully, silent. “I left Philly and I never looked back. I’ve spent this whole time out here proving to myself that I was fine. That I could provide for myself. That leaving was the right decision. And then, when I went out to celebrate with my friends on my birthday, I had a few too many drinks and I put this stupid message out there and Jesse saw it. I mean, I was drunk. I don’t even really remember doing it. He’d said something about us marrying each other if in ten years we were still single. We were drunk, and that was before we slept together. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t that drunk. Maybe I told him I didn’t remember any of it, but really, I do. I remember all of it. I wasn’t in my right mind when I wrote that message, but he saw it and he had his crazy butler dude come pick me up and take me to his house. He tried to get the guy to bring me to the store to pick out a ring and a freaking dress. It was the craziest thing. I think he just wanted to prove to me that he was taking it seriously.”
“So- so you were never really engaged?”
“No. The media was never supposed to be there when I got there. His mom let them in. Apparently, she liked the idea of us being together.”
“Jesse’s parents always loved you.”
“I know.” Sydney hung her head. “They were like my second family. They loved both of us. I can’t count how many times we all had dinner together. I think she wanted it to be real. She thought if the world thought it was, then I’d have to stay.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“No.”
“Because you can’t marry a man you love.”
“That’s the thing.” Sydney’s hands vibrated in her lap. “It’s the other way around. You shouldn’t marry a man that you do love.”
Her mom digested that for a minute, biting down hard on her lower lip. “You know, sweetie,” she finally said, her eyes meeting Sydney’s and misting over. “Just because it didn’t work out for me, doesn’t mean it won’t for you.”
“I know that mom.” Sydney sat up straighter. She didn’t want to see her mom cry. “He could have thrown me under the bus, but he didn’t. He did damage control for me. Took the heat off me and said that it just didn’t work out, because sometimes things don’t. He told the world to back off and give me my privacy. The thing is… that’s just Jesse. He’s the best person I’ve ever met.”
Her mom swallowed hard. “You know, I used to think that Jesse was the one causing all the trouble. Getting you into all those scrapes. That he was the wild one and you were just along for the ride. I soon realized he was the one who grounded you. Who kept you from making worse messes. He probably kept you from doing something altogether stupid and hurting or maiming yourself. You always had this crazy energy and he was like… the yin to your yang or something.”
“That’s very poetic.” Sydney had to take a sip of her wine because suddenly her eyes were the ones getting prickly.
“Sweetheart…” her mom reached out and gripped her hand as soon as she set her wine glass down. “I’m serious. After your father left and it was just us… I got used to being on my own. I liked it. But it’s not for everyone. I always thought you were so strong and independent, but there isn’t anything wrong with having those traits and finding someone who adores them in you.”
“Mom…”
“No, now it’s your turn to let me finish. If you love Jesse, you should give it a try. Some marriages do work. Or maybe you could just live in sin and not get married.”
Sydney let out an unladylike snort of laughter and her mom joined her. “I know you’re not old fashioned enough to think like that. Of all my friend’s parents, you were the most progressive.”
“I was the smartest you mean.”
Sydney laughed again, a laugh she felt right down to her abs. “Yes, mom.” She squeezed her mom’s hand.
“Never thought I’d heard the day my child admits to me being smart. I’ll have to mark it down on the calendar.”
“Who has those anymore?”
“I do. Get one free from the gas station every single year. Anyway, honey, you could start somewhere. Start small. See where things go. I’m sure if you and Jesse sat down with his parents, they wouldn’t pressure you into anything. They would respect your space and your boundaries because they love him and they want him to be happy, and if you’re his choice, they won’t do anything to jeopardize that for him.”
“Yeah, well, that’s easy to say, and really hard to do. I know I would be the one who ended up messing things up and then everyone would hate me. I don’t want to hurt him or toy with him. And even if I thought it would work out, I already burned that bridge. Like, really burned it. With fire and gasoline and maybe dynamite burned it. I messed everything up. I blew the best shot I had at being happy with someone because for me, I always knew it was Jesse or no one. I’ve known that forever.” She pushed her shoulders back in an effort to hold her head high. “I’ll be okay. I’ll be happy being single, like you. We’ll be two free women. We can travel the world. Do whatever we want. Free spirits that won’t ever settle down. Every day can be a new adventure.”
“Honey, I’m not saying no, because that sounds like a great time and I love the heck out of you. You’re my baby girl, no matter how old you get, and I want you to be fully happy. I don’t want you to live with regrets. If you’re sure Jesse was the only one for you, I’m pretty sure that’s a good indication
that it could have worked.”
“It’s okay, mom, really.” She knew she was going to have to do something drastic to prove it, so she let the tears burning the backs of her eyes fall and she let her mom sweep her in for a hug.
By the end of it, they were crying together, but after a good solid sob session, they were able to pull back and give each other watery smiles.
“I’m going to refill our glasses now and we’ll toast to getting the heck out of this city and figuring out what we’re going to do next.”
“Never really liked my job,” her mom smirked.
“I know. You complain about it all the time. That’s why I thought you wouldn’t be sad about leaving.”
Her mom’s smile was less watery as she lifted her glass. Her eyes sparkled with a glint that if Sydney didn’t know her mother better, she would have thought was a little devious.
“To our future of unending adventures,” her mom toasted as she raised her glass.
Even though her heart wasn’t in it, Sydney raised her glass and clinked it with her mom’s. She even managed to force a smile.
CHAPTER 17
Jesse
Jesse could literally count on one hand the number of times he’d talked to Sydney’s mom on the phone in his lifetime.
One.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t a phone person, because when cell phones came around, she was constantly texting Syd, just like an annoying friend, much to Sydney’s annoyance, but she never had any reason to call him. His mom, sure. Even his dad a few times, for emergency issues like plumbing fixes or when their internet malfunctioned. Stuff like that, since Sydney didn’t have a dad around to do that kind of stuff and his dad was fine with filling in. Once, she even called to give his brother shit about putting gum in Sydney’s hair. Yes. Seriously.