Isn’t It Time
Susan J. Graham
Copyright 2013 Susan J. Graham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Jack
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12 - Jack
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18 – Kate and Mike
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23 – Jack
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31 – Jack
Chapter 32
Epilogue – Three months later
Epilogue – Eight months later
Epilogue – Seven years later
Chapter 1
I was vaguely aware that Jimmy was speaking, but the part of my brain charged with processing such things was currently floundering, shrouded as it was in a post-orgasmic fog.
“Angie!” More insistently this time.
“What?” Getting that single word out expended most of my energy and I felt myself drifting off.
“This is done.”
Sighing and wishing he would just be quiet and let me sleep, I cracked open one eye and asked through a yawn, “What’s done?”
“Us. This relationship.”
Shit. Now I was going to have to wake myself up and pretend to care. I rolled from my stomach to my side and looked at him. He was lying naked on his back, his right arm cocked casually behind his head, legs crossed at the ankles.
“Seriously?” I asked, the extent of my pretending to care.
“Yeah.” He scratched his chest and shifted only his eyes in my direction.
I digested that for a moment then rolled to the side of the bed, reaching down to retrieve my tee shirt from the floor. Pulling it over my head as I exited the bed, I walked around to his side, fisted my hands on my hips and looked at him. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, go home.” I glared at him and waited for him to get moving.
He blinked, uncrossed his legs and pushed himself up on his elbows. “That’s it? Don’t you even want to know why?”
“No.” His reasons didn’t matter to me one way or the other. We weren’t exclusive, so it would be my guess there was another woman involved - and I wasn’t in the mood to hear about it. “But I will say that making sure you got laid before you dumped me was pure class. And that’s the last thing I have to say to you. You have two minutes. Get out.”
And with those ridiculous words (because, really, what was I going to do if he didn’t leave in two minutes?), I turned around and strolled to the bathroom. Shutting the door quietly behind me, I flipped on a light and stood there with my back against the door, wondering why in the hell I hadn’t walked out to the kitchen instead. Or, rather, why I hadn’t first put on my panties and then walked out to the kitchen. Now I was more or less trapped in this small room, panty-less, my pride stopping me from returning to the bedroom where I would be able to keep an eye on the big jerk.
With nothing better to do, I used the allotted two minutes to examine my feelings about being dumped, especially by someone as unexceptional as Jimmy. Frankly, I wasn’t the slightest bit upset about the whole thing. Relieved would be the better word.
Even though we had been dating pretty steadily for the past eight months, I had never felt any kind of real connection with Jimmy. It was stupid of me to even bother to maintain the relationship at all. He wasn’t soul mate material - not by any stretch of the imagination.
He wasn’t my type - and mostly I didn’t even like him all that much. Oh, he was quite good looking but, it must be said, the hotness factor was significantly diminished whenever he opened his mouth.
He could be funny - and not always unintentionally - and we had some good times together. But that was overshadowed by the fact that he was a bit of a Neanderthal, prone to grunting his responses and making outrageously crude comments at inappropriate times. The only thing he really had going for him was that the sex was a couple of steps above decent.
I knew all along he didn’t even come close to being the one – and, if I was honest with myself, I also knew that was really the main reason I kept him around. With him, I could be emotionally alone without having to be physically alone, and that suited me just fine.
So, really, if I was upset about anything in this situation, it was that I would have to make the decision to either stay on my current path of dating men who would never be right for me, or to get serious, put my fears aside and find the guy who was. Settling in to a going-nowhere relationship with Jimmy had allowed me to delay that decision for a while, but maybe the time was right for me to grow up and start acting like an adult.
I was 28 years old and already feeling that biological clock ticking. I knew I wanted to have a family of my own someday and I knew I wanted to have that family with a man I considered to be essential to my very existence.
And I knew that man was out there, I knew it – and that man was definitely not Jimmy.
My lovelorn ponderings were interrupted by a light tap at the bathroom door.
“Aren’t your two minutes about up?” I inquired through the door.
“Uh, yeah, but I really need that thing back that I gave you.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes, trying to remember if he had, in fact, ever given me anything at all, let alone something so big it would require my returning it. I drew a complete blank.
“What thing?”
“The commemorative beer mug.”
Shaking off my shock that he had just used a word of more than three syllables, I asked, “You mean the plastic cup you got at that football game we went to?”
“Yeah.”
God, what an idiot. Feeling better about this breakup by the minute, I directed him to the kitchen. “It’s in the cupboard above the coffee pot. Please get it quickly and then leave. And don’t take anything else.” I added that last bit just to be pissy.
I heard a grunted response as he walked away. Seconds later I heard my front door open and then close. Cracking the bathroom door open an inch, I listened until the sound of his truck starting and then driving off confirmed that I had probably, if I was lucky, just seen the last of Jimmy.
Walking back into the bedroom, I picked up the previously forgotten panties from the floor and wiggled into them. I went to check the front door in case the idiot hadn’t locked it behind him (he hadn’t), then turned off all the lights and climbed back into bed.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. Now that I was wide awake, but too lazy to get up and find something worthwhile to do, I laid there and contemplated my love life - or lack thereof.
My history with relationships had started out normally, took a turn toward ugly, and slid right into bizarre. I wanted what most everyone else wanted. A normal relationship. Marriage. Kids. The whole shebang. But the fear was still there. I couldn’t get rid of it. Even if Mr. Right came knocking on my door right now, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to trust him enough to let him in.
My phone rang, startling me, and I rolled ove
r to the side of my bed to retrieve it from my purse.
“Hey, Jack,” I answered.
“Hey. Were you sleeping?”
“Unfortunately, no. I was just lying here, wide awake, wishing I had someone to talk to. And there you were.”
“Here I am,” he agreed. “So you’re alone? Jimmy’s not there?”
“No. We just broke up.”
There was a brief pause before he asked, “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“For good?”
“Yeah, definitely for good.”
“Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed with a relieved exhale of breath. “I thought you were never going to cut that asshole loose.”
I was surprised by his reaction. Jack had never said one derogatory word to me about Jimmy. He never said anything complimentary about him, either, but I didn’t know his dislike was so intense.
“Um, actually, he broke up with me,” I offered.
“You have got to be kidding me. God, what an idiot.”
“Well, he is that,” I agreed.
“Are you okay? I’ll come over.”
“No, I’m perfectly fine. Truthfully, I’m relieved.” I made sure to put a smile in my voice when I responded. If Jack thought I was hurting in some way, he would worry about me – which meant he would be calling and stopping by more frequently than he already did. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, I just didn’t want him to feel obligated to do it.
“You’re relieved?” He sounded like he didn’t believe me.
“Well, yeah. I think we just agreed he’s an idiot.”
He laughed. “Well, I can’t say I’m not happy to hear it. I could never figure out why you kept him around so long.”
“We all do stupid things.” I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me, and changed the subject. “Was there a reason why you called?”
“Actually, yes. I had dinner with my parents tonight – “
“They’re back already?” I interrupted.
This surprised me. Jack’s parents, who had the unfortunate names of Al and Peggy, were usually in Florida at this time of year and weren’t due to return for at least another month.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “They came back last week. I forgot to tell you.”
“That’s odd,” I said.
“Yeah, they didn’t really say why and I didn’t ask. Anyway, we were discussing some things that were going on at work, and they had an idea that made a lot of sense to me - how do you feel about being promoted?”
“Promoted?” I couldn’t imagine where he thought he was going to promote me to. Our accounting department was very small and I wasn’t qualified to do anything else. “Promoted to what? There’s no place to be promoted to unless Frank retires and…oh my God! Is Frank retiring?” Frank, my direct supervisor, was not my favorite person and I began to do a little happy dance in my head.
“No, sorry. He’s not going anywhere,” Jack laughed. “I’ve got something different in mind.”
“Oh. That’s disappointing.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it is. What I’d like to do is re-assign some responsibilities between you and Frank and then move you into position as my personal assistant.”
“Personal assistant? That’s a promotion?”
“It is when it comes with a fifteen percent raise.”
“Oh. Well, now you’ve definitely got my attention.”
We both laughed and he said, “Yeah, I thought that might do it. So what do you think?”
“I think I have no idea what being a personal assistant means.”
“Does it matter? I know that you’re not all that fired up about accounting in the first place,” he said.
This was true. When I was in college, trying to decide on a major, I picked accounting mostly because my father is a CPA. Although my right-sided brain wanted to rebel against the choice, it seemed the practical thing to do. And I did like how numbers were just numbers – there was nothing subjective about them. They were what they were and they went where they went. But the truth was, overall, I found it tedious and dull.
“True,” I said.
“But you do have great organizational skills – and you may have noticed that’s a weakness of mine.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” I said dryly. Jack was very neat when he was at home, but his office was a nightmare – and probably a fire hazard. There were stacks of papers and random files everywhere. I shuddered a little every time I looked at it. But I also knew it was in that condition because he had a great deal of responsibilities and often spent much of his day putting out fires that pulled him from whatever more important project he should be working on.
“If you’re interested, we can work out the details later, but mostly I just want you to keep the minor problems away from me. I would like for people to come to you with what they need, and you can handle anything that doesn’t really require my attention. Then if you could summarize and prioritize the rest for me, I might be able to be a little more productive. What do you think?”
This was definitely sounding good. It would mean a break from the interminable sameness of my days. And the cherry on top of that sundae would be working with Jack instead of Frank.
“I wouldn’t have to drop off your dry cleaning or walk your dog, would I?”
“No,” he laughed. “But if I ever get a dog, we might have to renegotiate.”
“Then okay. That sounds great.”
“Good. I know it’s late, but I just wanted to run it by you and see how you felt about it.”
“I feel good about it. But Frank isn’t going to be happy.”
“Don’t care. He’s put too much of his work off on you as it is. It’s time he got some of it back and did what we pay him to do.”
“Sounds good,” I said with a yawn.
“Go to sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I stifled another yawn. “See ya, Jack.”
“See ya, Ange.”
I dropped my phone over the edge of the bed and returned to staring at the ceiling and thinking about relationships. Life would be so much easier if there were more men out there like Jack. Outside of my father, he was the only man I could still trust completely.
And I loved Jack. I mean, I seriously, honest to God, loved him. I met him six years ago on my very first day on the job and we had been friends ever since. This new position he was offering would mean for the first time, I would be reporting to him directly. Technically, though, he had always been my boss, since he was the CEO and majority owner of Great Lakes Construction, my employer. His father had retained thirty percent ownership when he retired early, but he was rarely in the office and Jack ran the show.
He was young for that position, only two years older than me, but he took it seriously (and it was about the only thing in his life he did take seriously) and he handled it well. When he graduated from college, his father had insisted he work his way through the ranks, spending a little time in every department, before the company was turned over to him. That’s what he was doing when I first met him and it seemed our paths were always crossing.
We shared a similar sense of humor and, as our relationship progressed, we discovered we also had almost identical interests and personal goals. I paid his bills as part of my job, so I had firsthand knowledge that he was loaded (nowhere near billionaire status, but he did quite well for himself), yet he totally lacked pretention. He was fun to be around, and also caring and considerate, affectionate and playful, and sharp as a tack – not much got by him. In a nutshell, he was a great guy. There wasn’t a single thing about him that I didn’t like. I considered him my closest friend and he felt the same.
Our friendship had solidified after my break-up with Steve, and we spent a great deal of time together but, office gossip being what it is, we held our friendship outside of work as a closely guarded secret.
I was wide awake again but I wasn’t staring at the ceiling anymore. Just having Steve’s name float through my mind ha
d me rolling over to my side and curling into a near-fetal position. He was the “ugly” in my relationship history.
During college, I’d had one long-term relationship that lasted about a year and a half before we parted amicably. Several shorter ones. And a great deal of casual dating in between. All of my experiences were good, my heart was never broken, and I thought I had the relationship thing all figured out.
Then came the real world - and Steve. I didn’t like to think about him, ever, but what he did was directly responsible for my love life taking that slide into the bizarre. And if I wanted to change that – and I knew I should – then I needed to focus on him and what he had done.
I was hired fresh out of college as Steve’s replacement when he left GLC to seek greener pastures. I worked closely with him for two weeks while he trained me in the particulars of the job.
He was four years older than me, but we shared some common interests and got along well. He was crazy smart - and that sometimes intimidated me, because I was not - but he had moments of sweetness and he made me laugh. There was no thunderbolt to my heart when we met – the sign I was sure I would get when I met “the one,” but when he asked me out at his going-away party, I liked him well enough to accept.
Things went pretty well for that first year and we spent a great deal of time in each other’s company, doing all the usual dating things. The sex was above average, if not earth-shattering, and we spent most of our nights together. It was all good and I began to think we might have a future together.
I couldn’t honestly say I was in love with Steve, and he never gave any indication his feelings were any stronger than mine, but I felt affection for him, we were comfortable together and I naively expected the love would eventually come.
Then, about a year into our relationship, Steve started to slowly change. Over the next couple of months, he was often tense and would snap at me for no reason, making a big deal out of the smallest things. One night he came into my house and tripped over a pair of shoes I had left by the front door. He didn’t fall or anything – it was your average, run-of-the-mill trip. I apologized, but he berated me for hours, insisting I had purposely set him up to look stupid. And when I walked away and went to bed, he woke me up four times to yell at me some more.
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