by Amy Star
Lorraine froze as the office door swung open, and slowly she turned to look at Cheyenne. Her eyes narrowed sharply, and she bared her teeth and growled, which seemed to be the last push Harry needed to actually act, as the hand on her shoulder went from warding her off to actively shoving her away, and she stumbled back from the chair, only narrowly managing to stay on her feet.
Everything was very quiet for a moment, until Cheyenne finally burst out, “What the fuck are you doing?” Her voice felt too sharp and sounded too loud in the silence of the office, where otherwise a pin could be heard falling on the floor from across the room.
“It-it’s none of your business,” Lorraine replied, and for once her prim and proper pleasantness cracked just a bit as her voice shook. “What are you doing in here?”
Cheyenne laughed sharply, and it was an ugly sound. She lifted a hand to cover her face as she kept laughing, leaning back against the doorframe as she did. Slowly, she fell quiet again, dragging her hand down her face, and she was smiling as she looked at Lorraine again. Not because she wasn’t angry—she was livid—but because of the sheer absurdity of the situation, and for a moment she couldn’t help but to think of that moment after the doctor’s appointment days ago, when Lorraine had looked so upset for just a moment.
Cheyenne wondered, for a second, if Lorraine had been planning on trying such a stunt since then. If hearing how excited Harry was about the babies had pushed her over the edge and forced her to acknowledge that being subtle wasn’t going to get her what she wanted.
Granted, the brute force approach wasn’t going to get her what she wanted either, considering Harry didn’t exactly look pleased with the situation just then.
“I think you should head home early,” Cheyenne suggested, her voice carefully even by sheer force of will. “It’s for the best, don’t you think?”
For a drawn-out moment, nothing happened. And then, Lorraine ducked her head and scurried from the room at a brisk walk that only barely managed to avoid being a jog. Cheyenne waited until she heard the front door open and slam closed once again, and then she turned on her heel and stormed off, leaving Harry alone in his office.
*
Dinner was quiet that evening. Unsurprisingly, Daphne had gotten home, realized within about four seconds that something had happened, and wisely decided to eat her dinner in her room, where the atmosphere was a bit less frigid.
Cheyenne stirred her food in circles on her plate. Despite knowing it would probably be amazing, she couldn’t help but to think that it looked and smelled like glop at that point. She wasn’t hungry. Harry didn’t seem to be faring much better than her, and he stopped pretending entirely when Cheyenne set down her fork and asked slowly, “Are you willing to admit that I haven’t just been making everything up because I don’t like her?”
Harry heaved a sigh and set his fork down with a quiet click. “Yes,” he offered simply. “I’m sorry.”
It didn’t quite feel like enough just then, but it was more than she had ever actually expected to get, and a knot of tension she had been steadily ignoring gradually began to unravel in her chest. She pushed her plate back and leaned her forearms on the table, leaning forward slightly to meet Harry’s eyes.
“She needs to go,” she stated clearly. “I don’t care if you give her a reference, warn everyone you know, or just kick her to the curb without warning, be rude, be nice, I don’t care, but she needs to be gone as soon as possible. She is not coming back tomorrow. If you even mention anything about how you still need a PA, I will get up and leave. If it’s really that pressing, I’ll fill in for her while you look for a new one.” She sat back in her seat once again. “Understood?”
Harry nodded stiffly, glancing past her for a moment before he finally looked her in the face. “Understood,” he assured her. “I’ll call her tonight and explain it. You won’t be seeing her again.”
“Good.” Slowly, Cheyenne got to her feet, turned, and made her way out of the room. She wanted to scream and kick and throw things and break things still, but she wasn’t going to get anything out of it if she listened to those urges. She was getting what she ultimately wanted, and no matter how angry she still was, she was just going to have to content herself with that for the time being, and eventually the anger would fade.
In the meantime, though, she was going to go soak in the bathtub for as long as she could before the water either got freezing cold or turned her into an enormous prune. She was tense enough that it felt like she had a steel bar jammed down her spine and an SUV sitting on her shoulders, and she was going to relax before she started snapping vertebrae.
It had been a very long evening. Hopefully, it would pick up a little bit from there, but if nothing else, she supposed it would at least be difficult for it to get any worse.
*
The entire time Cheyenne was in the bathroom, she could hear Harry pacing up and down the hallway. Every so often, as he passed closer to the bathroom door, she could hear him mumbling to himself, though it was always too quiet for her to actually pick out any words. She supposed he was trying to psych himself up to call Lorraine. Or he was already psyched up, and he was trying to think up the best way to phrase everything.
Granted, it seemed more likely that he was trying to do both.
When Cheyenne stepped out of the bathroom, dressed in her pajamas and moderately more relaxed than she had been earlier, Harry was still pacing, though he limited himself to only pacing along the half of the hallway that his room was on once he saw her.
Cheyenne watched him pace for a moment, back and forth. It was oddly sort of hypnotic. But she shook her head and yanked her gaze away after only a few seconds, instead turning towards Daphne’s room and barging in.
Daphne didn’t fall off the bed that time, though she did nearly smack herself in the face with her book as Cheyenne let the door bang closed behind her.
“Why do you always need to make an entrance?” Daphne whined. “Some of us are trying to relax.”
Ignoring that, Cheyenne crossed the room and toppled sideways onto the bed at Daphne’s feet.
“Your hair is getting the blanket all soggy,” Daphne groused, but she was sitting up and putting a bookmark in her book. As she set it down on the side table, she wondered, “So, what’s going on now?”
“I walked in on Lorraine trying to make a move on Harry,” Cheyenne explained frankly. “Like, obviously enough that even Harry cottoned onto the fact that she was, in fact, trying to make a move on him.”
Daphne’s eyebrows flew up towards her hairline. “What the fuck.” In her surprise, it sounded like more of a flat statement than an exclamation.
“I know!” Cheyenne agreed, throwing the arm she wasn’t laying on up in the air. “I just walked into his office, and there she was, trying to climb on top of him!”
Daphne let out a low, drawn-out whistle, before they both lapsed into silence once again. After a few moments, Daphne wondered, “So, what’s going to happen now, then?”
It was a good question. One that Cheyenne didn’t actually have much of an answer to. Heaving a sigh, she rolled onto her back, folding her hands together on top of her stomach. Her feet were on the floor, knees bent over the edge of the mattress. “Harry said he’s going to fire her. Granted, I’m pretty sure he was still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt—like, just assume it was a one-time thing and that she would control herself in the future—until I threatened to leave if he didn’t fire her, so I don’t actually know how much weight it will hold. But he did agree to fire her, and I think that’s what he’s working himself up to do right now.”
“I was wondering why he kept pacing up and down the hallway like a caged animal,” Daphne mused, drawing her legs underneath her and then tipping to the side until she sprawled out on the bed beside Cheyenne. She rolled onto her belly after a moment, legs sticking straight out past the edge of the mattress. “Here’s to hoping he sacks up and actually kicks her to the curb, then,” she added
, lifting a hand as if to make a toast with an invisible champagne flute. “And if not, here’s to hoping he doesn’t give you any shit when I help you pack and leave just like you said you would.”
Cheyenne lifted a hand to give her a high-five. “Here’s to hoping,” she agreed. “And here’s to hoping that by the time these babies are out of me in a couple months, I have not been driven irreparably over the edge.”
Daphne opened her mouth to reply, looking cheeky already, and Cheyenne reached over to swat at her. “I know, I know,” she scolded playfully. “I’ve been crazy since you met me. You already told me. But there is a difference between being crazy and being driven irreparably over the edge. One of them sounds like I might need to actually see a therapist afterwards.”
“We’re all going to need to talk to a therapist by the time this is done,” Daphne replied around a snort of laughter. “This is all nuts.”
“And yet, you’ve stayed here this entire time,” Cheyenne pointed out, nudging Daphne’s leg with her knee. “So, what does that say about you?”
Daphne folded her arms on the bed and leaned one cheek against them so she could still look at Cheyenne. “It’s not like I was going to leave,” she pointed out, and she said it so simply, as if she was just pointing out the obvious. “You needed me here. I wasn’t just going to leave you here on your own. Even if I know Harry’s not going to do anything to hurt you at this point, this entire situation is still shit, and I’m not just going to leave you to wade through it on your own.” She shrugged as best she could without sitting up. “Someone needs to stick around to throw you a rope when you start sinking, after all.”
Cheyenne’s expression softened slightly, and she nudged Daphne with her knee again. “You’re the best,” she stated simply. “You know that, right?”
“Of course,” Daphne assured her, and for a moment she almost seemed to be preening under the praise. She prodded at Cheyenne with her elbow. “Now go find a phone to listen in before he calls her. That is not a conversation you want to miss.”
Cheyenne huffed out a quiet laugh and levered herself up onto her elbows. “You’re right about that,” she agreed as she pushed herself upright and got to her feet. “I’ll let you know how it goes afterwards,” she added as she headed towards the door.
Maybe she was petty for looking forward to hearing the conversation. (Alright, she was definitely petty for looking forward to it.) But in that moment, she felt no shame about it whatsoever. As far as she was concerned, it had been a long time coming. Far too long.
*
Cheyenne picked up a phone from its cradle in the living room and then made her way back into the hall. Harry was back in his office by then, since that seemed to be where he did just about anything serious.
Cheyenne pressed an ear to the office door, and she could just barely hear the beeping sounds of him dialing a number. She had to time it carefully before she turned on the phone in her hand, so Harry wouldn’t hear it beep.
She held it to her ear and waited with bated breath to see if he was going to catch onto her. But when he didn’t say anything, she relaxed slightly. Not too much, though. She couldn’t risk letting him know she was on the line in the middle of the call, so she held the phone practically upside down so it was still pressed to her ear, but it was well away from her nose and mouth.
It rang several times, and Cheyenne had to force herself not to start tapping her foot impatiently. She had waited for this moment. She could wait a bit longer. It would be worth it.
When Lorraine answered with an eager, “Mr. Carmichael!” she sounded almost breathless, and Cheyenne couldn’t quite refrain from rolling her eyes. Luckily, there was no one there to see her.
Lorraine charged forward into the conversation like a draft horse pulling a plow. “Look, Mr. Carmichael, I need to apologize about what happened earlier today. I never should have let it get that far out of hand.”
Harry sighed, and it came out as more of an explosion of static. “I appreciate you telling me that,” he said carefully, and Cheyenne braced herself to hear him forgive her, as if she was expecting a physical blow. (Granted, considering how miserable Lorraine’s presence had made her, she wouldn’t be surprised if it really did feel like a physical blow if Harry welcomed her back into the house yet again.)
Harry wasn’t done speaking, though. “I really do. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go.”
For a long moment, there was silence, other than the nearly sub-audible buzz that seemed unique to landline phones alone. And then, finally, in a voice that wobbled just slightly, Lorraine asked, “What?”
“You no longer have a job with me,” Harry replied, and for a moment Cheyenne wanted to blow her cover just so she could shout ‘You’re fired!’ into the phone at the top of her lungs, since it seemed as if Harry was too polite to do so. She wrestled that urge under control, though, and clamped a hand over her mouth for good measure, just to make sure he wouldn’t be able to hear her.
There was another drawn-out silence, until she heard Lorraine begin to sniff, and after a few seconds it was very apparent that she had begun to cry. For a split second, Cheyenne almost felt bad for her. And then the feeling passed, though her vindictive glee had at least been slightly tempered.
When Lorraine spoke again, her voice was damp. “Mr. Carmichael—”
Harry cut her off before she could get any further than that. “I’m afraid that’s just how it needs to be,” he stated, and his voice sounded slightly strained. Even though he was good at accidentally being the bad guy, he didn’t like to purposely take on the role, even if his definition of what counted as ‘the bad guy’ vastly differed from Cheyenne’s. “I can write you a reference for another employer if that’s what you want, but that’s as much as I can do.”
Once again, the line fell silent, save for Lorraine’s tiny, shuddering breaths. Until she dragged in a deeper breath to steel herself, swallowed audibly, and managed an unsteady, “I would appreciate that, Mr. Carmichael. I’ll let you know when I start applying.”
“You do that,” Harry replied, and Cheyenne almost flinched at how awkward it was. But really, she supposed there was simply nothing else to say about it.
Lorraine offered a final, quiet, “It was good to know you, Mr. Carmichael,” before she hung up the phone. Cheyenne waited until she heard Harry’s end of the line go dead before she hung up as well, and she hurried back to the living room as quietly as she could to set the phone back in its cradle, just in case Harry decided to leave his office in a hurry.
He seemed as if he was going to stay in there for a little while, though, as the door was still closed when Cheyenne emerged from the living room again. She watched it for a moment before she headed back towards the stairs and jogged up them.
She had promised to let Daphne know what happened, after all, and she was already practically bursting to talk about it.
She was, indeed, a very petty human being, but in that moment, she felt absolutely no shame about it. In fact, she felt an almost obscene amount of glee. She took the last few steps two at a time, practically vaulting herself to the top so she had to catch herself on the corner of the wall before the rug went out from under her, and she struck a triumphant pose when she managed to keep her balance and stay on her feet.
By the time she made it to Daphne’s room, the door was already open, and Daphne was waiting for her expectantly, sitting on the edge of the bed. Cheyenne breezed in, pulling the door shut as she entered.
“I could hear you coming from downstairs,” Daphne informed her blandly. “You’re about as subtle and graceful as a drunk moose.”
“Well, that’s an improvement over most days,” Cheyenne replied, “so I’ll take it.” She plopped herself down on the edge of the bed. “It’s official. Lorraine has been fired.”
“Did she freak out?” Daphne wondered. “Throw a fit? Start screaming?” She held her hands up, clasped together in front of her chest as if in prayer. “Please just
tell me she finally dropped that godforsaken little smile. I have wanted to carve that thing off of her face since the first time I saw her, because at least the bleeding gash would have been more honest.”
Cheyenne rolled her eyes and bumped their shoulders together. “Are you going to let me talk, or are you just going to make up your own story about what happened?” she asked dryly, eyebrows rising towards her hairline.
Daphne held her hands up in a mockery of surrender. “I’m all ears,” she added, adopting an almost worshipful tone just for those three words. Lacking anything to hit her over the head with, Cheyenne bumped their shoulders together again in retaliation.