Hate to Lose You

by Penny Wylder

  “Who is this? How did you get this number?” he barks.

  The man holding the phone raises a single eyebrow, and extends the phone in my direction. I take a deep breath.

  Here goes nothing.

  “Father,” I say through gritted teeth, not only because of the pain my injuries are causing me, but also because of the pain this is causing me. “It’s me.”

  Okay, so maybe Daisy isn’t my only regret. I could have been smarter. Could have saved more money, stored some away rather than going on the spree I did through Vegas those first three years, blowing my cash on anything that caught my fancy. But I was a kid who’d never been allowed a childhood. I’d never overindulged, so I had no idea how to avoid crashing and burning.

  Besides, the way down was fucking fun, even if it wound up with me on the run from debt collectors all across the continental U.S., finally fleeing in desperation to a sleepy little Southern bypass town, the kind nobody in their right mind would stop to look in twice.

  At least, so I thought.

  There’s a silence on the other end of the line for so long that I almost think I misjudged. Fuck. Maybe my get out of jail free card isn’t on the table anymore. Maybe I really did push him too far this time. Maybe they’ve already cut me out of their life, replaced me. Adopted one of those friends’ kids they were always fawning over, perhaps.

  But then, finally, I hear a deep sigh, and my father says, “Bronson. What mess have you gotten yourself into?”

  I scowl at the phone. He has no fucking clue. No idea where I’ve been for the past five years. So who is he to talk down to me about messes? “Nice to speak to you too, Dad.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, young man,” the phone crackles. “You knew this number. You could have used it at any time. Do you have any idea how worried your mother and I have been? If it weren’t for the private investigators we hired to trail you, we wouldn’t even have known you were alive.”

  The bruiser holding the phone balls up one fist and gestures at me. The message is clear. Get to the point.

  “Speaking of alive,” I reply, glaring at the man. “I am in a bit of a, uh… situation, at the moment.”

  “Your gambling debts, I assume?”

  I grit my teeth. But I’ll get angry about him following my every move later. For now, I need him on my side. I shut my eyes tight. “Some very nice men have come to collect,” I say. “And I’m afraid I’m fresh out of… well, any capital, at the moment.”

  “How much?” my father asks.

  For the first time, the bruiser holding the phone speaks up. “One and a half million.”

  My head jerks upright at that figure. “Whoa, hold up,” I say, raising my voice. “I only owed you people a couple hundred thousand bucks last I checked.”

  The bruiser shrugs one shoulder. “Interest.”

  Over the phone, my father heaves a deep sigh. “Bronson, what have I always told you about negotiating interest rates upfront before you accept a loan?”

  Accept a loan? What the hell is… “Father, these are fucking casino mafioso scum we’re talking about, do you really think they offered me a choice of interest rates?”

  “What did you call us?” The bruiser takes a menacing step toward me, and I plaster on my most apologetic smile.

  “Nothing personal, of course. I’m speaking about your bosses.”

  His scowl fades, but only by a fraction. At least even in the underworld, you can always count on lower-level employees despising upper management.

  “One and a half million dollars,” my father says slowly on the other end of the line.

  My stomach sinks toward my feet. If he refuses to pay this for me, I am fucked. $200k, I might have been able to earn back on the run. I’ve been doing odd jobs for a few contacts I made back in Vegas, mostly helping them drop-ship a few semi-questionable items across various out-of-country borders. Virtually, of course. But one and a half million? I’ll never claw my way out from under debt like that. Not without my father’s help.

  Fuck.

  Then my father speaks again. “If I do this for you, Bronson…”

  My heart soars back into my chest, and I can breathe again. But only for a second.

  “Then you come home,” he says. “You move back to LA, you join the firm, and you take over the new wing we just founded. The way you should have been doing all along. You toe the line, you put your nose to the grindstone, and you work. Is that understood?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut so hard I see sparks behind them. But I already know the choice. It’s not a choice, not really. Somehow, my parents always manage to win our little games of chess. I managed to drag this one out longer than most, but in the end, they’ve got me in checkmate. They always do. “Understood,” I finally say, my voice a defeated whisper.

  “I didn’t catch that,” my father barks.

  I scowl at the phone. “I said understood, sir,” I shout, jaw clenched hard.

  That’s when a new voice floats over the phone line. “There’s no need to get snarky with your father, Bronson,” my mother says, her voice as perfectly prim and proper as ever. “He’s trying to help you.”

  “Hi, Stacey,” I reply.

  “Sweetie, we’re so glad you’re coming home to us. We can’t wait to see you. We left your room just the way it was when you departed. Everything the way you like it.”

  You mean everything the way I’ve hated it all along.

  “I’m having my secretary buy you a flight out here now,” my father is saying. “Atlanta airport is the closest, yes?”

  Was there anything he didn’t know all along? I don’t answer. I just scowl at the phone.

  The bruiser talks for me. “Kid’s not going anywhere until we get our payment,” he says.

  “The money should already be in your boss’s hands,” my father replies smoothly. “I sent over an emergency wire transfer while we were speaking.”

  He didn’t even wait for me to agree to his terms. But at the same time, I know I can’t complain. This move has saved my ass. And more than that, it will get these thugs to leave Daisy the hell alone. The least I can do is avoid dragging her into this mess.

  “Bronson, you’ll need to leave now if you want to make your flight,” Father breaks in again. “I’m sending a car to pick you up; can I have the address?”

  I sink back onto my heels as the bruiser tells my father to hold on, and starts to stomp up the staircase, presumably to check with his partner if it’s actually okay to release me.

  “Hold on a moment,” Father says, when the guy is almost at the top of the steps. “Bronson?”

  “Present,” I shout, eyes narrowed.

  “One more thing. You aren’t to speak to anyone about this. My investigator tells me you’ve been seeing a local girl—it will be best to leave her in the dark about the situation. If you know what’s good for her.”

  The thug smirks at me, at that, and my stomach sinks once more. For once, I’ve finally found something my father and I agree upon.

  4

  Daisy

  6 months later

  I step off the plane at LAX with a spring in my step and hope in my heart, for the first time in a long while. But my first glimpse, as the taxi pulls away from the airport onto the mega-highway into the city—a highway that looks like you ought to be speeding down it, but which is in fact so clogged with cars that we’re creeping along at a glacial pace—is of smog and traffic.

  I sigh and lean my forehead against the window, trying to lift my eyes above the over-populated road and into the cheery blue skies overhead instead. At least it’s a nice, bright, sunny day. The kind you hear about all the time, whenever anybody talks about LA.

  This is it. A fresh step in life. A new start. So why does it feel like I’m leaving my heart behind in Georgia?

  I can’t help it. My fingers move of their own accord. It’s been months since I’ve done this, but I click into my messages with Bronson. The ones I can’t stop myself from d
eleting, even though I know I should. It’s long overdue for me to get the fuck over that asshole.

  There it is, right at the bottom in black and white. The last text he ever sent me. The last time I ever heard from him.

  Have to leave town, it says. I won’t be back. Sorry.

  That’s it. Sorry. The world’s most inadequate apology for doing what he did—namely, breaking my heart into a million little pieces all over that fucking Ikea floor.

  I tried to tell myself I was being stupid. After all, it was only one month. A fling, really. Who gets attached that fast, let alone so attached they allow somebody to break their heart? It’s pathetic, is what it is. I couldn’t even talk to my friends about it, because I’d barely even told them Bronson and I were dating. Were we even dating? It was so fresh, so new. I never bothered to hit pause and take stock of what was happening, or measure if we were speeding way too fast.

  But I thought he was on the same page as me. It felt like he was, even if, from the outside looking in, the whole situation seemed nuts. The way we talked, the way he joked with me… I thought it was the start of something real, something with potential. It was the first time I’d ever felt that way about a guy.

  That’s the only reason I’m so heartbroken, I tell myself. It was the first time I found a guy I could actually picture myself with long-term… And it didn’t work out. It’s that daydream future I’m mourning, not some dude I only knew for a month.

  Not some dude whose optimistic and encouraging descriptions of big city life led to me freaking upsetting my entire life and moving to LA. Not some dude whose career advice I’m still taking, retroactively, because all I can think about is what he told me about how quickly I could make enough money to afford the big beautiful countryside house I want to buy back home.

  That’s why you met him, I tell myself. He was supposed to show up, dispense some sage advice about going to work for a big company to earn real money for a few years, and inspire me to get my ass in gear. Now I’m on the right track.

  Now I don’t need to dwell on him anymore.

  I hit delete, and watch as Bronson’s month full of texts vanish from my phone, all in one instant, like a blip. Poof. The same way he vanished out of my life.

  For good measure, I scroll into my contacts and delete his number, too. Then, heart feeling lighter than it has in months, I turn back to the window, smiling. The road doesn’t look so bad anymore. In fact, it looks positively glowing now. With enough sunlight, I can put up with any amount of traffic.

  LA fucking blows.

  I’ve been here three months, four days and twenty-six minutes, and not a single second of it has been pleasant. I can’t tell if it’s because of the city—with its traffic, its shallow people, its constant reminder that I’m about a three on the hot-and-dateable scale here—or because of my fucking job.

  When I took the entry-level position at this bank, I expected I wouldn’t love the work the same way somebody might love, oh, I don’t know, a job helping to rescue kittens off the street, or a position as an office manager for some fun jewelry designer or something. But I didn’t expect to loathe it with every ounce of power in my being.

  I strut to work in sky-high heels every morning at 6am—because the office manager told me I need to look presentable, and presentable means heels. I mean, is that even legal in this day and age? But I’ve learned how to walk well enough in them to fake it—the pencil skirt does help, actually, since it restricts movement in my legs to such a narrow margin that I can’t really walk with a wide enough stride to fall over in the heels.

  Then I make coffee for everyone in the branch where I work—a seedy branch in Downtown LA, which, considering I live all the way out in Carson, in a flat with four roommates so I can save every penny possible, is a fucking hike to reach at that hour of the morning. After making everyone their coffee, I sit down to my actual job, which mostly consists of answering phones and rewriting emails for higher-ups who can’t be bothered to learn how to spell any of the technical terms they need to use in their jobs on a daily basis.

  I thought I’d be learning important skills in this position. Skills like how to balance the books, how to manage funds, how to actually do any of the banking work. Instead I’m a glorified secretary, because we fired the actual secretary due to budget cuts, and nobody will bother to replace her when they have the office assistant to unload all her work onto instead.

  Every day I feel myself creeping closer and closer to just losing my shit and rage-quitting this job, this city, this life which is nothing like I pictured.

  Then, today, on day ninety-five of my stay in this city, a message pings into my inbox. Please report to Mr. Hastings’s office.

  Mr. Hastings, the branch manager. Mr. Hastings, the man who hired me, and who I haven’t seen hide or tail of since our interview over Skype about a month before I arrived here.

  Great. Now I’m probably going to be fired. I’m halfway out of my chair to answer the summons when the realization hits me like a ton of bricks.

  Fired. Hang on.

  All too aware that the clock is ticking on this meeting I’m procrastinating going to, I dig through my desk for the file I’m seeking—my hiring packet. I skim through it, past the table of contents and the salary—which, to be honest, is the only worthwhile thing about this damned job. And then, a few pages in, I find it. Right there on the paper like a lifeline thrown out to a drowning woman at sea.

  My severance information. The amount of money I’d make if I were fired from this position. My heart skips a beat.

  It’s not enough for me to stay in LA and live on, but who gives a crap about that? If I got this chunk of money as my severance pay, I could retreat home to Atlanta easily. Set myself up comfortably for at least a few months while I got another job—a job I actually liked, a job somewhere that gave me actual challenges instead of just shitty busywork.

  I breathe out a deep sigh and smile for what feels like the first time in weeks. It doesn’t matter that Mr. Hastings is probably about to fire me right now for some bullshit like not making his morning coffee just right, which I always pass along to his personal secretary (he’s allowed to maintain one, it’s just the rest of the company that can’t afford one). The second he tells me I’m out, I will be—out of this job, out of this city, out of this life. Back to where I belong. Where I’m meant to make my home.

  I practically skip down the hallway and into his office. Once there, I tap lightly on the door jam before I step inside.

  Mr. Hastings glances up from his computer, a single eyebrow arched, and then does a double-take. “You seem chipper,” he comments. “Did your favorite Bachelor contestant win last night? It’s all my wife has been talking about, too.”

  Suddenly, the easy smile I’ve been wearing becomes forced, as I clamp down my jaw to keep it from fading. I mean, I did watch the show. Everyone does. But he doesn’t know that, and it’s fucking annoying that he just assumes I must because, what, I’m female? I drop onto the edge of the chair across from him. “Something like that,” I say, smoothing my skirt underneath me. “Um, I got an email saying that you wanted to see me?” I add, when he doesn’t say anything else, his eyes shifting back to his computer screen.

  He clears his throat. “Yes. Daisy, right?”

  I bob my head.

  “You’ve been here a couple of months now, haven’t you?”

  “Three, sir,” I reply. In the back of my mind, I’m visualizing the severance contract again. Severance pay becomes valid after ninety days of employment at the bank. Score.

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” he says. “See how you’re fitting in.”

  I clear my throat, this time. “Um… I’m not sure what you mean, sir.” I think you’ve been using me like a glorified secretary, overworking the hell out of everyone here so that they dump all their impossible-to-do work on me, and it’s made me get sick to my stomach with dread every morning before I head into work here.

  “I me
an how have you been liking the work we’ve been giving you?” Mr. Hastings removes his glasses to clean them, slowly and methodically, on a silk handkerchief he pulls from a side drawer of his desk.

  It gives me time to collect myself. Think through an answer that’s polite but not over-the-top terrible. I want to get let go, but I don’t want him to know that’s what I want. “Um, it’s been a bit…” I clear my throat. “Well, to be honest, sir…”

  When I trail off a second time, he replaces his newly-cleaned glasses in order to squint at me, considering. “I’m not paying you to humor me, Daisy. Tell me what you really think.”

  “I’m not being challenged,” I reply, all in a rush. My heart leaps into my throat. But once I’ve started speaking, I can’t stop myself. “All I’ve been doing since the day I arrived here is busywork—and I know somebody needs to do that; I understand the day-to-day running of the business needs addressed. But it seems like that’s all I’ve been given to do, when that most certainly wasn’t the job I thought I was applying for, or the description of what I’d be doing when I was hired. I didn’t sign on to be ten people’s secretary at once—and if you ask me, your staff needs a few dedicated secretaries of their own. Surely you must know how important secretaries are, if you keep your own private one on the payroll even through all these cutbacks.”

  Mr. Hastings sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. All at once, my face goes hot with embarrassment. For a long, fraught moment, I feel myself holding my breath, waiting for the axe to fall.

  Hypothetically wanting to be made redundant is one thing. Sitting here in this hot seat waiting for the man who hired me—the man I just talked to the way I’d talk to a friend at a bar, not a high-powered bank manager who can determine my future—to bring the hammer down on my skull is quite another. My palms grow damp with nervous sweat, and I press them hard against my thighs, glad that I wore a dark-colored skirt today to disguise it.