Black Gold

by Angelika Robinson

  “You’re telling me,” he replies. “And there’s more travel soon too. Schmoozing, which at least has the benefit of being my favorite part of the job. You coming with us to the Central Asian HQ, like you did Australia?”

  “Schmoozing? What do you mean?”

  He seems surprised that I don’t know. “A lot of the time, what secures us a deal in countries we want to enter is all about how well you entertain your customer. In Kazakhstan, it’s the government, or big supplier companies close to the government. We wine ‘em and dine ‘em, make a big show of our close friendship, how our investment into the country will give their people lots of jobs, so on, so forth. Smiling for the camera.”

  “Oh,” I nod. “I guess I can understand that much. But I didn’t know there was going to be a trip like that so soon. Nobody told me anything about that during the flight back.”

  “Just got the memo this morning. We’re at the whims of big governments — or big billionaires. That Magnus really is something sometimes!”

  Before I can reply, the manager exits. He’s off at one of the upper floor carparks — I have to go down a few floors below to the first floor exit.

  On the bus home, I shed all the thoughts of work and that void instantly leaves me filling it with thoughts about Magnus. That damn text message. You’d think he’d want some company tonight, but instead I get to feel like I’m intruding on his time.

  Phil greets me from his usual spot in front of the TV when I get home. “Oh, Phil,” I say, walking right up to him and surprising him with a hug. “Everything is always so topsy turvy now. Can’t a girl get a break sometimes?”

  My roommate raises an eyebrow. “No luck with the ninja assassins?”

  “Think that could be a future career move of mine?” I joke. “This secretary thing is harder work than I thought. Funnily enough, it’s not the work, or the in-house politics, those aren’t the things that has me thinking that way. It’s me not being able to get a good read of this complicated, gorgeous man.”

  “Billions of dollars buys you complications, I suppose,” Phil tries to sooth me, as he gives me an impromptu rub of my arms. “Come on, though. Even the best of relationships have the occasional bad day. You’re going to kick ass, Shell. And Magnus is going to know it, too.”

  I shrug. “All I know in my heart of hearts right now, Phil, is that I think we’re both being wrecked with doubt.”

  With a sigh, I lean in and hug him again, and close my eyes.

  I just feel so tired.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The rest of the week hardly goes well for me either. Magnus is around the next day, but I don’t get a chance to see him. Not until there’s a meeting and he’s sitting in. Not presiding over it, which would mean I’d be sitting next to him. He’s just leaning against a glass wall, listening to everyone brainstorm around us.

  Still, I’m surprised when he lets everyone file out of the office, waiting for me to pack my stuff before he holds the door for me. “Did you get all the talking points for the spokesperson, when the Australian newspapers start calling us for comment?” he asks me, with that composed, professional voice of his.

  I feel like I can hear a crack in his voice — like he’s trying to say something else, but no, business first. “Of course I did,” I say almost defensively. Maybe it’s me misinterpreting the body language between the two of us, but I don’t like it when it really does sound like he’s being very condescending.

  Excuse you, Magnus. I know how to do my job.

  “Very good. Hey. Have a minute to talk?”

  I glance back at the meeting room. “I have a minute, I suppose,” I shrug, although secretly I’m glad to know that we’re getting this chance.

  Better, I’m really glad that he’s initiating it. It’s petty of me to think that, maybe, but it’s important to me that he takes charge in this relationship. That alpha male personality is so predominant in everything he does, and I can’t have him unwilling or afraid to face the hard parts of our relationship — we’re in this together, and he has to pull his weight, or he can kiss me goodbye.

  “Good,” he nods. He points to the seats at the table with his chin, but I shake my head, clutching my documents close to my chest. Guarded. I don’t need to sit down. He did only ask for a minute. “Alright, then.”

  “Yes?” I prompt him.

  “I’m going on a trip for the rest of the week, it’s an important client of ours working with our biggest excavation subsidiary. You’ll be out here for a while further, but you can expect to be cycled back into the outer and inner offices soon. That’s a promise, Shaleigh.”

  It’s telling that my response is a shrug. “I’m doing a good job here. I don’t mind being the go-between for the Australia guys.”

  Magnus clears his throat. “It’s because I miss you.”

  “You’re doing a poor job of showing it,” I point out. “Not that I set unreasonably high standards for you. Look, I get it. Work is work, right, Magnus? Or should I say ‘boss’?”

  “I’d rather you don’t.”

  “Chief?”

  “Shaleigh…”

  I crack him a smile. “Mr Boyd?”

  “That might be acceptable under some situations,” Magnus demurs.

  A sudden sizzle comes over me. That smile I gave him made his eyes flash, and it gives me the urge to test him further. “How about… Sir?”

  Magnus bites his lip. “That’ll be all, Shaleigh. I’ve got a meeting I’m about to be late for.”

  I glance back at the meeting room desk. “You’re the CEO. You can be as late as you want. Doing anything you—”

  “None of that, please,” Magnus shuts me down. “This isn’t the place or time for that.”

  He walks away, confident strides surprising me. I was expecting him to decline, sure. But I didn’t expect him to do so with such force. It’s almost as if he’s… putting me in my place.

  I feel almost sore about it, and by the time I leave the meeting room, I decide to make a beeline for the water cooler. I need a drink.

  A stronger one than just room-temperature water.

  The next few days blur through, too. Magnus goes on the trip I heard about from that middle manager, and idly one night at home, I Google his name and find news stories from some glitzy high society website in a language I can’t read — but the photos are clear that it’s Magnus, flanked with exotic models in yet another exotic country.

  “Goddamn you, Magnus Boyd,” I shake my head. Anger rises through me, feeling like steam that needs to vent right out of my skull.

  He’s got his usual Magnus face on: impassive, unimpressed by the beautiful women all vying for his attention. The girl on his left, a stunning dyed blonde who’s even taller than Magnus, is particularly besotted looking.

  That damn girl wants my guy’s D.

  No way, I’m not allowing that.

  Google Translate tells me it’s some actress from that faraway country. I instantly regret looking her up online, because the first photos I see are nude screenshots from B-movies she’s done.

  “Ugh!” I shout into my pillow. Outside, I hear the bathroom door open in the least noisiest way possible. Phil finally deciding he needs to pee after ten hours on the Playstation.

  Well, if Magnus thinks he’s going to get off easy and explain it away as just work, he doesn’t know what having a girlfriend is like. I’m not going to be one of these model girls sitting back and spending his money, not caring where he spends his time.

  I’m real. I’m real as fuck, and my feelings for Magnus are just as real. He’s crazy if he thinks he can simply… tell me I’m poking my nose in places it doesn’t belong.

  So I bide my time, let him go on his trip. I resolve not to do the crazy girlfriend thing of Googling him daily, but every so often I can’t resist, but what I find is largely harmless stuff. Ribbon cuttings. Meetings with politicians. Photo op handshakes.

  I don’t see Salma or Frances in any of the shots — wh
en I dare myself into checking in at the top floor knowing Magnus is still gone, I see them at their desks. It’s Cindy who’s not there. So is she with Magnus?

  “Oh, Cindy?” Frances tells me in her airy voice. “She’s actually away on family business. Her niece is getting married in Vancouver. She’ll be back by Monday.”

  “So who’s on secretary duty shadowing Magnus?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  “Nobody,” Salma says, unalarmed by this. I am, though. He always likes having a secretary, or a team of secretaries with him. It makes me feel like he’s acting shady, like this way he’s allowed to behave however he likes around people.

  Goddamn you, Magnus.

  In the end, I decide to confront him directly. I wait until he’s back in the country, and that night, upon getting a text from him saying his flight’s just landed, I beg Phil to borrow his car.

  “Okay, okay, fine, you can have it,” he relents in the end.

  Then I drive straight to Magnus’ place. Parking in the visitor’s spot, waved in by security who know me by sight.

  When I knock on Magnus’ door, he opens it, wearing a suit with a creased shirt, and no tie. “Shaleigh.”

  “Magnus. We have to talk.”

  He sighs, and opens the door for me. “Fine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Do you want a drink?” Magnus asks, walking straight for the cart he keeps all his fancy bottles of expensive liquor. “I was fancying one myself.”

  “Fancying,” I repeat, shaking my head with amusement. What a preppy guy, the way he just can’t avoid saying all these things the way he does. Despite the way I’m tense beyond words, I can’t help but smile at that.

  “Well? Drink?”

  I glance over the cart as he drops ice cubes into his glass. “No thanks. I’d rather be clear-headed here, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Uh oh,” Magnus says, stretching his words. He is calm, if tired. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

  “Are you?” I raise an eyebrow, letting him have the rising mercury of my sass. He is, but I wonder if he’s got something to confess first.

  “I really can’t think of another time when you’ve stood with your hands on your hips in front of me with a look on your face like that,” Magnus points out.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re ready to tear me a new one, to quote some movies I like,” he answers. “A lesser man might flinch.”

  “In that case, I’m glad you aren’t a lesser man,” I reply drily. “We have to talk.”

  He ushers me to the living area, close to his electric fireplace, which is quietly crackling. “You already said that. Okay. Let’s talk.”

  I feel at an instant disadvantage because my whole body is racked by frustration, but Magnus isn’t taking my bait. He’s playing this as calm, composed, and earnest. Tired. If I weren’t so angry, I would feel like I’m being a nuisance, piling on him like this.

  “I saw photos of you. With some Russian actresses ogling you, probably estimating how much they can get out of you after a marriage and quick divorce,” I blurt.

  Magnus lights up. “What? Oh. Kazakh, not Russian. Central Asia used to be part of the Soviet Union, yes, but that’s really irrelevant to this.”

  “You’re damn right, Magnus. You have a fight with your girlfriend and you run off to some supermodels halfway across the world? Is that really you?”

  “I entertained clients and prominent members of the high society in places where we have clients, that’s all,” Magnus says slowly, lowering his glass. “You make it sound like flying over to affirm Boyd Industries’ friendship with some of its key clients is akin to me hosting orgies every night for a week.”

  “Well, were there? Orgies?”

  Now he laughs. It’s not a mocking laugh, I’ll give him that. He’s just feeling incredulous here. “No… there weren’t any orgies. Not my thing. I don’t share.”

  A rush of fierce pride comes over me. “Good, because I don’t either.”

  “Now are you done interrogating me about who poses for a photo with me at a society dinner?” Magnus says, a twinge of sarcasm finally apparent in his voice.

  “No, actually, I’m not. I’m pissed off, Magnus. I’m hurt. Upset. You’ve been treating me like… like you have no grip on your emotions. After that big blow-out earlier, now you get to be on your high horse and stand with your thousand-dollar whiskey, smirking at me, speaking slowly as if I’m some stupid girl who needs the world explained to me. I’m not.”

  His eyes widen. I can tell Magnus wasn’t expecting that. “Shaleigh…”

  “No sir, no way,” I wave a finger in warning. “Don’t expect you’ll be able Shaleigh your way out of this.”

  “No, I don’t expect that, actually,” he says. “But you have to give me a break here. You and I are close, and we’re a good team — romantically, professionally, in every way. But it’s important we define some very real boundaries. And your behavior right now is telling me you have no interest in doing so.”

  “Damn right I have no interest in doing so!” I say, outraged. “You’re my boyfriend! I have a say in this too, Magnus. Right now everything honestly feels like it’s on your terms, and yours only. And the way you fired Jane was… honestly, just very mean.”

  “Do you expect me to fire someone nicely?” Magnus rolls his eyes at me. “I hadn’t been happy with her for some time now. She just really dropped the ball the day you were absent. It has nothing to do with you, but it feels to me like you’re bearing in a lot of responsibility for this… which again, has nothing to do with you.”

  “How would I know that though?” I say, flailing my hands around.

  There’s an awkward pause between us, too awkward. I have to pierce through this somehow, and get to him. I take a step forward.

  Suddenly I have flashbacks of previous fights in old relationships. Of men thinking they can “Shaleigh…” me, silence me, hope that I’ll burn through my rage. While all through this time they’ll cheat on me, break me, hurt me.

  I remember Dennis forcibly holding me and telling me to shut the fuck up. “This doesn’t concern you, bitch,” he’d hiss in my ear.

  Even Magnus can detect the shudder of terror I give.

  “Sorry isn’t something I say often,” Magnus mentions. “And I am, I honestly am, as straight with you as I can be. You matter to me. Our relationship, however, seems to seriously muddy the waters. You’re right, I’ve been taking the opportunity of the Australia deal and how swamped I am with it to go easier on you.”

  I raise an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been doing the exact opposite of going easy on me.”

  “You’re doing a great job as the deal’s go-between, but imagine trying to juggle having to deal with me as your boss and me as your boyfriend if you were in the inner office. I know you, Shaleigh. I know that that would have consequences.”

  My legs take me to the first armchair I find, slumping back as I watch Magnus, who’s still standing. “Consequences. You make me sound like a distraction.”

  “You are,” he says, with all the coolness of a cucumber. No surrender there, no admission. Just the truth, played straight. “I already think about you all the time, but you cut my efficiency when you and I are busy arguing and trying to organize our dates and doing this whole ‘normal’ thing you obsess about so much.”

  I purse my lips and look right at him. “I’m supposed to take that as a compliment, right? That you think about me all the time?”

  “Well, I’d definitely appreciate it,” he remarks. “But that doesn’t help at all, does it? Doesn’t solve anything. Doesn’t make you feel less… insecure about things with me, apparently. I’d like to know what I can do to help assuage all your fears, my darling.”

  The sigh that exits me is too heavy with emotion. “Magnus, you’re trying. I know you are trying. But I want to know… do you have second thoughts? Do you have doubts?”

  He pauses, opening his mouth and closing i
t quickly. I realize now that I’ve just unsettled him for a second, by being so direct.

  My eyes water as I wait for him to answer.

  “Yes,” Magnus says, although I don’t hear it at first. I can’t possibly hear it. Instead, what happens is I register only blood pumping in my ears. I register only numbness. All I hear from him is the echo of his admission.

  “Okay,” I nod and swallow.

  “That’s not tantamount to saying this isn’t working, I have to stress,” he says, carefully pronouncing every syllable. “It’s just a recognition of some facts in this relationship. I’ve always told you that I don’t do ‘complicated’ — but you, my darling, prefer complication over simplicity. A relationship like ours, by its very nature, is harder to accomplish than the baseline. You know, I really want this. I’ve never wanted a relationship as much I have here. With you, I see something real. A future.”

  “But fighting just makes you gain doubts,” I say, softly.

  “Of course it does. It reveals a lot of contradictions here that I frankly can tell you that I don’t like, Shaleigh. I wouldn’t tolerate it with anybody, no matter who they were — and I’m afraid that includes you.”

  I lean back into my seat, letting him continue. He’s already set his mind that he’s going to, anyway.

  “All this you’re doing, trying to bring our relationship to a level that both you and I can equally relate to… I appreciate that. But I fear like you’re holding that whole normalcy thing over my head. Like it’s something you use to punish me. Worse, to punish yourself. It seems to me that you’re telling yourself you don’t deserve a normal relationship, only this pantomime where you and I pretend to be normal while in reality we’re evolving into something very much far from the norm.”

  “I don’t see what’s so wrong about that,” I protest. “Normal is good, Magnus. Normal keeps you grounded. I can’t live this whole luxury, platinum lifestyle you live. I mean, I can learn to do it… but it’s not me. I’m a homespun, homegrown, homely girl.”