“No, you’re fine. What’s up?” Cane asked her.
“I know this is bad timing and I’m really sorry,” she said, stepping through the doorway. “But is there any way I can take some time off? My dad’s test came back and my mom called this morning. It’s cancer. I need to go be with her for a while. I’m not sure how long. Could be a day, could be—”
“Yes. Family first. We’ll make it work,” Cane said without hesitation.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Mr. Alexander, thank you so much. I don’t know what to say. Do you want me to call a temp agency?”
“No, temps never work. We’ll figure it out. I’ll talk to Hilah later.”
Lucy had worked for us since we took over Alexander Industries after his father was killed. She was the first person Cane actually hired and he always seemed to have an affinity for her.
“Just let me know if you need anything, okay? I’ll finish out the day today.” She flashed me a quick grin before shutting the door behind her.
“It’s so weird seeing you be nice to someone other than Jada,” I said to Cane, once the door was closed.
“I’ve always liked Lucy.”
“I always figured you’d marry her,” I chuckled.
Cane snorted. “She’s like a little sister or something. Not fuckable. Well, not to me,” he said pointedly.
“I didn’t fuck her.”
“Sure you didn’t,” he taunted.
“Whatever. I’m going to go fire Dan and work on the Chandler job. Some of us have real shit to do.”
“I’m going to the doctor with Jada this afternoon. She hasn’t been feeling good.”
I paused in my tracks. “She’s alright though?”
“I think so. It’s the normal appointment, but I’m going to be there.”
“Yeah, ya should be. Just let me know if you need anything, alright?”
We exchanged a nod. We’d been friends for so long that a nod was enough most times.
I left his office and made my way down the hallway towards mine. Our offices were at opposite corners of the building at Cane’s insistence. He said that it helped “balance our power,” whatever in the hell that was supposed to mean.
I passed by the break room and Lucy was making coffee.
“Lucy, can you ask Dan to come see me when he gets in, please?”
Her cheeks turned a bright pink. “Sure, Mr. Quinn. Anything else?” The hope in her voice was thick and it made me want to laugh. She was a beauty for sure, just not my type. Even though it had been very clearly laid out for me in the most literal way after the Christmas party when I took her home after too many Patron shots.
“No, that’s it. Thanks.” I felt her eyes on me as I made my way out of sight.
My office was bright and I wasn’t in the mood. I rolled my blinds down and sat in my chair. I checked my email before anything else.
I couldn’t help the grin on my face as I clicked the top message.
Subject: Red
Since I know you check this first thing because you’re OCD, I wanted to start your day off by telling you that I’m wearing something red today. And it isn’t my shoes, although I could add my red heels to the mix later. ;)
xo,
Kari
It wasn’t the first time she had emailed me in the morning and I loved it when she did. I clicked the arrow.
Subject: Blue
Since you just planted vivid images in my mind, I want you to know that because of your email, I’m starting the day off with something blue and it isn’t my shirt. Your skills will be required to rectify this situation this evening. Stay at my house tonight?
A few minutes went by before I heard the ping.
Subject: Pink
Only if rectifying your blue requires the use of some of my pink.
I hit REPLY.
Subject: Purple
Keep it up, sweetheart, and you’re going to be fucked so hard you’ll be purple tomorrow. This is not a request—be at my house after work.
A knock on the door ruined the moment.
“Come in,” I said, clearing my throat. I hated firing people, but it was better in this case that I did it than Cane.
Dan opened the door. “Hey, Max. Lucy said you wanted to see me?”
“Shut the door behind you and take a seat.” I found the termination papers that Hilah had placed on my desk.
Dan Collins was younger than me—mid 20’s and had just gotten married. He had sandy brown hair and green eyes that always looked like he was confused. But he did good work . . . until last week.
“Something wrong?” he asked, looking at my face as he took the seat across from me.
“Yes, there is. I had a call from Mr. Fifer at the City of Mesa this morning. The bid bond was not attached to the bid and we have been disqualified.”
His face fell, an ashen color washing over it. He readjusted himself in the chair. “What? You’re kidding me, right?”
“I wish I was.” I folded my arms on the papers. “What’s going on, Dan? This isn’t like you.”
He fumbled around, his eyes scanning around the room. “I . . . uh . . . I don’t know. I swear I put it in there, Max. I know I did. Oh, God . . .” He put his head in his hands.
“Alexander Industries needed that job. We all had a lot of work in that bid and to lose a job of that size to something so avoidable is asinine.”
“I know, Max. And I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again.” He looked me right in the eye with everything he had. I knew he was trying to prevent me from saying what we both knew came next.
I took a deep breath. “I’m going to have to let you go.”
“No!” he said, his voice bouncing around the room. “This won’t happen again. I can’t lose this job, Max. I can’t. I just got married. I . . .” He looked at me, begging me to rescind my words. “Please, don’t fire me.”
“I don’t have a choice,” I said with more conviction than I felt. It had to be done, but I still hated it. “Here is your final pay. I had Hilah pay you for the vacation and sick time you had accrued, which I didn’t have to do and normally don’t.”
“You are seriously letting me go?” he asked. He sat upright, his mouth forming a grim line.
I sat back in my chair, putting a little distance between us. I had one guy come across the desk once and it was a lesson painfully learned. “I am. You have a family to take care of, but so do the rest of us. This was a careless mistake that we can’t afford to have repeated and I can’t justify it to the rest of the guys that work their asses off.”
“I work my ass off, too!”
“I’m not saying you don’t. I’m saying you made an error that cost us a huge contract and I can’t overlook it. Word travels fast around here. Once the other guys know what happened, especially if we don’t get another job soon and we have to start laying people off . . . I don’t have a choice. ”
He was on his feet in a second, grabbing the papers off my desk. “Fuck you,” he bit out, his eyes on fire. “This is bullshit.”
“Losing that job was bullshit that didn’t have to happen.” My sympathy was being replaced with anger quickly. “And now the rest of us have to fix it.”
“You wanna fuck with me?” He smiled menacingly. He swung the door open and it hit the filing cabinet behind it, causing my hardhat to fall off the top and hit the ground. “You’ll regret this. You hear me?”
“I hear ya and I’m going to assume you’re spoutin’ off at the mouth because you’re angry. I get that. But I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises immediately and not cause a scene. Do you hear me?”
His eyes widened for a split second, a little taken aback at my tone. He started to say something, but I beat him to the punch.
“Don’t bite off more than you can chew, Dan.”
He turned on his heel and walked out, closing the door tightly behind him.
I let out a breath and rolled my neck a fe
w times. I heard the side door outside my office that led to the parking lot slam shut and could see him, through the blinds, heading to his car.
I reorganized the papers on my desk and got back to work.
Work was a form of stress-relief for me. I learned at a young age that when you feel like sinkin,’ the best thing to do is to swim as hard as you can. Just going along with the undertow will you get you one thing—sunk.
Since we were short one job thanks to Dan, I needed to stay on top of the budgets for the other projects. Construction jobs could go south in a second. I also needed to replace the missed bid in our upcoming work list.
I worked straight through lunch, reviewing project reports until Lucy buzzed in. “Mr. Quinn? There’s a Samantha West on the line for you.”
Why would Sam be calling me in the middle of the day at the office?
I glanced around the room and my eyes rested on the date on the corner of my computer screen and everything was clear.
“Mr. Quinn?” she repeated in her happy-go-lucky tone.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, Lucy. Put her through.”
I watched the light flash on my phone, signaling an incoming call. I didn’t want to answer, but I couldn’t ignore her. Not after everything that had happened.
“Hello?” I asked, watching the arms on the Saints clock tick on the wall above the door.
“Max?”
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, it’s me. How are you, Sam?”
“I’m good. How are you?” I could hear the hesitation in her voice.
“Good. Workin’ my life away,” I laughed, trying to ease the tension between us.
“Why does that not surprise me?”
“Some things never change, I guess. What are you up to?”
I heard her take a quick breath. “Ah, not much . . .”
Samantha was a fixture in my life since I could remember. She became friends with Brielle in elementary school and she’d been around ever since. Her parents were divorced and she lived with her mother and us a lot of the time, it seemed. Especially as she got older, she was always around. She didn’t seem to have many friends besides Brielle and never seemed to have a steady boyfriend; I never really understood that.
I was like a big brother to them both. I gave them rides, helped them out here and there, basic shit. They were good girls, a little ornery but nothing serious. Some of that changed after the incident. Mama had arranged for them to get counseling for awhile. Brielle kind of acted out, getting into some trouble on her own. Sam kind of kept quiet about it, though. We all waited for her to act out, too, but it never came.
“You alright?” I asked softly.
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “It’s a tough day.”
I nodded, although she couldn’t see me. “I’m sorry, Sam. Damn it, I’m just—”
“Stop it, Max. I shouldn’t have called you.”
“Of course you should have.” I felt my chest rise against the imaginary band wrapped around it. “Are you okay? Are you alone today?”
She laughed lightly, sounding so innocent. “I’m meeting Bri at your mama’s in a little while for lunch. She always has us come over on the anniversary.” Sam sighed. “I hate calling it an anniversary. That makes it seem like a good thing.”
“I’m with ya on that.”
“But Mama Fern is making Beef Manhattans and Better than Sex cake, so the day should get better.”
“Please don’t say my mom’s name and the word ‘sex’ in the same sentence ever again,” I deadpanned.
She laughed again, sounding happier this time. “Weird, right?”
“On so many levels.”
“How’s your day?”
“Not good, actually. Fired a guy earlier. That always sucks.”
“Well,” she drawled out, “your mom always says that everything can be fixed with food. Wanna meet us all there for lunch?”
I considered it, but my cell starting flashing Kari’s picture with an incoming call. A smile broke out across my face as I envisioned her in ‘red.’
“I’d love to, Sam, but I have a few things I have to do that I’ve already committed to. But if you need anything, you have my number, right?”
“Yeah, no worries. I won’t take up any more of your time. I just, you know . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I just wanted to hear your voice for some reason. I don’t know. I’m sorry if I bothered you at work.”
“I needed the break,” I smiled, looking down at a voicemail notification from Kari’s number. I felt guilty for trying to get off the phone with her.
“Alright, I’m off to your mom’s. I hope you have a good rest of your day.”
“Hey, Sam,” I said quickly before she hung up.
“Yeah?”
My stomach turned into a knot. “If you need anything, call me. I know that seems ironic—”
“Maxie,” she said, frustration in her voice. “Stop it.”
I blew out a breath into the phone.
“What happened had nothing to do with you. I didn’t call you today because I wanted to blame you for that night. I called you that night and today because you are probably the only person that might have answered the phone. I had no one else and I still don’t. So, ya know, thank you for always being there.”
I laughed sadly. “That’s messed up, Sam.”
“It’s not. Your family is the only family I really have. What would I have without you?”
KARI
“You home?” I called out as I slipped off my sneakers. My feet were tired, my heart was heavy, and my brain was mush.
“I’m in my office.”
I dropped my bag and walked through the house. Max’s two-story home was on a cul-de-sac. It sat back off the drive a little and was really quiet, especially for a house in the city. He had just enough furniture to make it seem homey, but not too much to seem stuffy. He had a few framed pictures, a few pieces of sports memorabilia, and little odds and ends here and there. I always smiled when I walked in.
Titus raised his head from his spot on the leather sofa and then, apparently finding me uninteresting, he laid back down. I knew he wasn’t supposed to be up there, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with it.
I made my way through the house until I stood in the doorway of Max’s office. He was standing, his hands on his desk, looking at a set of plans. A lamp on his desk was lit, the bulb bent over to give him more light. All the walls in the house were white, except in his office; they were a tobacco brown. Max said it was that way when he bought it and he liked it. A large, basic, rustic-looking wooden desk sat facing the doorway with a black leather chair behind it. There was a poster-sized picture of his Grandpa’s ranch in Texas on one wall and an aerial picture of the first project he completed as a contractor on the other.
“New job?” I asked and leaned against the doorway.
He put his head down for a second before raising it back up. “I sure as shit hope so. We lost a big one today and I had to fire Dan over it. If we can get this job next week, it’ll get us back to where we need to be.”
“Sounds like your day went about as good as mine,” I muttered.
“What happened, sweetheart?” He moved gracefully around the desk and wrapped me up in his arms. I lay my head against his chest, both firm and comfortable all at the same time. He kissed the top of my head and rubbed my neck with one hand.
“We lost a guy today in the ER. He was young and his parents . . .” My voice trailed off as I remembered hearing their sobs. I didn’t think that sound—one of pure devastation—would ever leave me. It was so haunting, so tragic. I had seen a lot of things as a nurse, but losing the 20-something to a random exposed electric line was just heartbreaking.
He kissed my head again. “I could never do what you do.”
“I need a bath. A long, hot bath. Want to join me and we can talk?”
“You think I’m going to turn down seeing you naked?” He grabbed my hand and led me up the stairs to the master bathroo
m. He ran a bubble bath silently while I tossed my clothes in the hamper. I looked up while I unfastened my red bra and Max was watching me.
“My favorite,” he smiled.
“I wore it for you.”
“That’s as good as anything. Just knowing you thought of me when you put it on this morning makes me happy.”
“I always think of you.” I pushed my panties down my legs and tossed my lingerie into the hamper as well. I slipped into the warmth, letting the water relax my muscles and my mind. “This feels so good.”
“I’m glad.” Max pulled the chair I used to put on my makeup around to face me. “Everything else go okay today?”
“No,” I said, blowing out a breath. “The nurses are all up-in-arms about this new doctor. He just started at the hospital and can be an ass. And then this morning,” I said, scooting up the wall of the tub, “I went by my house before work. I searched everywhere for my silver bracelet with the dangling heart. Do you remember the one I’m talking about? It had a blue bead in the center.”
He furrowed his brow. He knew I never misplaced things and looked as confused as I felt. It had bothered me all day. “I think so. When did you have it last?”
“I know I wore it to dinner with you a few months ago and I put it back in my jewelry box. It’s just gone.”
Max grabbed his cell out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and put it back in his pocket. He sighed.
“Everything okay?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t.
“It’s Dan, the guy I fired today. He’s blown up my phone all evening. He thinks we short-paid him for this week, so I told him to call Hilah. He’s acting like I slighted him somehow, but I paid the guy for sick and vacation time that he had saved and I didn’t have to do that. So why he thinks I withheld some of his pay is beyond me. He got more than he should have!”
I gathered some bubbles in my hand and blew them at him. “Like you’d do that anyway.”
He shrugged. “It’s frustrating, but I want to forget about it. I want to turn this phone off and just think about you. Want me to order something for dinner?”
“I actually have to go home. The pool guy was supposed to be by this afternoon and I need to make sure everything is done, gate shut, all that.”
The Perception Page 5