by Bianca Mori
He grips the steering wheel hard, jaws clenching a tiny bit. “What’s this really about, Mags?”
“I just wished you checked this all out with me, that’s all! I wasn’t prepared to go in there and sign a fucking love contract!”
I place my hands on the dashboard. They’re cold and shaking slightly. The force of my anger, now that it’s out, unnerves me. Luke flicks his eyes from my hands to my face.
“I’m sorry if that took you by surprise. I admit it’s not the most romantic thing--”
“I don’t give a shit about romance, Luke. Do you have any idea how this looks for me? I left Project Clausen because everyone basically assumed I’d seduced my lead and then accused him of harassment. Now they’ll think that I went and started up again with the lead of the new team I’d moved into. Only this time I did it good and legit with a fucking contract. ‘She’s learned her lesson now!’ they’ll all say.”
He looks at me like I’m the cute pet rabbit he’s brought into his home that had suddenly turned rabid.
“I know what else they’ll say,” I grip the dashboard harder. “They’ll say that Clarence probably rejected me, and that’s why I went and flipped the script by accusing him of coming on to me. But now that you’re fine with sleeping with Star Contact’s Slutty Single Mom, I’ve gone and sunk my claws in you by bringing this up with Tina.”
“You’re overreacting.” He tries his soothing training voice. “This is all in your head.”
“This is not in my head, Luke. People say these things. They have said these things. I’ve been here before,” I laugh bitterly. “More times than you can probably imagine.”
“People are mean, vindictive idiots,” he shakes his head. “Just ignore them.”
My laugh turns hysterical. “Oh my God, why haven’t I thought of that before? You mean to say all this will go away if I just pretend none of it exists?”
“Mags. Please.” His voice is strained. I know I’m scaring him; I know I should pump the brakes. But it’s so easy for him. For all of them. Clarence and Magnus’s dad and every single guy who’s been involved with me.
So freaking easy.
“You don’t understand any of this because you’ve never been in my shoes,” I say quietly. “You’ve never been pursued, and then thrown away after you put out. You’ve never been shamed for wanting, for not having the expected Maria Clara hang-ups about sex. You’ve never been whispered about, you’ve never had well-meaning people try to fix you because as far as everyone is concerned, you’re damaged goods. So please, don’t give me advice.”
“What do you want me to say?” he pleads. “That I should’ve kept this a secret from Tina? That we should’ve been fuck buddies instead? I don’t want that. That’s not how I do things.”
“But that’s how I roll, is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Stop putting words into my mouth.”
“This is a mistake,” I shake my head. “This is all a mistake. My mom was right.”
He pulls over to a curb and faces me full on. His eyes are clouded, confused. “Don’t say that, Mags. That woman’s been gaslighting you--”
“You don’t know her.”
“I heard enough over at Auntie Tilde’s.”
“That doesn’t entitle you to make a judgment about her.” I start unbuckling my seat and grope for my backpack.
“Mags,” he says again, his voice a breaking whisper.
“Let me out,” I seethe.
He locks gazes with me. I refuse to look away. There’s nothing now in the car to hear but the sound of blood rushing in my ears.
At the final moment, he pulls up the locks and I tumble out onto the sidewalk and walk away.
Chapter 14
Ting-ting-ting ting-ting!
“You’ve got to answer the phone already.”
Cass is sprawled out on Auntie Tilde’s couch, my mobile phone lighting up like a Christmas tree on her belly. She’s taken a sick leave today for me, and I love her for it.
I take my buzzing, twinkling phone and shove it under one of the throw pillows before flopping down on another armchair and offering Cass a Pringle.
“No,” she wrinkles her nose. “I hate that sour cream powder.”
“Good.” I crush a few of the chips into the can and tip the crumbled bits into my mouth. “Morefurrme.”
Cass watches with amusement on her face. She gets up, grabbing the near-empty can from my hands, and returns from the kitchen with two tall glasses of water, one of which she hands to me. “Wash all that sodium out from your system.”
She picks up the throw pillow to adjust it under her feet, de-muffling the phone.
Ting-ting-ting ting-ting!
“Mags.”
“No.”
“How long are you going to avoid this?”
I glance at Auntie Tilde’s fully functioning cuckoo clock. “I’ve made it two weeks?”
She shakes her head. “You are brutal, Ms. Abarquez. How are you even managing to avoid running into him? The training team is, like, tiny.”
“Michelle takes all the early scheduled classes. It works with her newborn baby’s schedule. So now I’m on Australia time too, and he’s mostly afternoon and evening shifts. And...I skipped the last team meeting.”
Cass’s bemused expression edges toward worry. “How are you going to finish your presentation? Isn’t it really close?”
“Monday.” I give her a little half-assed smile.
“Right before holiday break, huh? Nice.” She looks at me a little closer, and the worry in her face turns into alarm. “Mags. No.”
“‘No’ what?” I get up and take the empty water glasses to the kitchen. Cass follows me and waits until I face her.
“You know ‘what.’”
I steel myself for the knowing glint in her eye. She cocks a brow and crosses her arms over chest.
“Are you really trying to intimidate me, Cass?”
“Are you going to give me a straight answer?”
“I don’t know!” I flop over the counter and bury my face in my hands.
“Is it not going well with Michelle?”
“It’s fine,” I wave a hand through the air. “I took her through Lu—our—plans. She’s fine with the whole thing, pretty much lets me handle the course preps and just comes in from time to time to give her notes.”
It’s different though, and I don’t need to say it out loud for Cass to understand. Twenty Tips was our baby. Luke’s and mine.
“What is it, Mags?”
“It’s just that...each tip, each video has a memory of him connected with it. How he coached me through my speech, how we tweaked and tested the tips--”
“—On us,” she rolls her eyes.
“—How we decided together on which videos to show.” I wring my hands. “When Michelle looks over our materials and makes a suggestion, I take them, but it’s with this bitter little pull, you know? Like I’m possessive about it, but I know I shouldn’t be. She’s just helping out and I’m lucky she and Tina have been so nice, letting me continuing with the mentoring even if I, you know…”
“—Boned your mentor.”
I pretend to throw an invisible dart at her incessant giggles. “The point is...the point is…”
She gives me a sympathetic look. “You don’t feel like you own it anymore.”
I sigh and nod.
Just then Auntie Tilde peeks into the kitchen.
“Auntie!” Cass goes over to buss her cheeks.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Eh. I’m sick.” She coughs into her fist. “I have the black lung.”
Auntie shakes her head, chuckling softly as she takes out a jug from the fridge. “Fresh melon juice, girls? Cass, sweetie, would you pick me some mint leaves from the back?”
Cass loves Auntie’s mini herb garden and hurries out.
I smile tightly at Auntie. “It’s so easy to get her outside.”
She sets the jug of melon ju
ice on the counter. “Much easier than your son, that’s for sure.” She pours me a glass.
I take a gulp. “How much did you hear?”
“Pretty much all of it.” She sighs and eases onto a stool. “So, when are you moving out?”
I sputter, nearly choking on the juice. I set the glass down carefully. “What? Cass and I weren’t talking about me moving out, Auntie, I was just…”
“Thinking about quitting your job,” she nods. “I’m not deaf, dear, I heard.”
I shrink back in my seat. Auntie Tilde’s got her prosecutor-going-for-the-kill face on, and it’s scaring me.
“Well? Weren’t you thinking that?”
“I’m…yes, I’m considering it,” I say in a small voice.
She shakes her head. “Then start considering moving back to your mother’s house if you resign from Star Contact.”
I gasp. “Auntie Tilde! You wouldn’t.”
“Why not? It’s my house.”
I peer at her closely. “What’s going on, Auntie? Is this really you? Is Ma having some sort of astral projection and is currently possessing you right now?”
“You think your mother has the market for ultimatums cornered, but you’re talking to the woman who separated from your Uncle Harold. And kept this house. With a four-year-old boy. In 1980, when such things weren’t done. So I’ll thank you to keep that sarcastic tone for arguments between you and my pushover sister, my dear.”
I hang my head, chastised. But I can’t help but feel a smile tug on the corners of my mouth. I’ve never heard anyone call my mother a pushover, but if anyone could, it would be my aunt. Logical and smart where my mother tended to have emotional explosions, Auntie Tilde was right. I always told her she had ovaries of steel.
“I know why you’re thinking of running,” she says, in a softer tone. “I’ve been there. You know I have.”
I nod, still unable to meet her eye.
“I’m sure your mother has told you what a scandal I caused when I left your Uncle Harold, and I’ve told you the story many times myself. But what I don’t think I’ve been able to fully explain was how it was a terrible struggle for me to come to my decision.” Her voice turns quiet, reflective. “Everything I knew, everybody I knew, for that matter, pushed me to stay in a miserable marriage. Your mother being one of the most vocal. I’m sure she thought we could continue commiserating with each other, while she could always play the superior Ate, saying, ‘I told you so, you shouldn’t have gotten pregnant with him so early. Me and my wandering Harold, a counterpoint to her own marriage.”
She sighs, her eyes looking kindly upon me. “Your father, you know, was in Saudi Arabia. He’d only come home once every four years and was practically a stranger to her. So, no. Despite what Marina thinks, I did not come to the decision to end my marriage rashly. For one thing, there is no divorce law in this country, and there was a very real threat of me and Jameson getting kicked out into the streets, destitute. But after months—years—of agonizing, all I knew is that I refused to live any longer with a man whom I knew full well kept a mistress, and flaunted her and his second family too. But I wasn’t going anywhere. So I kicked him out of his own home.” A wry smile plays on her lips, and then it suddenly disappears. “I’m fairly certain my sister hasn’t forgiven me for that, you know.”
“That you left Uncle Harold?”
“That I didn’t stick around and be miserable with her,” she sighs. “Anyway. That’s the story why I won’t let this house go, even if the neighborhood has declined. Even if Jameson can afford to buy me a shiny new condo, or a nicer home in the suburbs. This house,” she looks fondly at her low-ceilinged, dusty, crammed-with-travel-mementoes bungalow, “well. I love it.”
I take her hand in mine and squeeze.
She turns her gaze back to me. “Would you believe that the fact I kept his house was, in most people’s eyes, the bigger sin? By kicking Harold out of his own house, the one he’d bought and paid for, it was as though I’d stripped him of his manliness. What a load of crock!” She takes another long sip of juice. “Obviously, people disapproved of me. For a very long time. They said I was a harpy and a vindictive, bitter woman. They said keeping this house was proof of my pettiness and that was probably why Harold’s eye went wandering.”
“That sucks.” I grasp her hand.
“I know. But you know what happened?” I shake my head. “Time passed. People moved on. They forgot, or their attention was claimed by another ‘scandal’. I lost touch with the most vocal of my critics (except Marina, of course), and made friends with people who didn’t care.” She squeezes my hand back. “The point, Mags, is that life goes on. One cannot make decisions upon the fear of what will be said for a very small fraction of the entire amount of time you spend on this earth.”
“I know that, Auntie.”
“Wait,” she raises her hand. “I’m not finished.”
I shrink back in my seat.
“I know you had very good reasons for resigning from each of the companies you left. However, please consider that your past experiences are different from where you are now. Different situations demand different reactions.”
I nod, and when I look up, the fierce lawyer expression is gone from Auntie Tilde’s face, replaced with her usual kindly smile.
“You’re my favorite niece not because you’re my only one,” she says softly. “You’re my favorite because you have spirit. Anyone who could so consistently defy my overbearing sister and look for her own way has, well…” she looks up thoughtfully. “What’s that thing you say I have?”
I bite down on my smile. “Ovaries of steel.”
She laughs quickly. “We Abarquez women have that, yes. That’s why I like having you around, and Magnus of course is a delight. But if you quit now, Mags...” Suddenly her eyes are shining. “I’ve been waiting for you to find your vocation, for a very long time. Each time you left a job, or quit a thing, I knew, in my heart, that that wasn’t it. But this time…I cannot tell you how your face would light up when you’d talk about your training program, how you could go on for hours about your twenty tips. And I knew it wasn’t just Luke.” She blinks quickly, and a lump forms in my own throat. “If you quit now, I am telling you, it would break my heart, my dear. I wouldn’t be able to take it. Mags…”
“Yes, Auntie?”
“It’s time to stop being afraid.”
She tips her head behind my shoulder. I look back; Cass is leaning against the entryway, a half-smile on her face and a pile of mint in her hands.
“Wash and dump that in here, Cass.” Auntie gets up as Cass takes the jug of juice from the table and adds the mint. Before she leaves, she rubs my cheek.
“Think about it.”
“I will, Auntie.”
She glances at the cuckoo clock. “And go pick up Magnus.”
Cass settles beside me when we hear Auntie’s bedroom door close. “Your aunt, Mags…”
I touch my cheek. “I know. She’s a slayer.”
Cass stirs the juice and pours herself a glass. “Mmmm. So. What are you going to do?”
I get up. Auntie’s right; I better get going if I’m to pick up Magnus on time.
“I don’t know, Cass. I don’t know.”
Chapter 15
“Are you ready?”
Cass is standing outside Conference Room 6, spending her precious 15-minute break with me, standing outside in the hallway as I pace like a crazy person.
“No,” I whisper, and grasp her hands.
“Yeesh, your hands are just like ice!”
“Yeah I know.”
“Who’s in there now?”
“Data analytics.”
“Oooh! Peter?”
I give her an incredulous look. “You like Wally Bayola?”
“Why not?” she thrusts out her chin. “He’s funny.”
“What happened to that Finnish guy you told me about?”
Her eyebrows draw together. “First of all, he’s not F
innish, he’s Filipino, he just moved there after college. Second, I so regret telling you about that. Fucking tequila might as well be truth serum when you’re around.”
“Cass has a guy who got awa-aaay,” I tease in a sing-song voice. “And I thought you were here for me.”
“Don’t be jelly, baby.”
The door opens and Michelle’s head pops out. “Mags? We’re ready for you.”
“Oh lord.”
Cass gives me one last squeeze. “Knock ‘em dead, Mamu.”
I hug her tightly and in the next moment, like some sort of time warp, I’m suddenly in the middle of the conference room, facing the training leads. Thank God there are only four of them now—Tina, Michelle, Chantal and Matt. Behind them are the rest of my wave of trainees.
No Luke, but I’m too nervous to process that now.
“So, Ms. Abarquez,” says Tina, sitting straight in her seat. “What will you present for us today?”
I smile, take a deep breath and center myself. The tips I’d been reading and testing and tweaking over the past three months flash through my head and wash over me like a wave. I have the feeling of diving into the depths of the ocean and emerging soaked with saltwater. And suddenly, the way the silence of the ocean throws the noise above the surface into clear perspective, I come out refreshed, still and calm. My nerves don’t matter; the ‘crowd’ doesn’t matter. I don’t have to work so hard to remember every single tip because I’ve immersed in all of them so deeply for so long, they’ve soaked through my skin.
“Good evening,” I greet the crowd. “Before I dive into our recalibrated Public Speaking course, which we are calling Twenty Tips To Blow Your Audience Away: You’ll Never Guess How Easy It Is!” I pause for the audience’s reaction, which comes as appreciative chuckles, “I’d like to illustrate to you the power and effectiveness of our material.
“I myself am a terrible public speaker.” The audience chuckles again. “When I step up in front of a crowd, even if it’s just three people, I feel like I am being x-rayed. My palms itch, my heart races, my tongue twists and threatens to garble everything I want to say. And that’s still true. But what I’d like to share is how it is possible for people, like me, to work with—not against—our natural nerves and deliver a talk that kicks ass.”