The Boy Who Has No Redemption

by Victoria Quinn

  “How can you make a promise like that?”

  “Because it’s not my time. This is a bump in the road. Nothing more.”

  I wanted to believe her more than anything in the world. I wanted to have her faith. I wanted…to feel better.

  “I know it hurts to see your father like this, but don’t take it personally. He loves you very much. He’s just not himself right now.”

  “I know. I just…” I shook my head and looked down. “Never mind.”

  “Honey.”

  I looked at her again. “I realize that he and I are the same. When he thinks he could lose the most important thing in the world, he doesn’t know what to do, so he crashes. I’m trying to be there for him, but he lashes out at everything I say. His pain entitles him to behave however he wants…with no regard to how it affects the people around him.” The memory hit me hard, unexpectedly, that moment in the stairwell when I turned to Emerson and told her we were done. Hot tears streaked down her cheeks, and she gripped the rail like she could collapse from heartbreak. My memory was phenomenal, but I’d forgotten about that moment until right then…that instant. “I’ve lashed out at people who’ve only tried to help me…and only cared about myself.” I stared at the checkerboard between us, having a moment of self-reflection that made me hate myself with such potency. Shame, guilt, and despair circulated in my veins and made my heart ache.

  Mom stared at me for a long time, as if she thought I might say something else. “Have you tried to talk to her?”

  I lifted my chin at the mention of Emerson, impressed but not surprised that my mother had figured out the person who took the worst of my coldness. “No.” When she’d walked into the warehouse the other day, all I could do was stare at her, see the way she looked at me with utter indifference. Months had passed, but now, it felt like just a week. Like I’d been asleep this entire time, and only now I was wide awake.

  “Maybe you should try.”

  I dropped my chin again. “She hates me.”

  “I doubt that, Derek.”

  “I don’t.” And she should hate me. She absolutely should.

  “I think an apology would go a long way…”

  I lifted my gaze and looked at her again, seeing my mother staring at me with love in her eyes, still loving me despite what I did to the woman she looked at as another daughter. Whether I was right or wrong, my mom was still there. “I don’t think an apology is enough…not for what I did to her.”

  “But it’s a start. And you have to start somewhere.”

  I grabbed a few of the checkers pieces and held them in my hand, my fingers rubbing the grooved edges, feeling the coarseness push back as I touched the plastic material.

  “Let’s not forget how much she loved you. Love is always stronger than hate.”

  I continued to look at the piece in my hand. “Yes…she loved me with her whole heart. She put up with my bullshit every day. She saw the best in me and ignored the worst. She cared about me for me…and no other reason.”

  “Then that’s worth fighting for.”

  “Not if I don’t deserve her,” I whispered. “And I don’t…”

  The rocket program was suspended because I’d turned off my brain to those possibilities the second everything went to shit. I threw in the towel and gave up overnight. A few of my colleagues asked about it, but when their inquiries were met with hostility, they stopped asking. I put them on different projects, told NASA we were no longer partners in this task, and that was it.

  But now, I wondered if I’d given up too easily.

  It was a test launch.

  Not the real thing.

  If I got this design right, there would be an escape route for the astronauts sitting inside, and that was worth fighting for. And with the new interns who would be starting here, I needed them to have every opportunity to learn.

  I worked at my bench in the warehouse when I heard the door close and then her heels start to tap on the floor. It was the end of the day, and Jerome and Pierre had already left. She didn’t stay late anymore, always grabbing dinner for me before she departed.

  Wordlessly, she left the bag on the counter.

  My head was raised, and I stared at her, seeing how long her hair had gotten over the last few months. She was thinner than she used to be too, less curvy, and there was a blankness to her eyes, as if her thoughts were numb and her heart was empty. Her appearance reminded me of myself, actually. “Thanks…” I didn’t know what to say to her, where to even begin, but I knew I had to make an effort. Otherwise, the silence would just continue endlessly. She would no longer put in the work to deal with me, because she’d officially checked out months ago.

  She stilled at my words and looked up to meet my gaze, the surprise in her arched eyebrows, as if she assumed I was incapable of saying anything like that. Her eyes were locked on my face, as if she heard my voice in her head rather than out loud.

  “Thank you for dinner.” I spoke with more confidence than last time, letting my heavy words pierce the silence.

  She dropped her gaze and dismissed my words with indifference. Then she turned around to walk away.

  She hated me. “Emerson?”

  She turned back to me, not even bothering to hide the inconvenience my words caused her, like she had plans for the evening and I was stalling them. One hand moved to her hip, and she regarded me coldly.

  I almost abandoned the attempt because she looked so livid, because this felt so pointless. “I wanted to select the interns with you. Can we do that tomorrow?”

  “Did you look at the papers I sent you?”

  No. I was too busy with my mom. “Yes. We’ll begin the selection process tomorrow.”

  “I already organized the best candidates. It’s your call at this point—”

  “We’ll work on it tomorrow after lunch.” It killed me to watch this scene unfold, to watch the woman who formerly bent over backward to do everything for me do everything possible to avoid me. She literally wanted nothing to do with me.

  She turned away and continued walking. “Whatever.”

  It was a day I would normally be home with my mom, but I came to the office so I would have a chance to talk to Emerson. Now, I was only coming to the office two days a week, but she never asked me about it. So she either didn’t notice I was gone or just didn’t give a damn.

  Both were bad.

  After she dropped off lunch, she headed back to the corporate office instead of staying in the warehouse. She either forgot about our meeting or was hoping to get out of it. Just being in the same room with me was a challenge—and not because she missed me, but because she couldn’t stand me.

  How did I let this happen?

  How did I let the one person who really loved me hate me?

  After lunch, I drove the golf cart to the main building and made the long walk to the office I never used. I was still her boss, so I could demand her to come to me, but I felt like a dick asking her to do anything ever again.

  I could see her through the glass doors. She sat at the desk that belonged to me and looked at her computer, like she was going through emails. A salad sat in front of her, partially eaten.

  I inhaled a deep breath then stepped inside, the folder of candidates tucked under my arm.

  Her eyes shifted to me, visibly annoyed.

  I lowered myself into the chair that faced her desk, my desk, and opened the folder.

  She gave a sigh she didn’t bother to hide before she opened a drawer and pulled out her copies of the candidates. “We can take up to forty people, but we had 11,000 submissions. I narrowed down the choices to the stack you have now, but there’s not much more selecting that I can do at this point. They’re all qualified, all interesting, all have their hearts in the right place.”

  I started to flip through them, only partially paying attention to what I was reading. I tried to think of something I could say to Emerson, a segue into what I truly wanted to discuss, an opening to pitch my apology…a
nd hope that she knew I meant it.

  “Every woman and person of color who applied is in that first stack, so they got priority over other candidates who were equally qualified.”

  I continued to flip and glance. “It definitely gives them an edge, but I’m not going to take them solely based on that. Thirty percent of applicants should be from that pile, but I also want everyone to have equal opportunity.”

  With her cheek propped against her palm, her head was bent to flip through the pages and scan the submissions. She had a slouched posture, like she couldn’t care less about her presentation or her poise.

  She didn’t give a damn about anything.

  I seized the opportunity to stare at her, to stop flipping the pages and take the time to study her face, to see her blue eyes in that beautiful face, the full lips I used to kiss every single day. The last few months had been a blur of women, booze, parties…darkness. But that fog had lifted, and I could see clearly once more, see the one person who actually meant something to me. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” She kept flipping, only half listening to me, not taking me seriously.

  “Emerson.” I cleared my throat, wanting her attention, wanting her to know my deep sincerity.

  She lifted her chin and looked at me, still cold, like she expected me to apologize for taking too long with the submissions or something casual. The last thing she expected was a real apology…for what I’d done.

  I rolled the papers in my hand as I held her gaze, my heart beating so fast, my knuckles sore because I gripped the stack of papers so tightly. Everything hit me hard, flashbacks of my behavior, of the way I dumped her in the stairwell, of the way I ignored her when she tried to talk to me again, of every single interaction when I barely gave her the time of day. I remembered the way Lizzie spoke to me on the phone, how shitty their Christmas had been…because of me. “I’m sorry…for the way I treated you.”

  When she understood what was happening, her eyes gradually fell, at first in confusion…and then disappointment. Her body slowly tightened, and her breathing changed, like she was more offended than she’d been before. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry for…everything. I’m sorry about the stairwell, the way I’ve treated you for the last three months, for—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” She cocked her head to the side, looking furious, and then she released a maniacal laugh, like this was somehow funny. “This has to be a fucking joke. Please tell me this is a joke. You’re apologizing to me…three goddamn months after everything happened?”

  This was going way worse than I ever imagined. A part of me hoped that the Emerson I knew was still in there, that she would extend her compassion toward me, even though I didn’t deserve it.

  “Asshole.” She snapped her fingers to get my attention even though I was staring at her. “I don’t need your apology. I’m over it, Derek. Soooo fucking over it. You can take your apology and shove it up your ass.” She dropped her chin and turned back to the candidates like nothing happened.

  “Emerson, I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

  Now her voice was quiet, like her outburst was over. “Okay.” She flipped the page and kept reading.

  “It hit me hard recently…that I treated you so terribly, and I’m so sorry—”

  “It’s fine, Derek.” She raised her chin and looked at me. “Let’s just move on.”

  My heart sank into my stomach because it wasn’t fine. Nowhere near it. She just…didn’t care.

  She turned the page and kept reading. “Alessandra Martinez is a great candidate. Her grades are pretty good, and she’s the first person in her family to go to college. Her parents came from Cuba. She has a really interesting backstory.”

  I stared at her, my heart cracking like frozen glass. “Please…”

  She lifted her chin again and looked at me, her eyes narrowed. “Please what?”

  I threw the papers on the desk. “I need you to know how sorry I am. I need you to know how much I regret what I did. I need you to know…I’m not that person anymore. I treated you so terribly, and it’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life—”

  She abruptly stood up and placed her hands on the desk. “We’re really going to do this? Fine. Derek, I put everything on the line for you, completely trusted you, gave you my entire heart, and you fucking dropped me the second things got difficult. You hurt me, you hurt my daughter, and our world came crashing down. You think an apology is going to make any kind of difference after that?”

  I slowly rose to my feet, the adrenaline making the blood pound in my ears. I’d provoked her, and even though it didn’t go the way I wanted, I had to keep hoping for a change. “Maybe it would…if you knew how sorry I was—”

  “I don’t care how sorry you are. You have no idea what your abandonment did to us. You have no idea the damage you caused. And you have no idea because I haven’t heard from you in three months. You dumped me because someone hurt you, someone violated your trust, and that’s fine. But you know what? You turned around and did that to me.” She pointed into her chest. “Hurt people hurt people. And that’s exactly what you did. Now, I’ll never trust a man again. I’ll never recover from this heartbreak. Because I completely, implicitly, unquestionably trusted you without reservation—and I can’t do that ever again.”

  I closed my eyes briefly because that made me choke up, made me sick.

  “Tabitha and Kevin ruined you. Well, now you’ve ruined me. Congratu-fucking-lations.”

  My eyes watered because I hated myself more than I ever had.

  “I dragged my feet telling Lizzie what happened with us because I knew she’d be heartbroken, and that bit me in the ass because we were shopping for Christmas presents for my parents and she grabbed a mug that said Best Teacher on it and said she was going to get it for you. And I couldn’t even bring myself to tell her… I just broke down…in the middle of a department store…and sobbed.” She raised her voice, her eyes filling with angry tears. “I literally fell to my knees and sobbed because I was so devastated. I’ve kept my shit together in front of my daughter since she was fucking born, and all that went to shit because of you. Now my daughter has to have that memory in her mind forever, even after I’m dead. Now Lizzie will probably be unable to have a healthy romantic relationship because she’s so disturbed by what she witnessed. I’m supposed to be a role model to her, and now I’ve written the playbook for what not to do with a guy. So, thank you for that. Fucking thank you.”

  The moisture in my eyes spilled over and dripped down my cheeks, picturing that scene unfolding like I was there, witnessing it with my own eyes, abandoning the two girls that I loved…at Christmas.

  “Your parents came over the day before Christmas Eve.”

  I inhaled a deep breath and sniffled, stopping myself from breaking into soul-crushing sobs, but I couldn’t stop the quiet tears.

  Her eyes remained wet and shiny, and the ferocity in her voice made her spit fly out across the desk. “I bet they didn’t tell you that. They came over, brought us Christmas presents, made us hot cocoa, and spent the evening with us…like we were family. Your parents stepped up because you chose to fucking abandon us.”

  I felt so much shame that I dropped my gaze.

  “No, asshole. You wanted to do this, so you’re going to look at me and listen to every damn word I have to say.”

  I inhaled a deep breath and steadied the tears momentarily before I looked at her again.

  She slammed her hand into her chest because she was so angry that she didn’t know what to do with herself. “They were there for me when you weren’t. They were there for my daughter when you weren’t. When Lizzie went to bed, they talked me through it, did their best to make me feel better. They said they would talk to you. And you know what I said? You’re a lost cause. A lost fucking cause. You will never change, Derek. You come in here like you’ve just woken up after a three-month nap, acting like a human being again, but the second shit hits the fan,
you’ll go right back to being a cruel, ruthless son of a bitch. Your apology means literally nothing to me because it’s conditional—it can change at a moment’s notice. Your rover tips over and gets stuck in a ditch? We’re over. You run into Kevin at the gym? It’s back to feeling up Fleur at the clubs.” She threw her arms up. “And yes, I know all about that, Derek, because it’s all over the internet. Our deep relationship meant absolutely nothing to you because you dumped me and then went right back to your models, to the woman who had no respect for you, who slapped you because she didn’t get her way. You left me…for that. And it was just a few weeks after we broke up, but you were probably fucking them long before that. Because I meant nothing to you. Nothing. Nada.”

  My lips trembled because I could barely keep a straight face, my lips soaked with salt, droplets on the floor between my shoes. Hearing her pain, hearing a truthful account of my behavior…was fucking sickening.

  That was me—I did all of those things.

  The self-loathing made my knees go weak, and I fell back into the chair, my forearms on my knees, my breathing shallow and uneven, the weight of my actions and the consequences crushing my lungs so I could barely draw breath.

  “I’ve been applying to every job on the market with a remotely similar income, and I keep losing the position to other people, but I will find something. And if I don’t, I’ll settle for something less. Because there’s not enough money in the world to make me work here—with you.”

  I closed my eyes and wished I could run away, silence her words, turn off the pain.

  “I used to get so much personal satisfaction out of my job, but now I hate it. Even if I don’t have to see you, I hate it. It’s unbearable to work for someone you literally have no respect for.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at her again.

  She made a circle with her fingers as she looked at me. “Zero. Nada. Zip.”