by Nella Tyler
“Thank God,” I said, relieved to see a friendly face. Ina stood in front of the coffee bar, stirring her drink with a red stirring stick. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”
She offered me a faint smile in return, something was definitely dampening her mood. Even while the rest of us buckled under pressure, she always had this ability to remain above it all like a cloud of joy. Something was different. Something was off.
“I don’t know what you’re doing girl.” She scooped her hot cup of coffee into her hand and turned to me. “But whatever it is, you’ve got to stop.”
“I… I don’t know what you mean.”
She stepped past me and craned her head around the corner of the room to make sure nobody was around before pulling back and shaking her head gently. “Look, I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong, but people are talking.”
“People are always talking,” I said, and for whatever reason, I assumed she was talking about my pregnancy, but that’s not anything anyone should be talking about since nobody was supposed to know. “And I have bigger fish to fry than idle gossip.”
“This isn’t gossip,” she said and then leaned in close. “There’s been talk about letting you go.”
“What?” I shrieked.
She moved with a lightning quick pace to clasp her free hand over my mouth. “I don’t know why, but I overheard Fred and his wench talking with some human resources guy, and all I know is that for whatever reason, you’re on the chopping block, so whatever you’re doing, you need to stop.”
“This is insane.” I shook my head and smacked my lips together, trying to contain the rage that raced through my veins. I balled one hand into a fist. “I swear to God—”
“I didn’t say anything to you.”
“You know what?” I threw both my hands up in the air and cocked a grin. Being with the boss meant that I had more protection than the average employee. “Caleb would never allow that.”
She frowned. “Caleb doesn’t get involved in lower-level stuff. He wouldn’t know until it was too late, because once those papers are signed, it’s game over.”
I chewed into my lip contemplatively. Something had to be done about this. “I don’t know what to do, Ina.”
“I love you like a sister,” she said as she passed me and stepped out into the hallway. “The only thing you can do is stop whatever you’re doing and do exactly what they tell you to do. It might not be fair, but this is business.”
# # #
I was dealing with a whole host of feelings compounded by my pregnancy. The stress threatened to drag me to the ground into emotional quicksand, but I fought the urge to give up by deciding to dig even deeper, even harder. Nobody was going to threaten my livelihood like that.
There was this feeling in my gut that Caleb was leaning more and more towards wanting to build something with me, and that meant that he was most likely going to be my man. And certainly, he was at least going to be my baby daddy. There was no way I was letting him go down without a fight, even if it meant sacrificing an amazing job.
I placed my hot cup of coffee on the corner of my desk and flipped open a folder, prepared to dive back into work. Unfortunately, asshole number three—Lance—quickly approached and curled his finger at me, gesturing for me to follow.
Knowing that some assholes wanted me long gone, I wasted no time in obliging his request, although I wasn’t happy about it. I reached for my coffee as I climbed to my feet and followed him down a long corridor to his office.
“What’s this about, Lance? I’m wading in a never-ending pile of work as it is.”
“We’re all overwhelmed, but you’re on the marketing project and our deadline is getting tighter and tighter and we’re not making much progress.”
There are more important things to worry about, is what I wanted to say. But I knew that if Tara and Fred were antagonized by continued digging, then Lance most likely would have been doubly pissed.
“How long is this going to take?” I questioned as he propped his office door open for me. “I really need to get back to work.”
“Life is about priorities, Lindsay,” he replied as he took a seat behind his desk and I followed suit, taking a seat in the chair in front of the desk. “And whatever you’re working on, it can be delegated to someone else. I picked you for this project for a reason.”
I’m not exactly sure that’s how that went down, but I didn’t protest. He dropped a stack of folders onto the desk in front of me as he began cycling through a dense stack of papers too.
“What is this?” I questioned, unable to hide the fact that I was annoyed any longer.
He peered up to me for a brief second. “It’s market research.”
“This is so out of my purview.” I shook my head. “This isn’t a job for accounting.”
“It’s a job for whoever I say it’s for, and unfortunately, the majority of the team is too busy trying to save Caleb’s ass.”
Which is exactly what I should be doing, I wanted to say to him, but again kept it to myself. There was no use in trying to get out of it, so I decided to work as fast and as hard as I could so I could get back to doing the work that I actually needed to be doing.
And as the hours blurred into each other and I found myself trapped in the confines of Lance’s office with an ending nowhere in sight, I grew more and more tired. Finally, sometime around six, when I had finished reading all the material and sorted the successful and useful research studies into one pile and the useless, non-pertinent studies into another, I was beat and ready to go home.
“Well,” I sighed, “this was fun.”
# # #
With no more energy or brainpower to harvest, I had to make the difficult decision to go home to get some rest. Slowly, I inched away from Lance’s office and headed down the hall to Caleb’s.
Instead of finding an open office door, I found a closed one. I knocked on the door three times before opening it to find nobody inside. He had already checked out for the day.
Checked out without so much as a word to me.
Fucking awesome.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Caleb
Jessie sat across from me at the impossibly large dining room of my father’s estate. There was enough room for at least sixteen people to sit comfortably, not that I believed my father ever had enough guests over to fill the entirety of the antique piece of furniture. It was characteristic of who he was as a person—completely over the top.
My father was supposed to have dinner with Jessie, but as usual, he was a no show. It wasn’t always like that when I was younger, but as my father grew older, he became more and more distanced from his family and more integrated with the life of an elderly playboy.
I had meant to say goodbye to Lindsay, to let her know about my whereabouts, but when I sneaked past Lance’s office, I could clearly see she was knee-deep in a conversation with Lance and I didn’t want to interrupt her. Still, my phone was rested on the table, albeit on silent. I waited for her to call or text, for my phone to light up, but it never did.
I twirled my fork in the mound of spaghetti atop my plate. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was certainly one of my specialties. More importantly, it was Jessie’s absolute favorite.
“I wish you would move back in,” Jessie said low and under his breath. I imagined that he got plenty lonely in this huge house by himself. “It’s boring without you here.”
“Yeah?” I chuckled and glanced at him. “I’ve been gone for a while. I can’t even believe you’d remember what life was like with me living here.”
“I just know things, you know?”
“Like what?” I chewed on a mouthful of spaghetti as I began to twirl my fork into the stringy mess again.
“Just that I wouldn’t be so damn bored all the time.”
“You know we talked about this, right? Language, I mean.” I propped my fork on the edge of my plate as he clumsily fed himself across the table. “But if y
ou can keep a secret, then I’ll let it slide.”
“Sure thing,” he said with his mouth full of spaghetti. “What did you do?”
The fact that his mind instantly went there made me wonder what he thought of me. Nevermind that, there was something I needed to tell somebody, and despite his age, I just about trusted him more than anybody else on the planet. “I’m going to be a daddy.”
He threw one fist against his chest and began to choke. Soon enough, as he fought to breathe, he was spitting his food back out onto the plate. “The hell?”
There was that language again, but I had promised to let it slide. “And I know you’re too young for all this, but there’s this girl—”
“Obviously.” He shook his head. “It’s not like you can knock up some dude or something.”
“She’s not exactly my girlfriend.”
Jessie pursed his lips and I could tell he was resisting the urge to be a judgmental weasel about the entire thing. "You know you’re going to have to marry her.”
“Really now?” I chuckled again as I reached for my glass of red wine. Jessie did the same across the way, although his glass was filled with nothing more than sparkling grape juice. “It’s not that simple.”
“You’re going to have to make it that simple.” He took a sip of his juice. “It’s about doing the right thing and if you love her—”
“That’s just it.” I shrugged and sighed. “I’m not sure where we stand with each other.”
“I can’t believe I’m giving you advice,” he said through a grin. “Oh, how the tables have turned.”
“Don’t gloat,” I warned him. “And just remember that I’m still your big brother.”
“I can’t tell you what to do, but I think you know what you should do.” He grimaced and stuck his fork in his spaghetti. “It’s as simple as that. So do it, whatever it is.”
I didn’t respond verbally, only with a slight nod as I contemplated his advice. Fucking Christ, he was more than right. Somehow that little nugget had so much wisdom considering his age, and I’m not going to lie, I took a lot of credit for that.
# # #
After dinner, the mother of one of Jessie’s friends stopped by to pick him up for the weekend. It made me happy that he was going to be able to spend some time with other people, especially kids his own age.
I sat in the rocking chair on the back porch overlooking a vast and empty green space where the sun crested against a lake in the near distance. I picked up my phone and dialed Lindsay’s number but was met instantly with her voicemail. I didn’t even consider leaving a message.
The back door—one of many in my father’s sprawling mansion—creaked open, and as I craned my head over one shoulder, I saw my father standing outside the door with two bottles of beer in his hand. He passed me one as he took a seat in the rocking chair beside me.
“You missed dinner,” I said as I popped the cap off the bottle. “It’s not fair to him, you know?”
“Life’s not exactly fair,” he pointed out before taking a swig of beer. “I do the best I can.”
“It’s not enough sometimes. You’re supposed to be a father.”
“Are you insulting me in my own home?” He chuckled and shook his head gently. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“I’m just saying it’s not normal or productive for that kid to spend so much time alone.”
He reached across the short distance between us and leveled one palm on my shoulder. “Then it’s great that he has someone like you watching after him.”
I cocked my head slightly towards him with a frown. “I’m going to be a father, Dad.”
“Someday, you will and then you’ll—”
“Someday soon,” I corrected him.
He locked his eyes with mine before bumping a fist against my chest. “You sly little fox.”
I pursed my lips. “Please don’t make light of this. God knows I don’t have that luxury.”
“I assume you’re not with this woman, right?” He eyed me for a moment longer before clearing his throat and taking a long gulp of beer. He turned away from me. “You know what you have to do then.”
“I’m torn between a thousand different scenarios.”
“None of them are any good… not with your current predicament.” And then he turned to me. “She has to abort this baby. Period.”
“What?” I leaped from my chair. “Why the hell would you just jump straight to that, when two seconds ago you were calling me a sly fox?”
“Take a look around,” his voice echoed against the porch. “Do you want to be like me?”
“That’s kind of the point. You’re crazy if you think aborting this baby is even an option.”
“She works for you, doesn’t she?” He shook his head with an apathetic grin. “That’s the way this always goes. It will not and cannot end well. Assuming you stay out of prison, you might just end up going down anyways. Abort the baby.”
“You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?” I grabbed my bottle of beer by the neck and threw it against the other side of the porch, where it shattered into a thousand sharp pieces. I eyed him for a moment longer before ripping the screen door open, only to be confronted by his shadow as he stood up to give chase. I twisted back on my feet to face him. “I’m not you, Dad. I’m not going to just run when things get hard. I’m going to help her take care of it, help her raise him or her. And her. If, like you said, I don’t go to jail.”
He just stood there shaking his head. There was anger, or maybe it was resentment, hiding behind his eyes. It’s not a look I envied seeing on my father even if he had disappointed me numerous times in our often tumultuous relationship.
“You’re going to find out, sometime soon, I’d wager, why I do and did the things I did, and you’re going to remember this moment.” He nodded at me and finished off his beer. “And you’re going to know I was right.”
“I told you.” I shrugged. “I’m not like you. I can’t be like you.”
And then I made my way inside and out the front door in a hurry.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Lindsay
Caleb had called a total of four times over the short weekend and I ignored every single one of his calls. I had needed time and space to figure things out. I knew that he was calling to inquire if I had found information on the tax issue, which I had and was preparing all the documents and proof that Caleb would need.
If he was calling about everything else? I wasn’t sure I could force him or myself into a relationship just because we had a kid on the way. Just because I was pregnant, that didn’t mean that I was in love, or that he loved me, or that we loved each other. That had to come independent of the baby that was growing inside of me.
I just needed to breathe. I just needed to think.
I was waiting impatiently in Lance’s office as he had requested that I meet him there, and just when I was prepared to get up and walk out, he came rushing in and hooked a finger for me to follow him.
I did as instructed after swinging my purse over my shoulder and following him down the long corridor until we came to the room Caleb had fucked me in all those weeks prior. It was a sobering thought as we walked into the empty space, that this was the very room my future child was conceived in. Not that he or she would ever get to hear about that story. I realized then and there that I would most likely have to lie to my child if the topic ever came up.
Lance closed the door behind us, and as I took a seat, he paced to the front of the room where a projector was already painting a white screen with blue light. He slid his finger across his phone and his presentation began without so much of a conversation between us.
The screen went black for a few seconds. “Just real quick, I need your initial reaction before I show the rest of the team.”
Why do you care what I have to think? I thought to myself. Certainly, there were people far more involved in the process than I was. After all, my only job within the scope of the projec
t was to outline potential financial constraints—of which there were plenty.
The presentation as dull, pointless, and was a hard sell from the beginning, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. The marketing ploy had no business within the structure of M&D, and nobody had the balls to tell him that.
I had balls that day. Maybe I was being bitchy for no reason, but I was certainly feeling some type of way. All of my problems were compounding on top of each other and I couldn’t help but to be blunt when he asked, “What do you think?”
“I think it fucking sucks.” I glared at him, shooting him a death stare. “I honest-to-God hate it and I think the entire project needs scrapped, if I’m being honest.”
He arched a brow at me, furious. “Excuse me?”
“It has absolutely nothing to do with the company. If we were selling free apps that relied on selling ad space, it’d be useful, but we don’t. Our apps are designed from the ground up to be engaged with, and your idea for ads is far from revolutionary. I honestly can’t think of an idea that’d be quicker to drive away potential customers than to bombard them with ads as if we were selling apps that relied on spam revenue.” Whew, that was a mouthful. I took a deep breath and then pursed my lips slightly, feeling a little bit guilty. It had to be the hormones, I told myself because there was no other reason I’d ever feel guilt for knocking Lance down a peg or two.
“Heh.” He scratched at the back of his head, but he couldn’t hide how annoyed he was. It was written all over his face as he shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a moronic accountant, not some genius marketing guru.”
I swallowed a nervous lump in my throat, realizing for the first time that I had probably went too far. What was he going to do? Fire me? “I’m… I’m sorry,” I said lowly, offering him a somewhat sincere apology.