by Kris Ripper
“It was. It was. But, clichéd as it is, it was also, in a way, the thing that was going to happen eventually, and I’m grateful that it wasn’t worse than it was. It could have been... I’d been worried that they might...” He shook his head, sipping his coffee. “Anyway, I’d done a lot of research and I already had plenty of contacts so I managed to get them a temporary space in a building where they’re on a waiting list for an apartment.”
“That’s good. I mean, obviously it’s also really hard, but I’m glad they’re safe at least.”
“Me too. And it means I’ll probably need to go back to a more lucrative, shall we say, form of employment. But at least I won’t spend my sixteen-hour days worried they’re going to burn the house down while I’m at work.”
“Oh.” Jack was leaving. This was it no matter what. God, why was that so sad? We’d only been able to tolerate each other for the last few weeks! I was not going to cry over Jack leaving the company I didn’t even work for. Dammit.
He grabbed a couple of high-quality napkins and passed them to me.
“Sorry, sorry, it’s not you, it’s everything.”
“I wasn’t under the impression my departure was the thing breaking your heart.”
“I’m sorry.” I blew my nose and dabbed at my eyes. “But it is kind of sad. I got used to working with you.”
“I got used to working with you too. Kid.” He smiled.
“You were such a jerk.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. The job felt like charity and instead of handling it with grace, I was a total dick. But you ended up being a pretty good supervisor. Though I’ve needed to ask you since we met—what’s up with the spreadsheet?”
“What? It’s a good spreadsheet!”
“Yeah, but most people use apps or email or something.”
“I don’t have the time to learn all that stuff when my list works really well. Don’t talk shit about my spreadsheet, man.”
He raised his coffee cup. “To your spreadsheet, the seed of all we see before us.”
“To my spreadsheet.” I clunked cardboard with him. “We should probably get going.”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“It’s only what you once did for me.”
So in Jack’s mind, this was repayment for a coffee already offered in a moment of need. Maybe that meant it wasn’t a debt. Or maybe it didn’t matter.
We got to work, carefully crafting the best, most seamless and professional Spring Fling experience the board had ever seen. The food and drinks were on point, the goody bags were perfectly arranged (or sorry, the complimentary gift bags of branded junk because apparently if you’re on the board of a big company you’re too cheap to buy your own pens and USB sticks), the chairs were squared off to the table.
And, most importantly, the Fling bricks were in place. The symbols of so much strife, yet here they were, neatly positioned to the side of each seat, ready to be tossed into various garbage cans, filing cabinets, and piles of miscellaneous paperwork. A destiny hardly fitting to things we’d worked so hard on, but it was their fate.
* * *
Jack and I worked the next few hours making sure everything was going smoothly, and overall, everything had. We were just packing up when Deb walked into the conference room.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Jack said to her as he erased the freestanding whiteboard we’d borrowed from the hotel.
“I have a thing. Can you two take a ten-minute not-break or will you be over hours for the day?”
I looked at my phone while Jack looked at his watch. “We only took half an hour for lunch,” I said.
“And we probably only have another twenty minutes here, so we can take ten if you want.”
She gestured to the table. “Have a seat.”
“Oh boy.” I looked at him. “I feel like we’re about to get in trouble.”
“Deny everything.”
Deb smiled at both of us. “I’ve heard rave reviews about the event all day from people not inclined to issue compliments where none are warranted. You reflected well on the company, and within the company you reflected well on me. So thank you, personally, for making me look like a genius for throwing together a couple of temporary employees on an important job.”
Jack shook his head. “Why did you do that? You said you’d tell me if we pulled it off.”
“I was proving a point to my boss, who fears change, and isn’t comfortable when ‘underlings’—” air quotes “—take initiative. He told me he’d believe it if a couple of newcomers could take on the Fling and not crash and burn.”
“And you...” I stared at her, horror filling my veins. “You gave that job to us? Oh my god. We could have fucked it up! Like really easily! The bookbinding thing worked out, but what if it hadn’t, oh my god, I can’t breathe.”
“You were great.”
Jack reached out to awkwardly pat my shoulder. “Declan’s having kind of a day. You should hire him, by the way. As a supervisor. I can vouch for his organization skills, big picture thinking, and compassion.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, not looking at either of them.
“Oh, I’ve tried. Three times. But Declan will not be had.”
“Try, try again. Especially since you can’t have me.”
“So you decided.”
I found myself sad all over again that Jack would no longer be working for...the company I didn’t technically work for.
“It makes the most sense. I want the grandparents to be comfortable, in the best place I can afford. And I can afford a lot more when I’m doing other things.”
Deb nodded and held out her hand, which he shook. “We figured this would only be a stopgap for you, but I’m glad to have had you even for a short time.”
“Me too,” I said. “Like, not at first, but now I might even miss you.”
He laughed. “Don’t go too far out of your way to compliment me, it might go to my head.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
Deb held her hand out to me too. “You excelled, as I was sure you would.”
“Thanks. I thought you were pretty much nuts to give me this assignment, FYI.”
“Maybe I was. The risk paid off, though.”
We needed to get back to packing up. Deb probably needed to get back to her real job.
I looked up at her, stomach feeling weirdly hollow. “Do you still want to hire me?”
“In a hot second.”
“For what?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot, but I think your job duties would be as vague as I could make them, that way I could still send you around to do whatever needed doing. One of your gifts is quickly getting to know the people you’re working with, which makes your past experience filling positions in multiple departments invaluable.” She sat back, never breaking eye contact. “I have employees who are so localized to their department that they never even meet the people working next door. You bridge that, and you do it with style. I’d like to train more roving contact people, Declan. You could help.”
I swallowed. It sounded...kind of amazing. I wouldn’t be locked down to a desk doing one thing every day forever. And I’d get to keep working with Deb. Maybe I’d get to lobby for space in the fish bowl, which I’d grown fond of.
“You can take the weekend to think about it.”
“I’m in. If you want me.”
Jack clapped. “Good answer. I mean, you’re no me, but you’ll do.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Thanks a lot.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Deb seemed genuinely thrilled. “Now, that was unexpected. I’m pleased. Can I send the paperwork to the temp agency on Monday?”
Ugh, had I really thought about this? Was it really w
hat I wanted? But what the hell did I know about what I wanted, anyway? If I hated it, I could always quit and go back to temping. And there was even a chance that I’d...like it. That being employed full-time in one job might, like, suit me. I was still a little freaked out. But also a little excited.
“Monday, okay. That sounds good. Um. Now, we should probably get back to cleaning up or we’ll be in OT.”
“That’s the attitude I want in my staff,” she teased. “I’m really happy you’re taking the job.”
“I... I think I am too.”
She took my hand, not to shake it this time, exactly. But to squeeze it. “If you start getting restless, talk to me before you make any big decisions. There are a lot of different ways you can fit in here, and we might not nail the right one on the first try, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Deb.”
“Oh, thank you. This is the cherry on top of a damn good workday. I’ll see you next week.”
We waved as she went out.
Jack turned to me, watching as I went back to carelessly shoving goody bags in a box.
“What?” I demanded after a full minute.
“Oh nothing. Only you did something that scared you just then. So that’s interesting.”
“I’m not scared.” Obviously I was, but I wasn’t going to admit it to Smug Jack.
“Keep telling yourself that, junior.”
I pointed at him. “I am your supervisor, and you will treat me with the respect I deserve.” Then, because it sounded hilarious coming from me, I giggled. “Oh wow, I should talk like that all the time. Insta-mood lifter.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure you pulled that off, better luck next time.”
We bickered for fun until we finished everything, which I packed into my car to take back Monday morning since we’d run out of time. Before we said goodbye we exchanged phone numbers. I had no idea if I’d ever actually text Jack, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t text me, but still, I was glad we could if we wanted to.
Then I went home. Alone. To my tiny little unit. I let Toby come in and sit on my bed with me while I entered into a Netflix fugue. One of us finished off a bag of Ruffles, I can’t say for certain who it was. I did make sure he didn’t eat any of the pint of ice cream I’d picked up on the way home, though. Dairy isn’t good for Toby.
A tub of ice cream and a bag of potato chips isn’t all that good for me, but I told myself it was probably better than nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The thing I wanted to happen: secure in the knowledge that I’d done the right thing, I would feel very sad for a few days, then moderately sad for maybe a week, then satisfied that the worst was past, after which I wouldn’t have to feel sad at all.
The thing that happened in reality: the sadness of missing Sidney—of having hurt them and then not being able to talk to them about it—deepened over time until it became something closer to despondency. I didn’t want to do anything. I could hole up in my in-law unit for a little while, but Mason kept texting, then the girls, then Oscar, with Mason never really letting up.
I said I was sick. I said I had the flu. I said maybe I was getting better but I was still rundown and needed to rest. I skipped drinks. Twice.
I couldn’t face them. Not after they’d been so happy for me. For us. Not after I’d screwed up so spectacularly when trying not to screw up worse. Had Sidney needed to cancel the show? The more I replayed it all in my head, the less sense it made. Why had I run? Sidney was logical. If I’d just explained that I couldn’t do this, that it wasn’t in me, they would have understood. Probably.
Except whenever I started thinking about that, I remembered how I’d barely been able to breathe by the time I got to my car, and I’d cried all the way home, and for most of that night, and...
But I didn’t want to think about all that, so I tried not to.
I cleaned up the fish bowl, coiling the cords for the laptops Jack and I had used, making neat piles of things that should probably be carted away, like the trash can and the file cabinet. When Deb found me doing all that she told me to set it back up again; the fish bowl would be my base of operations until she decided where to put me.
She’d lowered her voice and added that since no one used the fish bowl, no one technically knew I was there, which might come in useful “down the line.”
I had no real idea what that meant, but one side effect of misery was that I didn’t really care. I liked the fish bowl. I felt comfortable there. I plugged my laptop back in and rearranged things so I had a sort of desk area facing the window.
In better days I would have taken a picture and posted it on Instagram with a trending hashtag about my new office. Instead I thought about doing that and realized it was way too much work.
For stretches here and there I wasn’t thinking about it. Us. Sidney and me. I got through Monday, then Tuesday, reporting to Deb in the morning, doing whatever she assigned me to do. I reorganized a storage room for all of Wednesday and most of Thursday. On Friday I covered a desk for someone who’d gone home sick in Deb’s department, which meant she got to show me a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have normally seen about her job.
When I accused her of grooming me to be her second in command she only winked and I acknowledged to myself that if I could feel happy, this would have made me feel happy.
Mostly I just felt tired. And still sad. I didn’t know why I couldn’t shake the sadness. It didn’t seem like Sidney and I had known each other long enough for me to be this sad. And we’d only been officially dating for a couple of weeks. Hardly any time at all, right? We’d barely scratched the surface of friendship, of...of love.
God, it was just...really sad, though. Seen from any angle, seen in a microscope, seen from space...really, really sad.
I thought my weak flu excuse had held up pretty well until Mia and Mason showed up at my house Saturday morning, calling my phone over and over from the driveway so I’d come let them into the yard.
“You look like shit.” Mason’s first words to me.
“Honey.” Mia paused. “He’s right. You look terrible.”
“Wow, thanks for coming over. You can go home now.”
They barged right in.
Mia made a press of coffee and poked through my cabinets while Mason disgustedly began shoving my dirty clothes (now making up an archaeological record of depression on my floor) into a hamper.
And I sat. On my bed. Watching them. And, after a few minutes, crying again. It was the kind of ugly crying that came with a sort of vague sense of relief, like popping a massive pimple. It was gross and it was messy, but it also felt inevitable and now, finally, it was happening.
“I fucked up,” I babbled through my tears. “I fucked up so so much.”
They came to sit with me, one of them on each side, coffee and laundry forgotten.
“Baby, you’re wrecked.” Mase brushed back my hair, his touch familiar and comforting. “What the hell happened? One minute you were happy and the next you aren’t on The Love Study and Sidney looks shell-shocked and neither of you show up for drinks.”
“Everything seemed fine at the wedding,” Mia offered. “Actually, I have no idea. I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
I leaned into her. “It was your wedding, that’s all you were supposed to be doing.”
Her arm wrapped around me. “So everything wasn’t fine? I know it’s not fine now because Sidney looks—well, better than you do, but not great.”
“You’ve seen them? I mean obviously you’ve seen them. Are they okay? How are they?” I did not demand to know if they’d asked about me because they wouldn’t have. Boundaries and stuff.
Mia gave me a shoulder squeeze. “They’re not great, like I said. But how are you?”
“I don’t know. I thought I was fine, but then I started feeling bad, and I kept thinking about
how I can’t do romance, everyone knows I can’t, and how Sidney did the sweetest thing for Valentine’s, they set up my perfect date, and I couldn’t get into it at all, and it felt so empty, but they were into it, and maybe the problem was me like Mase said, and—”
“Hold up, hold up. When did I say what now?”
“How I’m not romantic and Sidney obviously is and I was fucking it up all over again except this time I ended it faster so I couldn’t hurt them.” I tried to get words out between sobs, but it was hard. “I hurt you so much, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone like that ever again.”
“You broke up with Sidney because...you and I aren’t romantically compatible? Sister, you were right. You fucked up.”
“I tried to fix it—”
“No, not that.” He grabbed both of my hands, squeezing them. “I didn’t say you weren’t romantic, Dec. You’re plenty romantic. You just do it in a different way than I do, and that would have hurt both of us if we’d tried to stay together.”
I hiccupped. More tears eked out of my eyes. “I’m not romantic. You said that.”
“No, I said you weren’t into bringing me flowers. That’s, like, one possible way to be romantic.” He squeezed again. “You made Sidney food. You kissed their hand. Tell me that’s not romantic.”
“And you brought them chocolates,” Mia added.
I sniffed. “They were on sale. The chocolates. And Sidney had been listening to a podcast about chocolate, so I thought...” Oh god. I missed hearing about the podcasts they were listening to, telling them about my wacky documentaries. I tried to stay strong this time, but I wanted to curl in on myself until everything went away.
“But that is romantic.” Mia stroked my temple as I leaned against her. “Dec, romance is...paying attention. You know? It’s listening and sharing and enjoying each other.”
“And being thoughtful. You never brought me flowers, but you used to do little things that I didn’t see as romantic at the time, but totally were.” Mase ducked his head to catch my eye. “Remember when you got me that electric toothbrush after I got cavities?”