Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy
Page 21
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He was feeling better than he had in longer than he could remember (that wasn’t really all that impressive all things considered, most days he had a great deal of difficulty remembering what his life had been before he ended up in the midst of this whole crazy situation). He shouldn’t be feeling better. He should be worrying about how he was going to figure out what the soon to be happily married Walshes were going to do next and how to stop them. He should be sad that he had experienced a total melt down of his relationship with his parents. He should be concerned that he was currently sans his job (granted the fact that he had a fairly successful second job already sort of mitigated that, but it should still merit some thought).
There were a thousand different things that he should be working on, and there were a thousand different things that should be causing his head to pound with a stress headache. He was feeling none of it. He felt good. He felt light. He felt like those people in musicals right before they broke out into a song about how happy they were and how great life was.
Okay, that might be pushing it a little far.
The point was he didn’t feel buried. He didn’t feel tired. He had forgotten what it was like to not be exhausted. He had forgotten what it was like to not feel like he had the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. It might be some sort of semi mental breakdown brought on by the long period of stress and the euphoria of a momentary success.
If it was, then he wasn’t going to question it. He was a little too caught up in the whole feeling happy thing. Forget figuring it out; they had won a battle here. No one else might know that it was won or that there had been a battle in the first place -- that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Meredyth Lawson could be successfully fought.
There had been some times in the past few months where he had doubted that. He wouldn’t have stopped fighting, but it was great to have the reassurance that it wasn’t a futile effort.
They had a chance. They could do this. He felt like celebrating. He tossed a paperweight at the half filled box on the top of his desk and bit back a wince as it clanked against something glass. Whoops. He should probably be a little more careful.
The word set something off inside of him. Careful. He didn’t have to be careful any longer. He was “moving on to other pursuits.” He wanted to celebrate, and there was nothing stopping him from heading down to Anna’s office and walking out the door with her for a celebratory dinner. That sounded like a deeply excellent idea.
He caught himself whistling as he took the stairs between floors; he had been too antsy to stand and wait for the elevator. He let the whistling continue even after he realized. Why shouldn’t he? They would do something fun with the kids later. The place he had in mind for tonight’s celebratory dinner would probably not be their cup of tea. He wasn’t really sure that it was Anna’s cup of tea either, but he was in the mood to do something special.
He was actually rubbing his hands together in anticipation as he hit her doorway. What he saw put an end to his celebration planning.
Anna didn’t look calm. Clearly, his euphoria issues were confined to himself alone. Anna looked a lot like he thought he had looked for the weeks prior to the RR board meeting on the Walsh merger. Her posture was awful. She was slumped more than sitting in the chair at her desk as if something was lying across her and pushing her down. When she looked up, the dark circles under her eyes were so prominent it looked as though someone had blackened them. When was the last time he had really looked at Anna? That surely hadn’t happened in just a couple of days?
“I’m really sorry, Connor,” she told him looking like tears were going to start flowing at any moment. He felt a surge of panic rush through him. Someone was hurt. Someone had to be hurt for her to look like that.
“Sorry?” He questioned unconsciously holding his breath as he waited for her to elaborate.
“About your job,” she said unsuccessfully trying to hold back a sniffle. She dove for a tissue from the box on her desktop and somehow managed to hide her whole face behind it. “About the blow up with your parents.”
“Oh, that,” he breathed so relieved that she wasn’t about to send him off to see someone in the hospital that it took a moment for him to register the disbelief on her face as the tissue came down.
“Oh, that?” If the disbelief on her face hadn’t already caught his attention, then the tone of it in her voice would have.
“It’s not a big deal,” he dismissed wondering if she was really crying over his employment situation. He was tempted to crack a joke about what a great boss he must be, but he decided it probably wasn’t the proper moment.
“Not a big deal?” The disbelief became more prevalent (which he wouldn’t have thought was possible, but it apparently was). “You aren’t speaking to your parents.”
Oh, he could see why that would be a big deal to her. This made much more sense as a reason for her to be all teary. He thought she had some idea, but there just wasn’t a good way to explain exactly how unlike her family his was.
“We’re speaking,” he tried to reassure her (he had limited expectations of effectiveness). “We’re just confining ourselves to carefully crafted exchanges of commentary on the weather.”
“Connor . . .,” she looked so downtrodden that he couldn’t even let her finish whatever it was that she was going to say.
“Look, there is no reason for you to be all upset about this,” he moved across the room but hesitated to rest a hand on her shoulder. His experience with crying women was minimal at best. Lollipops had been the comfort method of choice back in the day with Lia, and he knew enough to know that if that was the extent of his knowledge, then he was likely better off not trying random methods of intercession.
“The job thing wasn’t entirely unexpected, and the spat with my parents has been building for years. It was probably deeply therapeutic for us to all clear the air a little bit.” He offered in explanation. “How about we dry up the tears?” He hoped that he didn’t sound quite as desperately hopeful with that last question as he expected that he might.
“It’s my fault,” she dabbed at her eyes with the tissue again. “Why aren’t you mad at me?”
“Back up for me,” he said staring at her. She couldn’t be thinking what that implied she was thinking. “If you’re about to tell me that you shouldn’t have created Glimpse in the first place, then I don’t want to hear it. We’ve gone over that already.”
“We were in this together,” she sounded angry suddenly. Angry he was used to dealing with; he could handle that. Anything was better than teary. “And it’s blown up in your face. I should have done something.”
“Stop,” he insisted. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like we are in the midst of some sort of a crisis here. Do you understand that we stopped her? She won’t be getting her hands on Glimpse. This is a win for us.”
“It’s not just over, Connor,” she nearly tripped as she stood up in an attempt (Connor assumed) to be more eye level with him. It didn’t really work (mostly because she was so much shorter than he was). He bit back the impulse to laugh at her outraged kitten bristling. He didn’t think she would appreciate his humor at her appearance.
“They aren’t going to just shrug their shoulders in defeat and take up knitting to fill their previously used in an attempt to take over the world hours.”
“Sorry,” he offered as he snorted. “I had a sudden mental image of Wyatt Walsh and fluffy sweaters.”
“This isn’t funny!” She threw her hands up in the air. She was obviously not seeing the humor yet. That was okay; they could work around to that. He needed to get her out of her freak out state first. Then, they could move to humor (and hopefully from there on to celebratory dinner eating).
“No,” he agreed finally letting the impulses win and placing a hand on her upper arm. “But it is breathing
room. Maybe we didn’t stop them, maybe they won’t ever stop, but we slowed them down.” He smiled at her and let his hand trail down her arm until his fingers twined with hers. She blinked up at him in confusion.
“Enjoy the fact that this round didn’t end in our lives as we know them ceasing to exist,” he told her. “You’ve got to learn to breathe, Anna.” He realized that he wasn’t the poster child that should be offering said advice, but he was what she had. “If you don’t take time to appreciate what we’ve got, then you’re going to lose sight of what it is we’re trying to hold on to here. We can’t let that happen. If we do, then we’ll lose by default.”