“Wait, Lady Fluke,” I said, getting desperate. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t appreciate this—”
“Then that’s all you need to say,” she said, pushing her chair back. She stood, bag clutched in her arms. “Bret will get you up to speed. I have an appointment soon and I hate being tardy. Good luck, Jude, and don’t let me down. Otherwise, I’ll have to let you go.” She nodded at me, then nodded at Bret. “Good day.”
And with that, Lady Fluke left.
I sat there, stunned. It would’ve been better if she’d invited me into the conference room and proceeded to tell me that she runs a devil-worshipping cult or something. I wish she’d sacrificed me in some crazy ceremony.
Instead, she left me alone with Bret.
I looked at him again and felt like I was going to be sick.
“I know this is a lot,” he said, holding his hands out. “I tried to tell Fluke that she was throwing you to the wolves, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
“You knew?” I asked him, incredulous. The thought that Bret knew about this before I did, and had been waiting for this moment for some untold amount of time boiled my skin in rage.
“We’ve been in talks for months now,” he said, shrugging a little. “Opening a factory overseas isn’t exactly easy.”
“You knew,” I said, pushing back from the table. “And you didn’t tell me.”
Neal Bull looked from Bret to me, his face screwed up in confusion. “Am I missing something here?” he asked. “I feel like there’s some context I don’t have.”
“Jude and I know each other,” Bret said simply, head tilted to one side. “We go back a while, don’t we, Jude?”
I stood there and stared at him, and remembered the tiny Levittown house in Forsythia Gate, the stink of cigarette smoke and the TV tuned to sports, his father in the recliner shouting, sticky beer on the kitchen floor, and my mother wasting away on pills and long hours waitressing for shit tips, and the elementary school playground, the swings creaking as he laughed and told me he’d do anything to get out of Levittown, and I said I’d do anything too, and we made a pact to leave together—
Until one day he left without me, and never looked back.
I turned on my heel and marched out of the conference room.
“Jude, wait,” he called after me, but fuck him.
He made his choice ten years ago.
I caught up with Lady Fluke just as the elevator doors were shutting. She said nothing as I joined her, and I stood with my back against the wall, breathing hard from my brisk sprint out of that office. She looked at me, and didn’t speak for five floors, the silence like an anchor dragging me into the gloomy ocean depths.
“If you can’t do it, I’ll find someone else,” she said, and I expected her to sound angry—but instead, she sounded exhausted. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her sound so tired before, not a single time since I started working for her, and we spoke on the phone at least once every day.
“It’s not that I can’t do it,” I said, and stopped myself, because it was that, actually, but so much more.
“It’s okay, Jude,” she said, and touched her fingers to her temple, like her head hurt. “I’ve perhaps asked too much of you. It’s only that I never wanted to bring my business to America, but the world’s changing. And I’d like to have someone I can truly trust at the top. You’re the only person I have left here.”
I chewed on my lip and stared down at the polished floor. She used to have friends in America, but something happened and all that changed. Maybe that was why she hadn’t visited in so long. I wanted to ask her why, or what she’d done, but I knew better than to press. She’d only give me an angry look, and I’d get nowhere.
“Why him?” I asked, raising my gaze.
She seemed surprised. “Who? Mr. Flowers?”
I nodded once. “We know each other. We grew up together.”
She let out a little, startled laugh, and adjusted her bag. “He didn’t tell me that,” she said, and I believed her, because of course he didn’t. Bret wouldn’t tell her something like that. He’d rather be a sneak about it—that was him, fundamentally. Deep down, he was a liar.
“There’s history,” I said, then stopped myself. Lady Fluke didn’t like drama—she didn’t like history, especially not something so unpleasant. “I want to avoid it.” Maybe she’d understand that, at least.
She nodded slightly and sighed. “Very well then. I was going to offer you half a million per year, but I suppose I can find an outside hire. Maybe it’s better this way. Someone more qualified.”
I stared at her and felt my jaw bang up against my knees. I had to physically shove it closed and shake my head. Half a million dollars per year would change my life in so many ways I could barely begin to understand it. I went to Drexel and got a marketing degree, and though I loved college, I had to take out enough student loans to fund a small country. My mother had no money and loved pills more than she loved me, and my father died when I was three of an overdose, which meant I was on my own, all on my own.