He didn’t. And she told herself she was relieved when he palmed his phone and dialed it like she’d asked him to.
It didn’t hurt to lie to yourself as long as those lies were to protect the person you loved. As long as you could make yourself believe them.
CHAPTER 16
Sydney
“Where’s the monthly report on the McKinnon file?”
Stewart burst into her tiny cubicle in a panic, just like Sydney knew he would, considering it was the end of the month on a Friday morning and he had a big board meeting in an hour. She normally handed him his spreadsheets, all neatly done up for each client, so it looked like he actually gave a fuck, by end of work on Thursday. She’d never failed to send them along over email so that he was prepared for the next morning.
“Oh. Right.” Sydney leaned back in her piece of junk office chair and crossed her arms behind her head, a casual gesture that was so at odds with Stewart’s red face and his shiny bald head. His too tight dress shirt strained over his paunch and there were sweat stains forming at the collar and wet circles gracing the armpit area.
How classy.
While big shots like Stewart got a huge glass office with plushy chairs and an expensive desk, she got something that looked like it had been pulled out of the dumpster behind the building. Her entire workspace consisted of a five by five cubicle that backed the rest of the shitty other five by five cubicles where the rest of the lowly office staff worked.
She felt like a peasant in the land where kings ruled and the rest of them had to lick their boots and do their dirty bidding.
She used to just dislike her job.
That was ten years ago. Now she hated it with a passion.
She’d hoped, once, that something else would come along. That the opportunity of a lifetime would just be dumped in her lap and she could leave the shithole marketing and accounting firm she worked for.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that opportunity had come and gone and there she was, still sitting there.
Nearly a month had passed since she’d spent that day with Jesse. It was just a day. Not even a full one, but it changed her in ways she always knew it would if she ever ran into him. She was sad. Sad and tired. Exhausted by the life she’d made for herself.
She’d vowed to dig herself out, to find a semblance of happiness now that she could finally close that door on her past for good. Before it had been left open, just a quarter inch, but it was enough so that she’d never been able to properly move on. She’d slammed that door in Jesse’s face and now…
Now it was time to make some changes to try and make her life bearable, if not all the time, at least some of it.
“Where are the reports?” Stewart formed his demands into something that should have been a question, but didn’t sound at all like it, as though she hadn’t heard him the first time.
Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, over his jowls and down his thick neck. His nose was a florid red since he liked to keep a bottle of whiskey in the top drawer of his desk and sip at it all day long when he thought no one would notice. He also chewed breath mints neurotically, to try and disguise the whiskey on his breath.
“Yeah, about that… I didn’t do them.”
Stewart’s jaw nearly hit the floor. An angry purple hue crept up his neck to replace the tomato red already staining his face. “Why? Why the hell would you not have them ready? My meeting’s in an hour!”
“Well… mostly because they’re your responsibility. Everyone thinks that you do them and that you do them well. I believe you won an award last year for being so organized and on target. They called it customer service. I call it bullshit, because you never did those reports once. I’ve been doing them for nearly a decade. I’ve been doing your bidding for ten years, Stewart, and you know what my reward is? Ridiculous demands for coffee. Oh, and you staring at my tits every chance you get.”
Stewart’s mouth flapped open and shut like he was drowning and gasping for air. Yeah, he was drowning alright, floundering in the waters of her righteous indignation.
It might have come a decade too late, but hell, it finally arrived.
“You- you- you…” Stewart spluttered, and she decided to save him the trouble.
“Don’t worry, Stewy, you don’t have to say anything. I know that I’m fired. Thank fuck. It’s about time.”
She stood and grabbed the box off her desk, filled with the personal things she’d already packed, a stapler she’d bought herself because the department was too fricking cheap to get her one after hers broke, her lunch bag, a water bottle, and a small potted succulent. That’s what her ten years amounted to.