I walked right down the hallway, feeling like I’d just been kicked in the stomach, and debating whether or not I should break down crying or throw a rock through a window. In my office, I shut the door and started pacing back and forth, going over what was just said, everything that had just happened, when there came a knock.
“Mr. Hollis.” My secretary poked her head in and winced when she saw me. She could tell I was upset, but she had already interrupted me, so I motioned with my hand for her to go on. “Dean Stevens is here to see you.”
“Dean’s here?”
“Why yes I am.” Dean slipped past the secretary and beamed at me. “I came here to talk to you more about the Japan trip.”
I didn’t see any way of getting the man out of my office without looking suspicious, so I smiled back as convincingly as I could and greeted him as my secretary left, closing the door behind her.
“Hey there,” I said. “I only just got in, so you’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t even had my morning coffee yet.”
He frowned at me. “Are you alright, you look like you didn’t sleep a wink last night.”
I laughed. “Very astute of you to notice.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing is wrong.” Then, as if someone had just poured lighter fluid all over a fire, my anger flooded back into me with a raging force. “Strike that! Everything is wrong. Everything is fucked up, and you want to know something, it’s your daughter’s fault!”
“Kat?” Dean balked. “What did Kat do?”
“What didn’t she do,” I said with a mean laugh. I was aware of what I was doing, on some level, but I still couldn’t stop myself from doing it. I was so angered by her dismissal, so hurt by the way she spoke to me, how she acted like settling down with me was her worst nightmare, that I wanted to make her feel what I was feeling. It was petty and cruel and completely out of character for me, and yet, I did it anyway.
“For one,” I said, holding up a finger so that I could physically count the ways she had driven me mad. “She seduced me. She came into this office and flirted with me, she looked at me like I was the only man in the world. She made me feel things I hadn’t felt since Erin was alive.”
Dean’s face was contorting as I spoke, and I knew he must’ve been feeling all sorts of confusion and anger on the inside, but still, I kept talking.
“And then.” I held up another finger. “She came over to my house in the middle of the night.Shedecided to take things to the next level. Over this last month she has turned my entire life upside down. I wake up with a smile and I go to bed with dreams of seeing her beautiful face at work the next day. She made me fall completely and utterly in love with her, and then she—” I stopped short of saying this last part. It was too devastating to put into words, and the devastation I felt just thinking about what happened in her office five minutes ago served to sober me up in a way. I remembered who I was talking to and managed within a fraction of a second to hold back from telling Dean that his daughter was pregnant.
With my child.
Not that it mattered, he had clearly been sent over the edge already. His face was red and when he tried to speak, all that came out was a jumbled mess of sputtering and grumbling. He stared me down for a bit, making sure I understood just how furious he was, before turning on his heel and walking out of my office.
Once he was gone, I threw myself down on my desk chair and started to rub my temples.
Today was officially chalking up to be the second worst day of my life.
* * *
Kat ended up taking the rest of the week off.
Since she wasn’t talking to me during this time, and I didn’t make any effort to reach out to her, I wasn’t sure what she was doing exactly. She could’ve been working from home, or maybe she took some vacation days. Perhaps she was recovering from a procedure, but I tried not to think about that option, for it was by far the one that made me the most upset. By the time Friday rolled around, a lot of the anger I’d been feeling towards her had worn off and all I was left with was sadness. I missed her, there was no pretending I didn’t. And I hated to think that she was going through all of this alone. Whether or not she decided to keep the baby, I felt as if I should’ve been there for her.
But she clearly didn’t want anything to do with me, so I did my best to keep my distance.
Victoria had a slumber party she was going to that night, so when I left the office, I decided to go drown my sorrows at Sean’s bar. I knew he would help me get proper drunk and then call me a ride home, as well as talk me down off a ledge when my drunken ass inevitably decided to do something stupid and regretful.
When I showed up at the bar, it was pretty empty, being just before six. That’s what I was hoping for, however. I liked the bar when it was a little quieter. I spotted Sean behind the counter and when he saw me, he offered me a knowing smile.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” he said. He poured me a whiskey without even asking me first, placed it down in front of the stool I had chosen to sit in. “Calvin was in here on Monday, drinking like a sailor and telling me how he got an earful from his dad after old man Dean found out you had been sleeping with his daughter for the last month.”
I threw back the drink in one go. “Another one,” I said, and Sean obliged.
“I take it you’ve had the week from hell?”
“You have no idea.”
“No,” a voice on my right said. “Youhave no idea.”