“I’m packing,” I said.
Much to my satisfaction, his eyes went wide. I hoped he thought I’d gotten a fabulous promotion. That would chap his ass. He pressed his lips together and nodded. It was the sort of look one person gave another when they were commiserating with them over bad news, like getting a speeding ticket or finding out your crush liked your best friend instead of you.
“You got sacked,” he said.
“What?” I cried. I dropped the award into the box. “No, I didn’t!”
“It’s okay,” he said. “There’s no shame in being let go.” His voice was infused with an artificial warmth of understanding. I wanted to punch him in the throat.
“I was not let go,” I growled.
“Then what are you doing?” he asked. He gestured to the box. “Redecorating? I’ve got to say, it’s about time. Stark white walls with no pictures on them are so 2010.”
I glared at him. “This from a man who has a basketball hoop on the back of his door.”
“You know you’re welcome to play anytime,” he said. “I’ll even be a sport and spot you ten points.”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’d hate to watch a grown man cry when I destroy him with three-pointers.”
“You talk big, Martin,” he said. His full lips parted in a grin that on any other man might have been sexy. On him, it grated.
Challenge accepted. I straightened my shoulders and ripped a sheet off the legal pad on my desk. I wadded it into a tight ball and tossed it, right past his nose, to land dead center in the wire wastebasket on the far side of my office. The look of surprise on his face was worth the hours I’d spent firing papers into that very can on the off chance I ever had to take him on. I forced myself to stay cool and not do a fist pump. It was a struggle.
“It isn’t talk,” I said. I turned away and continued packing, hoping he’d go away.
Jason didn’t take the hint. Instead, he chuckled and strolled all the way into my office, sat in the cushy chair across from my desk, and nonchalantly propped his feet up on the corner.
“You’ve got some hidden talents, Martin,” he said.
I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me and I should resist. Instead, I smacked his feet off the desk.
“You’re mistaking my work space for the frat house you wallow in, Knightley,” I said. “Feet stay on the floor.”
“You’re no fun,” he complained.
It was exactly the sort of thing he could have said to me on any other day and I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Not today. Today I felt as if he was speaking my truth, and it hurt.
“Was there something you needed?” I snapped. “Because I really am busy.”
He studied my face. Clearly, he’d been expecting a bit more of our usual back-and-forth.
“Busy doing what exactly?” he asked.
“Packing,” I said. I gestured to the box and my stuff going inside the box. I really thought I should get points for not adding duh to my answer.
He heaved an exasperated sigh. “No kidding, but why are you packing?”
“Because I’m leaving,” I said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Wait . . . what?” He rose to his feet, and I found myself staring up at him. “You’re serious? You’re leaving? For real?”
“Yes,” I said. “In two weeks I’m gone.”
Jason stared at me, slack jawed. He looked stunned, as if I’d just told him I was pregnant and the baby was his.
“But . . . that’s . . . How . . . Why . . .”
I took no small satisfaction in making the usually smooth-talking Jason stutter. I watched as he shook his head as if trying to realign his brain. When he finished, he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me.
“Martin, you can’t leave. You can’t leave me.”
I stared at him. He seemed genuinely upset. Had I misjudged our heated rivalry all these years? I’d thought he couldn’t stand me. Had I been wrong? Maybe beneath his flagrant disregard for my organizational skills and his sarcastic asides at meetings when I was speaking, he actually liked me. Was our relationship the professional equivalent of the boy on the playground who showed a girl he liked her by pulling her pigtails or punching her in the arm?
“I mean, who is going to make me look good at the weekly staff meetings if you’re not there to bore us all to death with your PowerPoints, charts, graphs, and other assorted mind-numbing minutiae?” he asked. He uncrossed his arms and spread his hands wide. “I count on you, Martin, to make me shine.”
So that was a negative on him actually liking me. I should have known. Jason Knightley was an arrogant asshat. If I could pick one thing I was not going to miss about working here, it would be him.
“I’ll be sure to tell my replacement to load up on the statistical data,” I said. “I wouldn’t want your lazy little star to go dim.”
“Lazy?” His eyebrows rose. “Are you calling me lazy?”
He put his hands on his hips and looked incredulous. Clearly, I’d struck a nerve. Goody.
“Truth hurts?” I asked.
“Truth?” he asked. “What truth? I work just as hard as you do.”
I snorted and held up a hand as if he were telling a joke that was too funny. “Please.”
“I do,” he insisted. “Just because I don’t bog it all down with number projections in Excel spreadsheets—”
“Bog it all down?” I gaped at him. “Those projections are what convince the corporations to pony up the major gifts, Knightley. They want to see how their money will be used, how it will impact their business and spread their mission.”
“It’s all smoke and mirrors,” he said. He shook his head. “You make it more task driven than it needs to be. You like busywork because it makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something. News flash—you’re not. It’s the big picture that matters.”
That did it! I really was going to brain him with one of my awards.
“Busywork?” I hissed through clenched teeth. My right eyelid started to twitch. I could feel it throb in time to my heartbeat. I wanted to hold it still with my index finger, but I didn’t want to betray that he was getting to me.
“Yup,” he said. He pantomimed typing on a keyboard with his hands. “Busy, busy, busy. No one wants to read those long-winded reports of yours. They want big ideas; they want something to get excited about; they want to have a campaign that goes viral and makes their company a global presence.”
If he kept talking, I suspected my resting bitch face was going to become permanent, like a stone mask that nothing could crack. This. This was precisely why I couldn’t stand Jason Knightley. He didn’t want to do the work: the grunt work, the hard labor, the number crunching, the projections, the analysis of a corporation’s history—oh no, all of that was beneath him. He just wanted to be the idea guy, think the big thoughts, and let the plebs carry out his grandiose plans. It made my fingers itch to slap his smug face.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “But you’re an idiot. No corporation is going to sign off on a major gift for a ‘big idea.’”
“No?” Jason asked. He gave me a superior look. “Then why did the sneaker company Soles jump in and match the donations from my hot-wing challenge for the Children’s Leukemia Society?”
I closed my eyes. I drew in a long breath, held it, and then carefully let it out. So typical of him to bring up his one significant claim to fundraising fame. I stared at him across my barren desk.
“You got lucky.” I carefully enunciated each syllable so that he could hear each drip of disdain in my words.
He tipped his chin up and studied me under half-lowered lids. “Luck had nothing to do with it. What’s the matter, Martin? Jealous?”
It was so ridiculous, so outrageous an accusation that I barked out a laugh that soun
ded more maniacal than I would have liked. “Jealous?” I cried. I stepped out from behind my desk to face him. “You had a hot-wing challenge go viral for a little while. Seriously, BFD.”
He grinned at me without humor. “It drives you crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Are you referring to your unsubstantiated arrogance?” I asked.
“Unsubstantiated?” He squinted his eyes and cupped his chin with one hand, in a thoughtful pose. “Let me think—what was the grand total of money raised to fight leukemia with the hot-wing challenge? Was it ten million? Nope. Twenty-five million? No, that wasn’t it either. Oh yeah, I remember now. Fifty-seven million and change off a genius idea.”
“Genius?” I spat. “People challenging each other to eat a Carolina Reaper hot wing or fork up a hundred-dollar donation.” I pretended to yawn, patting my open mouth with my hand. “So predictable. If a few celebrities hadn’t gotten involved, it would have died a sudden death.”
“A few celebrities?” he choked. “I had everyone from Kendrick Lamar to Rachel Maddow participating.”
I rolled my eyes. “It was lightning in a bottle.”
“Bullshit. It was a well-thought-out campaign that people loved to participate in,” he said.
“Well thought out?” I leaned back on my heels and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to look down on him, which was not easy, because he was several inches taller than I was. “Who are you kidding? You cooked it up while killing time at some bar for happy hour where the wings and beer were half price.”
He didn’t even look embarrassed. He shrugged and winked at me and said, “Inspiration strikes where it strikes, plus it made millions. How much have you ever managed to wrestle as a major gift? One million? Five million?”
“I’m sorry, are we comparing dick size here?” I asked. “Because I can assure you while my anatomy is different, if it’s a pissing contest you want, I’ll win.”
“Admit it, Martin.” He leaned down so our faces were just inches apart. “You don’t have my reach.”
“Ugh.” I curled my lip. That was it. I was leaving my job. Why was I even speaking to this Neanderthal? I turned on my heel and crossed to the open door of my office. I raised my hands and gestured for him to leave. “I think we’re done here.”
“Is that how you deal with losing a debate?” he asked. He turned to face me. “You just throw the person out?”
“First, this wasn’t a debate. It was a waste of fifteen minutes of my life that I’ll never get back,” I said.
I reached forward and grabbed his arm, pulling him toward the door. Normally, I would never touch another employee, as I was hyperaware of the rules put forth by our human resources person, Michelle Fernando, who was downright scary, about encroaching on my colleagues’ personal space, but at the moment, I had no fucks left to give. If Jason Knightley didn’t leave my office right now, I was going to put my foot in his backside and kick him out the door.
“Second, I’m not throwing you out but merely assisting your overly swollen head through the doorway so that it doesn’t get stuck,” I said.
“Aw, sweet.” Jason chuckled as I propelled him forward. In an innuendo-laden voice, he wagged his eyebrows and asked, “So, you like my big frontal lobe?”
“Get. Out.” I gave him a firm but what I hoped would be construed as friendly—it wasn’t—shove through the opening. I stepped back and grabbed the door, slamming it in his face. Then I huffed out an exasperated breath, trying to find my Zen.
“I take it that’s a no on the sexy frontal lobe?” he called through the door.
In spite of myself, my lips twitched.
chapter five
IT TOOK ME every second of the following week to clear my desk and pack, but I did it. On the day of my departure, my plan had been to catch an Uber to the airport and leave with as little fuss as possible, but Annabelle insisted that she would take me. Which proved to be a big, fat lie when my father pulled up in front of my apartment in his dadmobile, an ancient green Subaru station wagon that Annabelle and I had been begging him to sell for at least a decade. Despite the peeling paint, rumbling muffler, and general air of exhaustion about the vehicle, he refused.
He bounced out of the driver’s seat and circled the hood, coming to meet me on the steps, where I stood, looking for Annabelle’s sleek BMW, which was supposed to be my airport ride.
“Dad, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“We wanted to give you our full support,” he said.
“We?” I glanced at the car just as Annabelle popped out of the back seat and Sheri got out of the front. What was she doing here?
“Oh,” I said. I was instantly uncomfortable. This should have been me saying goodbye to my family, and despite this crazy impending marriage to my father, Sheri was not family. She never would be. Not wanting to have any drama when I really needed to get to the airport, I forced my lips up at the corners and said, “Great.”
Dad stuffed my suitcase into the back of the station wagon, and we all piled back into the car, with me and Annabelle in back and Dad and Sheri up front. It was so much like the last time my family had seen me off at the airport that I felt as if I were in a dream in which I knew the people but they looked nothing like who they were supposed to be, as if the role of my mother in this dream were being played by Sheri Armstrong. Weird.
“Are you excited for your trip, Chelsea?” Sheri asked. Her tone was polite but cautious. I suspected my father had told her about my freak-out at the bridal salon. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Guilty? Embarrassed? Defensive? All of the above?
“Yes,” I said, my voice as guarded as hers. “Very excited.”
“Great,” she said. She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Clearly, she found this forced conversation to be as painful as I did, and that actually made me warm to her about a degree and a half.
“You have to text me every day and tell me what’s happening,” Annabelle said. “And I want pictures of all the sights.” She wagged her eyebrows at me, and I knew that meant she wanted to see what my old boyfriends looked like. “Especially Italy.”
“Definitely,” Dad agreed from the front seat. “Lots of pictures. We want to see everything.”
Annabelle snorted, and I elbowed her in the side, which only made her laugh harder.
The traffic was light at this time of night. We made it to the Callahan Tunnel, which ran under Boston Harbor, in record time. As we moved through it, Dad went over his usual list of travel advice, beginning with “don’t lose your passport” and ending with “look out for pickpockets.”
Sheri smiled at him as if he was just the cutest thing, while I tuned him out and wished the car could go faster. This right here was why I was leaving. Because my father had managed to move forward in his life, while I was stuck, stuck, stuck.
Dad and I had made up, sort of, after our disagreement at the bridal salon. I had stopped by his house on a night when I knew Sheri wasn’t there, because of her evening Pilates class, and I’d apologized for my rudeness. Then I’d told him about my plan to revisit my year abroad.
Surprisingly, Dad had taken the news of my sudden trip with great equanimity. As a math professor, he favored logic and reason and wasn’t one to promote leaving a high-paying job with almost no notice to take off for parts unknown. But when I explained to him that I wanted to remember what it felt like to be in love again, he’d nodded his approval with a sheen of emotion in his eyes that he never verbalized, and that was it. No questions, no arguments, he’d just slipped me a wad of cash and told me he loved me.
Terminal E loomed ahead, and Dad wedged his car right up against the curb. Small surprise, as other cars and drivers were giving the dadmobile a wide berth as if its dents and corrosion were contagious. We all piled out of the car while Dad grabbed my suitcase.
“Do you have everything?” he asked.
I looked at my rolling carry-on and my big purse and said, “Yes. Checked and rechecked. I’m good.”
“All right, then, we won’t keep you.” He studied my face for a moment as if committing it to memory. Then he jerked his head in Sheri’s direction, and his meaning was clear. I was to offer a proper goodbye to his intended.
She was standing on the curb beside my suitcase, looking as if she wasn’t quite certain of her place in this moment. That made two of us. Did I hug her? Half hug her? Shake her hand? Ugh, this was misery.
I stepped closer, wanting to get it over with. Sheri glanced up at me with a nervous smile. She was a petite brunette with large brown eyes and a pointy chin that gave her a gamine appeal. I opened my arms, signaling, I hoped, that I was coming in for a hug.
She perked up at that, and we closed in on each other. Unfortunately, I zigged when I should have zagged, and when I hunkered down, we almost bonked heads. We reared back at the same time and ended up awkwardly patting each other’s shoulders. It was a colossal failure, and we both looked pained, but judging by my dad’s grin, he was so pleased by our efforts that it didn’t matter that we looked like we were breaking out of a football huddle.
Dad scooped me close and bear-hugged me, giving me a smacking kiss on my cheek. “I love you, peanut.”
“I love you, too, Dad,” I said. My throat got tight, and I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. I refused to cry. I didn’t want to upset anyone.
Instead, I turned to hug Annabelle, who was zipping the front pocket of my suitcase closed. I narrowed my eyes. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she cried. She leaped away from my bag as if it had zapped her.
“I know you,” I said. “I know that face. You’re up to something.” I strode forward and unzipped the front pocket, grabbing a brown paper sack that I had not packed out of the bag. With a glare at Annabelle, I opened it.
“No, don’t—” she cried.
Too late. A brightly colored box of condoms fell out of the bag and landed on the ground at my feet. We all stood there, looking at the box that declared itself a pleasure pack, in absolute horror. Well, all of us except Annabelle, who laughed, bent down to retrieve the box, and shoved it into the paper sack, which she stuffed back into my suitcase.
Paris Is Always a Good Idea Page 5
