His Secretary: Undone

by Melanie Marchande

  I avoid the doorman's eyes as I jam my thumb against the print scanner. Really, I never thought about how remarkable it was that Adrian thought I could be trusted with 24/7 access to his building, but I bet he's about to regret it.

  After a long, stomach-lurching elevator ride, I find his door and pound it with my fist, until it aches.

  At first, there's no response. I'm starting to wonder if he's even home, and why I assumed he must be - when there's suddenly a series of shuffling and clicking noises, and the door swings open.

  His clothes are rumpled, his hair a complete mess, with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in one hand and a half-empty glass in the other. I'm starting to understand why it was such a production to get the door open.

  "It was you the whole time," I practically shout at him, not caring if anyone hears.

  "It was me the whole time!" he echoes, spreading his arms out in a dramatic gesture. Jesus, he's even drunker than I thought.

  I storm inside, kicking the door closed behind me. "Are you fucking serious right now? How long did you know it was me?"

  "I suspected, at first," he says, swaying a little as he heads for the kitchen. "Then, when the details started to come out, I knew."

  "Bullshit." I fold my arms across my chest, protectively. "There's no way you couldn't have known from the first email."

  "Okay, okay." He sits down, heavily, on a stool at the bar. "I knew, but I didn't want to know. I told myself it had to be a coincidence, because if it really was you, that'd be too big of a coincidence. It made sense at the time." He swallows with an effort. "Also, I wanted to know what you say about me behind my back."

  "Big fucking mystery there." I stand there, in front of him, wondering if he'll even remember this tomorrow. "I can't believe this. You told me to wear lingerie at work." My face burns as I recall that conversation.

  "And I stand by that suggestion." He manages a lopsided grin. "You should see the emails I didn't send you."

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. I cannot deal with this right now.

  "I'm not proud of it," he says, at last, a little more quietly. "But then I saw the things you'd never tell me to my face. Like that you think I'm a good person. That you like how I make you laugh. I shouldn't have done it, but I'm not sorry I had a chance to find out." He looks up at me, and there's no humor left in his face. "I was just begging for scraps, Meg. When it comes to you, that's all I've got."

  I let out a bitter laugh. "No, no, you are not putting me in a position to feel sorry for you. Not today."

  "Will you please sit down?" he slurs.

  "No, Adrian!" I shout, adrenaline coursing through me as I let five years' worth of bottled-up anger spill out. "No, I will not fucking sit down! I'm done with this. I'm done with you. You're fucking toxic, and you poison everything around you, and you already ruined half a decade of my life. I let you take my self esteem, and my self respect, and my sanity. I even shared your bed because I just needed something to make me feel better about all this shit. And it did, you know that? You're pretty fucking good at making me forget what a train wreck my life is. And the fact that you made it that way. You're my own personal heroin. I'm fucking done, Adrian. I hate who I am now. I hate what you've turned me into."

  He just stares at me. I watch his nostrils flare, his eyes flash, his chest rising and falling more rapidly as he listens, but he doesn't say anything. My face is burning, and I can feel angry tears beginning to gather and trickle down my cheeks. I don't even care. After today, I'm never going to see him again.

  "I used to be a good person, Adrian." My voice is thick with sobs I force myself to swallow. "I used to have friends. I used to have fun. I even used to be able to tolerate my parents, for a monthly phone call, for a couple visits a year. It was shitty, but at least it was something. Now I'm going to be eating a fucking Swanson meal for Christmas with a god damn plastic tree in my discount apartment because paying me another couple dollars an hour would mean you have to cut down on your Dom Perignon consumption. And I can't start my own family, because now, thanks to you, I'm exactly the shrill insufferable bitch you always thought I was."

  He just keeps staring at me.

  Finally, he speaks, his tongue sounding thick in his mouth. "You're not…you're not," he says.

  "Really? That's the best you've got?"

  His eyes are barely even open anymore. Jesus Christ.

  I storm out of Adrian Risinger's penthouse suite, out of his building, out of his life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Time passes.

  I wake up in the morning. I shower. I swallow a mouthful of vitamins I know I'm supposed to be taking, and I update my resume.

  I make a Linked In profile and I send in applications and I wait. Most of the time, I remember to eat. At night, I stare at the ceiling until I fall asleep. Sometimes it takes too long.

  If I dream, I don't remember it.

  I do all of these things without feeling. If there's still a heart beating in my chest, I'm not particularly aware of it. I've had to excise the part of myself that was stupid enough to fall in love with a man like Adrian, and it's left precious little behind.

  Someday, I know, I will look back on this time in my life and wonder what the hell I could have possibly been thinking. I might even laugh at it, perhaps with my kind, slightly older, curly-haired husband who is a college professor or an assistant regional manager of who gives a fuck. We'll swap stories about the crazy exploits of our youth. He'll tell me about the time he broke his leg jumping into a shallow lake, I'll tell him about the time I slept with my boss. We'll be that kind of couple. He won't get jealous, because he knows that time is long gone.

  He knows, as well as I do, you can't grow old with a man like Adrian.

  Maybe someday we'll see each other. Not bloody likely, in a city this big. But it could happen. Maybe he'll be reduced to doing his own food shopping at some point, and I'll meet him in the ice cream aisle with a baby on my hip. Maybe I'll pretend not to recognize him.

  A month passes, and I find myself with a new job. It doesn't pay as much, but it's enough. My boss is patient and understanding. A normal person, basically.

  I hate it.

  My first day, I get home and suddenly realize what a sty I'm living in. A month's worth of the shitty local newspaper scattered across my kitchen table, junk mail everywhere, empty bottles of God knows what. I haven't had an adrenaline rush in ages, so I find myself cleaning. I flip on the TV and let the financial news drone on in the background while I gather up the recycling.

  As I walk to the bin in the kitchen, something on one of the newspapers catches my eye.

  Animal shelter says "guardian angel" responsible for saving location; furry tenants

  The eye-rolling headline notwithstanding, I have to wonder.

  I flip to the human interest section. Sure enough, it's a picture of Shelly cuddling a very photogenic polydactyl cat with striking green eyes, taking up half the page.

  My heart squeezes painfully in my chest.

  ….the donor, who insists on remaining anonymous, has promised Masterson his ongoing support for her shelter, and its mission. "He really is a guardian angel," she says. "I've always believed that the universe will provide when you're at your most desperate, but until now I didn't realize just how true that was."

  The universe, hell.

  Guardian fucking angel? Not likely.

  I'm laughing and I'm crying and I'm laughing some more.

  And he never said a word to me. Why would he? He didn't know. It's not his job to update me on every charity he decides to support.

  But the anonymity is different. That means he's not supporting them as Risinger Industries, he's just supporting them as himself. Like he actually cares.

  My heartbeat comes back. And with it, a pain in my chest that I wonder if I'll ever live completely without.

  ***

  When I show up at the shelter, with its shiny new coat of paint and expanded kennel area, Shelly hugs me and cries.
<
br />   "I thought you might be back," she sniffles. "I was hoping. After we ran into each other…"

  She pauses, looking at me. It seems like there's a thousand things she's not saying.

  "I'm just so glad you're here," she says, finally.

  I puzzle over this while I supervise the open play time for the dogs, throwing balls and sticks and sitting down on the bench with the elderly beagle who just wants to cuddle all day. I know he's going to have a hard time finding a home, and I try not to think about it as I stroke his ears.

  The one nice thing about this new, terminally boring job is that it leaves me plenty of time and energy to volunteer again. It feels strange, like a time machine has taken me back five years and dropped me in a place where I no longer really fit in. Nothing else has changed much, but I have.

  I start spending weekends, evenings, and even some early mornings at the shelter. When I mention it offhandedly to my new boss, he offers me a flexible schedule to help out with my charitable endeavors. He loves animals, you see.

  I feel like I'm on a different fucking planet.

  When Shelly walks into the room, the whole atmosphere changes. Every single dog's head perks up, and they're all looking at her, waiting for instructions.

  "Sit," she says, quietly, and they all do.

  The woman is terrifying, and I love her.

  "Meg, are you all right?" She comes over and lays her hand on my shoulder. "You seem like you're a million miles away, sometimes."

  Is it that obvious? I feel my ears start to burn. "I'm sorry. I'll try to focus better. I'm just…"

  "No, no, no. You're not doing anything wrong." She sits down beside me. "I'm just worried about you, that's all. If you ever want to talk, I'm here."

  "I know." Sighing, I look down at my hands in my lap. They're just sitting there, inert, like they don't know what to do. It feels like everything takes a special effort. Breathing. Thinking. Every muscle in my body is particularly heavy and sluggish. "I got myself into kind of a mess at my old job. I'm glad I left. Not that it was my choice. But I think it was the right one, even if it seemed horrible at the time."

  "That job was definitely not good for you." Shelly nods. "I could see it draining the life out of you, every time we ran into each other. But you don't look any happier now, Meg. You still look like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Have you really left that place behind?"

  Of course I haven't. But how can I explain that, without confessing that I slept with my boss? I don't want Shelly to know that about me. It seems so juvenile, so ridiculous. I'm going to come across like the delusional one - unable to accept that a guy who's so spectacularly out of my league doesn't want to settle down and have babies with the likes of me. No matter how much he likes the sex, I never should have mistaken it for love.

  It wasn't a mistake, though. I know it wasn't. He felt something and he ran the fuck away from it. If that's how he's going to be, then I don't want him in my life.

  "It's hard to let go of the fantasy of somebody that you have in your head, you know?" I say, finally. It doesn't make any sense out of context, but with Shelly that seldom matters. "Even if you know they're really not like that. It's like we just see bits and pieces, and our brains fill in the rest with whatever we want to be there."

  She's nodding. Once again, it seems like there's something she's not saying, and I can't imagine what. Shelly seldom finds a reason to bite her tongue.

  "Well, whatever's going on, I know you're gonna be okay." She squeezes my shoulder. "Let me know if there's anything I can do."

  I promise her that I will, but I can't imagine how anyone could help me at this point.

  ***

  For some reason, my TV keeps ending up back on the financial channel. It's all stuff I needed to know when I was working for Adrian, but it's almost entirely irrelevant to my life now. All the same, I stay informed. Whenever there's nothing better on, I learn about all the latest mergers and acquisitions and wild speculation.

  I'm just used to it, I suppose. It's like a lullaby at this point, or Seinfeld reruns for anyone who grew up in the 90s. It's nice to know there's at least one thing in the world that hasn't changed.

  But Jim Cramer is really letting the spittle fly tonight. Something must have happened. I didn't hear any air raid sirens, so it can't be all that important, but I turn my attention to the screen all the same, while I gather up my dishes.

  "…so with this unprecedented move, what do you anticipate for the future?" one of the other talking heads is asking.

  "You know, John - obviously we've seen things like this happen before, big upsets like this, but ultimately I think this'll be a blip. Of course it'll depend on the impression the new CEO leaves. But there's no sign the company's been mismanaged before now. Ultimately I think people are going to forget the name Adrian Risinger."

  I don't drop the glass I'm holding, but thinking back on it, I'm not sure how the hell I managed that.

  "It's a little early for a midlife crisis," someone else is saying. "There's going to be suggestions - in fact, we're already seeing implications that he might have stepped down because of some corruption or an issue he otherwise doesn't want to deal with. And that's going to be swirling through everyone's head when the markets open tomorrow."

  With numb fingers, I type his name into the search on my phone. Five or six news stories pop up immediately. There's a video. I don't want to hit play, but I do.

  "I've already commented on this…I've said everything I'm going to say. It has nothing to do with Risinger Industries. I see a prosperous future for them without me. This was never the right position for me, and I was never the right man for the job. My only regret is that it took me so long to realize it."

  I sit down, mostly because my knees have stopped working.

  He lived for that company. It's all he has. All he's ever had. And now he's just…walking away?

  Panic is clawing at the inside of my throat, and I realize this whole time I've been scared for him. I don't know how he can live without me, and how's that for hubris? All along I've been writing him off as the arrogant one, but I've grown to believe myself indispensable to him.

  Clearly, I'm not.

  Being Adrian's secretary was my whole identity. For five long years, it was all I had. I didn't want to believe that I let it seep into me so deeply, but I have. Adrian will be fine without me. He'll be fine without the company. In fact, he'll probably go back to writing. He's a man of many talents, unlike me. Unless dealing with an impossible people is a talent. It doesn't seem to be coming in particularly handy now.

  Heartache keeps me awake that night, and I wish I could just forget about it. His life and mine are no longer intertwined. In fact, I have no plans to speak to him ever again.

  And yet.

  And yet.

  ***

  When Shelly asks me if there's any possible way I can make it in a little early on a Wednesday, I actually run it by my boss, and he says of course I can. There's a truck coming with a massive load of donations and they need all the help they can get to unpack and organize it.

  I'm ready to spend a few hours embroiled in backbreaking labor, if it'll help me forget all the things I need to forget.

  Even though I leave not too long after lunch, I'm still one of the last volunteers in the group. It's a good turnout - Shelly always has a knack for getting people to roll up their sleeves.

  Walking up behind the little crowd, I see something that makes my heart slam into my ribcage.

  It's not him. It's not him. IT CAN'T BE HIM.

  Even knowing what I know, this is not the sort of thing Adrian would turn out for. Hands-on work? He's more of a "write a check and forget about it" kind of guy. But if that's not the back of his head, incongruously sticking out of a strangely familiar looking tee-shirt, then I will swallow my shoe.

  I just stare. I've never seen him in jeans before. I've never seen him casual before. I haven't seen him at all in so long, after
seeing him every weekday and way too many weekends for half a decade, and I think my heart might explode.

  "Adrian?" I half-whisper.

  He turns around.

  There's that classic just saw a ghost look in his eyes, but I can't stop staring at his mouth, his jaw, because he's finally let that stubborn stubble grow out, nothing crazy, less than half an inch of carefully-groomed beard. It's just a shade darker than the hair on his head, with more mottled golden-red mixed in. It suits him.

  His shirt says: KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD

  "Shelly told me you wouldn't be here," he says, softly.

  "Shelly lied," says the woman herself, appearing from behind a pile of boxes, dusting off her hands. "You two need to have a long conversation. Meghan, please give him a chance. You can have my office. Adrian, go. Tell her what you told me. So help me God, I don't care how much money you donate, I'll drag you there by your ear if you give me any sass."

  I'm staring at her. No wonder it was so urgent for me to work today. "What the hell is going on?"

  She just shrugs. "I put the pieces together. I remembered you said you were working for his company, so when he shows up all of a sudden, I had a feeling there was a connection. It didn't take much prying to get the whole sob story out of him, I'll tell you. Something about holding a kitten just makes a man want to confess all his sins. I'm not saying you have to forgive him, but I can't keep watching you two pine away for each other. Work it out somehow, for all of our sakes."

  I can't look at Adrian, don't want to, now, but he touches my arm.

  "I think we'd better go," he says, with a hint of an apprehensive smile on his lips. "She scares me."

  Numbly, with a ringing in my ears, I follow him. He sits down on the edge of her desk, maybe because he doesn't want to mirror the way we always used to speak to each other, and otherwise I would have instinctively sat down in the visitor's chair, while he reclined behind the desk.