See You Monday: An Office Romance (Weekday series Book 1)

by Tiffany Costa

  Mister Graham crossed the street to meet me. Celeste stretched her legs on the other side of the car as we spoke. “As I said, she hasn’t come out despite all our efforts. No one’s seen her for a little over a week. Maybe more? One gets used to seeing each other, you know, and then you don’t realize the routine’s been broken until it’s too late. But the lights turn on and off. And like I said, my wife went knocking this morning, and she’d heard some crashing.”

  “Thanks, Graham. I’ll take it from here. Celeste, could you just wait here?”

  “Of course,” she came around the car, entered through the gate with me, gave me an encouraging nod, and turned to the garden.

  I dug around the pots on the front porch a little before finding the spare key. I hesitated before turning the knob. A part of me wanted this to be a false alarm. A part of me didn’t want to do this at all.

  I pushed it open and found my mother on the couch. Her chest rose and fell evenly. Passed out. Rip-roaring drunk. Several bottles of wine strewn across the floor next to her. My heart sank. I looked around for evidence of drugs, checking the bathroom and bedroom first. When I was sure there were none, I released the tense breath I had been holding.

  Anger, hurt, disappointment welled inside of me as I approached her. That little boy inside of me faded away when I brushed the hair from her eyes and looked down into her pained expression. Even in her sleep, something was haunting her. A pain I’d never understand no matter how much research I did. No matter how many women’s marches I attended or women’s rights activists I spoke to.

  “Mummy,” I whispered. Her hand twitched. “Mum, wake up, Mum,” I whispered a little louder. “I’m here. Can you hear me?”

  Her eyes fluttered open and immediately flooded with tears. She struggled to sit, still drunk, and I steadied her. “Isaac. No. Get out.” She elbowed me across the jaw.

  “It’s alright Mum, I’m here to help.”

  “Get out!” She screamed, pushing me away groggily, her arms flailing and pounding against my chest.

  I heard the front door click shut behind me. Celeste hovered in the doorway. I looked to her and without a word she disappeared to the kitchen.

  “Leave me alone, Isaac. I’m… I’m.” She started to cry and I held her.

  Celeste appeared with a bowl, a glass of water, and a fistful of napkins.

  My mother hurled and Celeste ran over to catch it. I pulled off my shirt while Celeste held my mother's hair back as she emptied the contents of her stomach into the bowl. I tossed my rancid shirt into the kitchen sink and ran the tap over it.

  “Alright. It’s okay. There. Let it all out.” Celeste pet her hair and smoothed her hand over her back.

  “Get out! You shouldn’t see me like this. Sod off!” My mother wailed.

  “Hey, stop. It’s okay. Everyone falls down sometimes. We’re going to help you back up. Okay? Is it okay if I help you back up?”

  My mother sobbed through a renewed bout of vomiting. Celeste looked away and swallowed down her own bile.

  “I’m such a sodding, bloody, fucking piece of shite.” My mother sobbed, her head rolled onto Celeste’s shoulder.

  Celeste squeezed an arm around her shoulder, her voice lowering as if she were talking to a hurt child. And I guess we were, my mother’s injured inner child was her greatest demon. “Stop that. You made a mistake. Come. Can you stand? Do you think you can make it to the bathroom?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Okay,” Celeste looked to me and I ran over, hooked my arm under my mother and she leaned heavily on me.

  “We’re going to run a nice bath and you’re going to feel much better.” Celeste’s voice was soothing and practiced, like she’s nursed hundreds of people from the depths of despair.

  “Oh, you don’t want to see me naked, dear. Please.”

  “I’m going to run the bath. Isaac will help you undress.”

  I helped my mother to the bathroom. Celeste pulled my mother’s vomit-stained hair from her messy ponytail and turned on the faucet. She filled the tub and dropped a dollop of body wash in, helping it foam with her hand. I helped my mother, who was getting lethargic and heavy in my arms to rinse her mouth. I gave Celeste a look, and she immediately helped me peel my mother’s clothes from her.

  Like a babe, I dropped my mother into the warm bath and Celeste grabbed a cup from the kitchen. We washed her, without a word. The only sound of her weeping and apologizing, barely audible through her slurs. Celeste and I reassured her that everything would be alright.

  “Misses Thompson, would you like me to braid your hair?”

  My mother opened her eyes then, and they looked at each other for the first time. “Why are you doing this for me, a drunk old hag? You must be disgusted.”

  “For one, you’re not old. And two, I am absolutely not disgusted. Everyone deserves kindness,” Celeste smiled.

  “Not me.”

  “Well, I’m always right, and I say you do. Just ask your son.”

  “You’re perfect for each other, then. My sons a know-it-all, too.”

  Celeste grinned and poured some water over my mother's temple, massaging the conditioner from her hair. “Isaac is an insufferable know-it-all.”

  I lifted Mum so that her neck lay on the lip of the tub. Celeste squeezed her hair with a towel and braided it quickly. We could both sense my mother was close to passing out and I wasn’t sure I could carry her dead weight all the way to her bed by myself. Celeste helped me, without question or thought.

  After tucking her in, we went into the corridor and finally looked at each other for the first time that day. I had been watching her tend to my mother. Glancing over at her to find that watching her selfless kindness made me love her harder. Hurt piercing when she didn’t look back at me. “I’m going to go check on the animals. Will you stay here? Watch to make sure she doesn’t vomit?”

  “Of course.” Celeste reached out and touched my arm.

  I flinched, stepped away. I didn’t want her pity. “I’m sorry.”

  Celeste reached for my hand, ignoring my boundaries. “Stop apologizing. It must run in the family. She needs you, and you need help. Go do what you have to do, and I’ll watch her.” She squeezed my hand. I walked away from her without saying anything else. What else was there to say?

  CHAPTER 42

  Celeste

  After a few minutes of watching Mum, I took a walk around the cottage. She’d been on a bender, for sure. There were cups and bottles of booze left on windowsills, above bookcases, and next to a pile of laundry in the hallway. The living room and kitchen carried the brunt of her relapse. I knelt and gathered all of the open photo albums she had strewn across the living room floor into a neat pile under the television console. I resisted the urge to look through them, even though images of Isaac as a child and handsome young adult piqued my curiosity more than I could bear.

  Mum’s even snoring was loud enough to hear from the kitchen, so I pulled on her apron and got to work on all the cups I’d gathered. I searched the cottage for plates and cutlery, collecting it all and washing them under scalding water and lemony hand soap. She’d run out of dish soap, so this was the next best option.

  When Isaac came back in, he passed by me but didn’t look at me. “How are the animals?” I asked.

  “I have to go to the store and buy some feed and supplies. But they’re alright.”

  “If you’re going out, maybe you should go to the grocery store. I’ll make a chicken soup for when she wakes up. We need dish soap.”

  Isaac opened the fridge and was met with the same rancid emptiness I’d found a few moments earlier. He agreed, grabbed a knife from a drawer and went out back again. By the time I was done washing the dishes he reappeared with a chicken, head severed, already plucked, and bled.

  Horror. I was horrified. “Did you just?”

  “Yeah.” He dropped the poor thing onto a cutting board.

  “I didn’t know you were that kind of country.�
� I poked the bird with the end of a fork.

  He chuckled. “My grandmother hated doing the killing. And my grandfather taught me young.”

  After he prepped the bird for me, he left and I continued to work, building a stock with what I could find in the vegetable garden out back and a lonely bouillon cube I found in the fridge. It would have to do. I left the stock on a simmer, grabbed the cleaning supplies from a closet, and got to work.

  Isaac and I didn’t speak or cross paths all afternoon. I had the vague sense that he was avoiding me completely because he simply didn’t want me there. I thought I should have felt hurt by that, instead I felt calm. Because I knew he needed me. We would talk when he was ready. I couldn’t begin to imagine the kinds of wounds that were ripping open while we fixed up his childhood home and waited for his mother to sober up.

  He stayed outside and I caught him, shirt drenched in sweat, while I tidied and watered the plants on the windowsill. An ache, deep in my chest, nagged me to go out there and be close to him. To comfort him.

  I suppressed a rogue urge to kiss him and hold him.

  “Hello, Celeste, right?” I jumped at the invasion to my thoughts.

  “Yes.” I wiped my hands on her apron and turned to face Isaac’s Mum. After a long sleep, she looked almost the way she had when we’d first met. Her eyes were still sunken, and she looked a little gray around the edges.

  “I’m sorry if I said anything nasty before. I’m not myself when I drink.”

  “No need to apologize. I’ll get you a bowl of soup.”

  “You made this for me?” her voice was raspy and hoarse from all the alcohol.

  “And me.” I grinned, attempting to lighten the mood.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Did Isaac kill one of my birds?”

  I nodded and she frowned.

  “He better not have killed my good egg layer.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I set a bowl for her and myself. “He should be here soon. He’s getting cleaned up. I don’t know what he did in the field, but he did something all day.”

  “I see you did too. Thank you.” She said, but I knew she meant for much more than just the soup and the housework. We left it at that, though. This woman deserved her dignity, and I had no desire to hear her grovel her thanks. She blew the steam from the spoonful of soup she had hovering in front of her lips. “So, I have to ask, how did you end up here?”

  “Isaac and I were at an interview when the neighbor called him. I came along because I didn’t want him to waste time driving me home.” But that was a white lie, so I told the truth, “And I wanted to help.”

  “Is he angry at me?” Her gaze dropped to her bowl and stayed there, shame coloring her cheeks.

  “Of course not. He’s just glad you’re safe now.”

  Mum sighed in relief. “So, are you and my son, together?”

  I hesitated.

  That seemed to lift her spirits and she sent me a wicked grin.

  “No,” I said finally.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re just his type, I can’t imagine he’s not head over heels in love with you.”

  I burnt my tongue avoiding the truth.

  “Oh, I see.” She drew out each syllable. “Isaac, my son, he’s afraid of commitment. I’m afraid that’s my fault."

  The thought that it was me, that I was afraid of commitment, rattled around in my head. I squirmed under the way she watched me avoid the conversation with a grin on her face. I let her think whatever she wanted… but my resolve about Isaac and the sex, and the relationship, and the whatever we were… it wasn’t quite as solid and resolute as the way Mum nodded and raised her brows while she ate. She saw a woman in love unrequited, and I wanted to tell her it was the other way around. But it wasn’t. That didn’t feel true. So, I changed the subject.

  Isaac walked in on me spilling the story of how I defied my parents and went into HRI instead of home-making and interior design. He ladled a bowl for himself and ate, leaning against the counter and watching me with a curious fascination. He’d heard this story before, so I thought the look was misplaced.

  “Well, as mothers, we try to do our best.”

  I winced at how she must have read into my complaining about my mother as a reflection on her. “You know. For a long time I didn’t know any better. But, moving away and being on my own, I can see my life as if from an outsider’s perspective. And I see now that my mom is doing her best. She’s doing what she knows, and is it perfect? No. But I think one day she and I will be able to have a relationship like you and Isaac. I’m just now learning that I need to love her for who she is, not who I want her to be. When she does the same in return, we can heal.” The words tumbled out from a deep part of me that had been healing over the last few months. A sense of closure etching over the scars of my heart.

  When I glanced up at Isaac, I felt another piece of my heart unsteady, and loud. I looked away and smiled at Mum, who had a dark sad expression across her face. It was time for them to chat. “I’m going to shower and let you two catch up. Goodnight, Misses Thompson.”

  “Call me Mum. All of Isaac’s friends do.”

  “Goodnight, Mum.” I don’t know why, but I felt the urge to kiss her cheek. I did and she squeezed me tightly in her arms. I wasn’t halfway down the hall before I heard her speak and Isaac shush her.

  §Isaac§

  “She’s perfect for you.”

  I shushed her. God this woman had absolutely no training in subtlety. Celeste was hardly down the hall. “Mum, she doesn’t like me like that.”

  “Oh, psh, I’m not blind. I can tell when someone’s got a crush,” she raised an accusing brow.

  “Well, your skills are lacking. We ended things, recently actually, because I told her I loved her and she said she doesn’t feel the same.”

  Mum’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I don’t know about that, dear. I see the way she looks at you. I talked to her all evening. She just needs time. She’s only just figured out that she can be herself.”

  “I should never have started anything to begin with. We have to work together. It was stupid. And reckless.” I started wiping down the counters and busying myself with prepping some of the vegetables I’d taken from the garden to stock the fridge.

  “I imagine that’s pretty awkward now.”

  “Not really. We were always good at separating the sex from the work.” My Mum chose mercy and didn’t point out my blatant lie. It was far more awkward being around her right now. I wanted to touch her and kiss her and show her the places I used to get caught being bad.

  Worse, I wanted to be comforted by her. I was exhausted, mentally, and I wanted to share my bed. Let Celeste into the darker corners of my life I hadn’t yet let her see.

  It was hard to see her chatting with my mother as if they were old friends. A glimpse at the life I wanted. Mum took to washing the dishes and I grabbed a towel to dry. “What happened?” I asked finally, after pouring her a cup of tea.

  Her gaze dropped to the scorching liquid, her frown splitting my heart. “My boyfriend broke up with me.”

  I didn’t even know she was dating. “Alright, tell me about it.”

  She covered her face, a telltale sign that she was deeply embarrassed and hurting. “We met online. He was really nice. But he got impatient when I said, ‘no,’ after two months. I didn’t think two months was a long time. And I wasn’t ready. And my therapist said to wait. But he didn’t want to.” Her voice cracked.

  “Mum?”

  “He didn’t, Isaac. He never touched me like that. He’s a good man. But, he wanted to have sex and I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know the apps were for sex. I thought… I thought I’d find someone and have a go at a relationship again. I thought I could fall in love properly, you see.”

  “He’s a shit, Mum. A good man would have waited for you.”

  “Would you stay if a woman might never have sex with you?”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re letting him and your feelings about the past
manipulate you. You’re not wrong for refusing sex. You’ve had sex with others. If he’s a piece of shit, that’s on him. Your gut was telling you he wasn’t right for you.”

  “He offered me a glass of wine and when I said, ‘no.’ He said I was strong and I could have just one drink. That I wouldn’t be so nervous if I had a drink.”

  I’d kill him. I’d find the man and drown him in a tub of liquor. I didn’t tell her that. She didn’t need my wrath right then. I forced my voice to soften. “Let’s call your sponsor? Get you back on track?” She nodded and wiped the streams from her cheeks.

  “I really thought he liked me.” Her voice lilted up. “I get lonely, but I can’t just screw around.”

  “Runs in the family apparently,” I cut dryly. We both laughed at that.

  “Sometimes I look at you and I thank Granny for having raised you right. You’re a good man. But you always did fall in love first. Just like Granny.”

  “You taught me how to love, too.” I pulled her into my arms, and kissed the top of her head as she stifled a sob. It wasn’t the embrace of a mother comforting her son. Instead, it was the opposite. It might always be like this for us. And that was just fine for me. I was alright with my mother being my friend and ally. I was alright being the one to hold her while she wept. I was okay being the strength when she was lacking.

  We held hands and talked about the animals, some town gossip, and planned to see each other more often for a while. She promised me that she’d stop keeping secrets from me, and I kissed her goodnight.

  Dropping into my childhood bed was a small comfort after a long day of uncomfortable silence. Before long I heard the telltale click of my doorknob.

  “Are you awake?”

  Celeste McAlaster.

  I contemplated pretending I was asleep.

  “Do you want to talk?”

  I held my breath. Illuminated by the moonlight pouring in from the open window, I could see her dark figure approach my bed. My old band tee-shirt hung all the way to her thighs, one of her shoulders peeking out from where the neckline hung. Every teenage boy’s fantasy incarnate. “Can I lay with you?”