by Sloan Storm
I crossed the threshold into the room, my legs heavy with resistance. Each step, brought more and more of her surroundings to my awareness. Everywhere I looked, I felt the familiar, dull ache of grief in my throat. For several minutes, I meandered around the small room, picking up sad mementos and trinkets of her existence.
At last, I made my way around the foot of her bed and took a seat there as I so often did. But, no sooner had the springs in the mattress stopped squeaking than I once again doubled over and wept.
As I cried, the myriad of troubles I faced streaked across my mind, casting shadows on it like sinister ghouls. Unless I could figure something out—and soon—I would be completely bankrupt. For years, I’d fought the notion of ever giving in and declaring myself unable to pay my bills.
I squeezed my scalp, raking my nails in, and screamed, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Shaking and sobbing, I moaned, “Ohhh, ohhhh, ohhhh…”
How could it have come to this? What had I ever done to anyone? I had only ever done the right thing my entire life and now, in the span of a few months, my existence was in ruins.
How could Gabe have been so cruel?
I considered the question for several moments, but realized that it didn’t matter. It was only a matter of time now. Soon, I’d be completely unable to pay all of my bills, including my rent. If I didn’t figure something out, I’d be on the street.
Utterly exhausted, I leaned backward and fell into the mattress. Tomorrow I would have to figure out a way to survive, but for tonight I only wanted to sleep.
GABE
I sat at my desk with my elbows propped up on it. Eyes closed, I neared my second hour of deliberation about what to do with the future of the Link Protocol.
The casual attitude I’d adopted while on my solo retreat in St. Barth’s had obviously abandoned me when it mattered most. Without thinking, I’d done the equivalent of deflating three good tires because one had gotten a flat.
Looking back, I felt as if I tried my best to understand and help Fiona. But the distance she continued to put between us and the wall she’d kept up was more than I could stand to deal with at that time.
And now, more than ever, I faced an absolute avalanche of problems.
The first of these was the fact that the investors were still expecting an update on the progress of the Link Protocol and the clinical trials. And in spite of knowing that it would take any ordinary physicist months to catch up to Fiona’s level of creativity and brilliance, I’d let my emotions get the better of me, jeopardizing the entire deal.
After a deep exhale, I leaned back in my chair for a moment and looked up towards the ceiling. Things couldn’t have been much worse than they were right then. Not only would the timing of trying to string along the project without Fiona’s involvement be inconvenient, but it would also likely cost me billions of dollars.
But as bad as the financial impact would be, with each hour that crept by, I began to wonder if I’d completely destroyed what existed between us.
“Jesus,” I muttered, as I stood from my chair. I slid my hands into the pockets of my pants and made my way around my desk.
Why wouldn’t she let me help her? Was I such a terrible person, lover, or friend?
I couldn’t understand anything about it. It made less than no sense to me, It was completely irrational and unlike everything I’d ever come to know about Fiona.
Leaving aside the fact that she’d rejected my overtures to help, the fact that Fiona had rejected me was equally baffling.
Simply put, that had never happened to me with a woman.
As the minutes ticked by, I began to feel more and more as if her lack of presence here at the lab, while important, paled in comparison to not having her in my life. I hadn’t been with another woman since she and I first got involved.
Somehow, some way, she’d managed to get under my skin, and now what it felt like to miss her was something very unfamiliar to me.
In fact, the more time that passed from our last discussion until now, the more obvious it became to me that it wasn’t her work here that mattered most.
She did.
I had little doubt that she’d be unwilling to hear me out, that is, unless I could convince her to come back somehow.
It was a difficult proposition.
On the one hand, I needed Fiona’s intelligence and determination to see the project through to its completion and to present the findings to the investors. But on the other, I had to find some way to make my feelings clear to her. By the way we left things, it was obvious I’d done a shitty job of all of it so far.
I literally had no time left to come up with a solution. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, there really was only one option. Just then, I made my way back to my desk, picked up the phone and dialed Holly.
“Yes, Gabe?” she asked, as she answered.
“Holly, please get hold of Mrs. Jameson in Human Resources right away.”
“All right, Gabe. Should I tell her what this is in reference to?”
“Yes, it’s about Fiona.”
“Okay, I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you my dear.”
Less than a minute later, my intercom crackled to life.
“Yes, Holly?” I answered.
“Mrs. Jameson for you.”
I picked up the phone and began to speak to her.
“Yes, Mr. Hawkins--I understand that you wanted to discuss Fiona Matthews.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
In the background, I heard the sound of her moving things around on her desk.
“All right then, I’ll just pull up her file and…”
“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Jameson.” I said, as I interrupted her. “What I have to tell you won’t take long.”
Her attention shifted away from whatever it was she was doing. With focus in her voice, she replied, “Very well, sir.”
As she spoke, I detected an uneasiness in her tone.
“Mrs. Jameson,” I began, as I attempted to calm her fear. “You aren’t to blame for what’s happened to Fiona. I won’t be holding you responsible in any way for the leave of absence, so please don’t worry about it.”
After clearing her throat, Mrs. Jameson replied, “Um, well thank you sir. If you don’t mind me asking, what’s happened to Fiona?”
“I fired her.”
“Oh dear, I see. Well, I… I-I will make the necessary adjustments to her personnel file.”
“No, no… Mrs. Jameson, I just need you to listen to me for a minute.”
“Okay, sir.”
I exhaled and began to explain what happened. “Mrs. Jameson, you see, I fired Fiona in a moment of bad judgment. What I’d like to do is offer her old position back to her and double her salary as compensation for it.”
“Oh… A-All right then, sir. I’ll make a note here in her file. You’ll let me know of course, when she returns so that I can finalize the information.”
“Actually, Mrs. Jameson,” I began, as I leaned back in my chair and raked my hand through my hair. “You’ll be the one contacting Fiona and offering her the old position back with the revised terms as I laid them out.”
After a considerable pause, Mrs. Jameson cleared her throat. “Well, what should I tell her specifically? We may have an issue with wrongful termination here and…”
I waved her off. “Just come up with a workable solution. I’ll leave it to you to decide.”
She nodded. “Yes sir, all right then, Mr. Hawkins, I’ll take care of it right away.”
“Thank you Mrs. Jameson, see that you do.” I replied. “Please let me know the outcome as soon as possible.”
“Yes sir. I will.”
FIONA
With a massive financial crisis looming, I’d spent the better part of the past several days contacting each of my creditors as well as the funeral home, trying to work out some payment arrangements.
No matter what, bankruptcy simply wasn’t an optio
n for me. I promised myself that, no matter what it took, I would see my financial obligations through and find a way to survive in the meantime. Even so, my strength and resolve in dealing with these issues began to take a greater toll on me with each day that passed.
Even worse was the fact I had no way to move out of the apartment my grandmother and I shared. As a result, I lived with a nonstop reminder of the hole her loss created in my life.
I hadn’t been eating. Or sleeping.
It’s one thing to mentally prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario, but it’s something else entirely to have to deal with it in real life.
But, that’s exactly what I faced now…
A life full of lonely days and a financial burden I’d never be able to overcome without a miracle.
As for Gabe, he hadn’t contacted me since the day he fired me. And as much as I needed it, somewhere inside of me resisted the urge to pick up the phone and try to reason with him. It’s not as if I could, even if I wanted to do so. Gabe could be far from reasonable at times. Based on the way we left things between us, I had little doubt that my pleas would fall on deaf ears.
I sat at the kitchen table thinking as I ate the meal my grandmother and I enjoyed the most, pot roast.
Everything tasted different now. The same meal that would have warmed me, nourished me, and delighted my taste buds now seemed bland and borderline repulsive.
I suppose that’s what grief does to a person, but I’d never experienced it to this level, even after the loss of my family when I was a child. And now, suddenly, I’d lost the two most important people in my life in the span of a few days.
One of them, of course, I would never get back.
When it came to Gabe, however, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to any longer.
We’d shared some wonderful times together, and he’d helped me grow in ways I never had the belief I could. But when he fired me without cause and with such extreme callousness, I was left with no alternative but to close off my heart to him. Not doing so would have put me in a place where I wouldn’t have been able to function whatsoever.
I exhaled and leaned over my plate. Forcing another forkful of the salted, gravy-coated meat into my mouth, I chewed and swallowed it down absentmindedly.
After I finished my bite, I reached for my napkin, but as I did, the email notification on my phone chimed. I reached for it, flipping it over and swiping it on as I drew it towards my face.
Over the next minute or so, I read an email from Mrs. Jameson.
She’d been instructed to reinstate me in my position at twice the salary I had before. Apparently, there had been a disagreement amongst the Board of Directors, and Gabe had voluntarily offered to bring me back.
Yet, as excited as that should have made me, I had a sense of uneasiness as I read the email.
As I continued on, I confirmed my suspicions.
It seems Gabe felt the need to attach a stipulation to my reinstatement. In order to receive the ‘generous’ offer, I would have to sign a statement indicating I had no intention of filing charges for wrongful termination.
Of course, I’d considered it in the days since Gabe had done what he did, but short of having several hundred thousand dollars to hire a competent attorney, there was very little chance I’d see a single dime from such a lawsuit. But just the fact that Gabe felt the need to include that as a condition of my return indicated to me that he at least thought I might have a case.
Pursing my lips I stared at the small screen until it went dim and the words faded to blackness. With all of the money at stake in such a lawsuit, I realized it might be far simpler to find a lawyer to take on such a case.
It would certainly humiliate Gabe.
On the other hand, the wheels of justice turned slowly, and it could be months, more likely years, before I saw a single dime from the case. In the meantime, I would lose everything without a job and a steady source of income.
Clutching the phone in my hand, I stood from the kitchen table. After wiping my mouth with my napkin, I dropped it without thought on top of my dinner plate and turned to walk down the hall towards my grandmother’s bedroom.
As I entered, I allowed my eyes to take in the surroundings with as little emotion as possible. I’d cried and sobbed for countless hours in this room since she’d died. Now, with this decision at hand, what I needed more than anything were not tears, but clarity.
I walked over to her bed and reached for an old family photo from her nightstand. I’d looked at it hundreds of times over the years, but never with the focus I had in that moment.
Reaching down towards the picture, which was taken not long before my family’s death, I touched the clear plastic that coated it with the tip of my fingernail. I traced the ghostly figures of my past and wondered what they had to tell me about my future.
What would my parents say to me if they were still alive today?
Would they be proud of what I’d become and what I’d done to succeed? Or would they think less of me, thinking that perhaps I’d sold myself to Gabe to get ahead?
I sighed as I placed the photo back down on the nightstand once again.
The truth was that it didn’t matter anymore. They were all gone and I was left here.
Alone.
The only opinion that mattered any longer was my own.
Realizing that, I plopped down on my grandmother’s mattress. The old, worn springs jostled me for a few seconds, until I came to a stop. Lifting my phone to my face once more, I began to type my response to Gabe’s offer.
Dear Mrs. Jameson,
Thank you for contacting me on Mr. Hawkins behalf and offering me my old position back at Hawkins Biotech. I’ve reviewed the terms. With one exception, I have no issues with them and am happy to return.
The condition I have that must be met is that Mr. Hawkins must not summon me to his office without the presence of a third party.
If he is unwilling to agree to this stipulation, I’ll have no choice but to reject the offer.
Regards,
Fiona Matthews
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I watched as the slender fingers of her hand grabbed the inside of the limo door a split second before her leg appeared through a slit in her dress. I could see the muscles in it flex as she made her way inside. Her legs were long, lean, slightly tanned and obviously fit. I don’t suppose I could have hoped for more, especially on such short notice.
As she took a seat across from me, I allowed my eyes to travel wherever they saw fit. Aside from her tempting legs, she had ample tits, a great ass and a helluva smile. She was a damn beauty, that’s for sure. The picture hardly did her justice. This was going to be a good first night. An unexpected and enjoyable end to an otherwise pain-in-the-ass day.
“Mr. Sinclair,” she began, as she raised her hand and draped it across her chest. “I’m really sorry about what happened out there a moment ago. Please believe me when I say I didn’t mean to offend you in any way.”
Just
as she finished speaking, the car lurched forward. The tires squeaked on the slick surface of the tarmac and in that same instant, her purse fell from her lap, spilling its contents onto the floor in the process.
“Oh my God!” she gasped.
For a split second, I almost reached down to help her, but when I got a look at her cleavage, I thought better of it. While I got an eyeful, she corralled a stack of paper and an assortment of other random knickknacks and jammed them back into her bag.
Returning to her seat, she flung a handful of her blond hair out of her eyes. It came to rest in an even split along her shoulder, with half of it covering her breast and the other half concealed from my view as it draped down her back. A hint of crimson flushed to her cheeks as I studied her attempt to compose herself. She flashed a closed-lipped grin at me once the fidgeting ceased.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” she began. “I’m so sorry about that, Mr. Sinclair, about what happened when you got off the plane, I’m just… sorry. Can we start over?”
Spreading my legs, I unfolded my hands from their position in my lap and covered my kneecaps with my palms.
“Sure thing,” I replied. “We can do that.”
“Oh, thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” As she spoke, she broke eye contact with me just long enough to start fishing around inside of her purse once again. Within a few seconds, she produced a handful of paper, now tattered at the edges from the mishap moments before.
“What do you have there?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, as she jumped in with eagerness. Clutching the half-folded stack in her hand she smiled and said, “Well, I… I’ve compiled a list of activities based on the proposal I sent you. You know, stuff you might be interested in seeing or doing in town when you’re not working.”
Raising my hand, I motioned for her to pass the information to me. I took the papers from her, spun them around and placed them in my lap for a closer examination.
“Got a pen?” I asked, as I started to scan the list.
