by Ali Parker
I sat down in the chair and pulled out the book, flipping to the marked page. I thought I had been on a different section, and then I remembered Elon had said he’d read to her when he came. That was sweet. I knew it was, but it didn’t take away the pain and anger inside of me. I started to read where he left off, hoping the mindless task of it would clear my heart and my mind. However, the more I read, the louder the sounds of her heart monitor got until I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I closed the book and leaned forward, putting my face in my hands and groaning.
Everything seemed so daunting from work, from being a mother, and especially from Elon. I had really reached a point where I was beginning to deal with knowing my mother was never going to get better. I was starting to be okay with the idea of letting her go, and then he’d paid for another month of support. It complicated things and made me second guess myself. If she had the support, I didn’t want to take her off, especially if I didn’t have to figure out how to pay for it all. But that went back on everything I was trying to accomplish. I was trying to move forward, and for me, it was baby steps, but those steps were getting bigger as every day passed. This just set me back an entire month, the agony of watching my mother struggle through every day, machines pumping her heart and lungs while she lay unable to move or talk. Hell, I didn’t even know if she was still in there at all.
“You look like you could use a drink,” Dalton said, standing in the doorway with flowers.
“Hey,” I said. “Those are pretty. I’m sure Mom would love them.”
“These beautiful rainbow roses are for you, my dear,” he said, walking over and handing them to me. “These purple lilies are for your momma.”
“You are too sweet.” I smiled. “How did you know I was going to be here?”
“You weren’t at home, and you don’t do anything else, so I figured I would find you here,” he said. “You’re a predictable creature, and that isn’t an insult, maybe just a warning.”
“A warning.” I laughed. “A warning to you because you can always find me?”
“No,” he said, putting the lilies in a vase. “A warning to yourself that maybe it’s time to shake things up a little, step outside of your box, and I don’t mean the one in-between your legs. I mean the one that keeps you held captive like a prisoner, unable to see the good things around you when you have them. The one that makes you see a gift as a bad thing.”
“I’m assuming you’re not talking about my cooking.” I chuckled.
“No, little miss,” he said, walking over and sitting next to me. “I’m talking about Elon.”
“How do you know about Elon?”
“He called me in his office looking like someone just shot his dog,” he said, holding my hands. “The man was a complete wreck. He showed me the invoice, told me how he came down here this morning, held your momma’s hand, read to her from your book, talked to her a little bit.”
“And then overstepped his boundaries,” I said.
“What boundaries?” he said. “What boundary is there that says he can’t try to do something to make you happy? To make your and Mikey’s life a little bit easier? What boundary is that because if you created it, girl, you’re on the wrong track to a life of happiness. It’s just money. It doesn’t put down the years of hard work, struggle, and independence you’ve built your world around. It’s a chance for you to make things right in your life. You stayed from that job with him, and he was doing something to make up for the sacrifice you made for him. That is not a bad thing.”
“To you, it’s not a bad thing,” I said, shaking my head.
“Amanda,” he said, getting serious in tone. “I have known you a long time, and in that length of time, I’ve seen this strong girl become an even stronger woman. What I haven’t seen was any man ever treat you the way you deserved to be treated, until Elon. No one has ever done something like that for you, for Mikey too. Don’t think he didn’t know that lessening that financial burden here wouldn’t help you at home too. He’s a smart man, and he knew exactly what he was doing.”
“I told him it wasn’t his burden, but he did it anyway and without even talking to me about it,” I argued.
“So,” he said. “So, what? He didn’t talk to you first before paying down some serious debt in your life. For giving you a month of reprieve, for giving Momma another month of life. If you think he did it for himself, girl, you are crazy. He did it for you. He could have bought a car, jewelry, whatever he wanted, but this was more important to him than any of that stuff. He didn’t do this to be mean or make things harder for you.”
“I know that,” I sighed. “I know he didn’t have ill intent when he did this, that he meant well in his intentions, but that doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. Dalton, I was so close to coming to terms with my mother’s situation. I was so close to making a choice to let her go, to end this cycle that we’re all in with her. If he would have talked to me first, he would have known I didn’t want another month of support. But now that it is here, it weighs on my mind. It’s another month of questioning whether I’m making the right choice for her or not. When the money was gone, it made it easier to make a decision. It made it easier knowing the time had come, but with no need to rush things, I’m left to ask myself every day if I’m making the right choice, and every day, my answer is a different one. It’s a constant struggle inside of me, wanting so badly to have her back, to have hope that she’ll come back to me.”
“I know it is,” Dalton said, pulling me into a hug. “And no one, not me, not Elon, not Mikey, can make that decision for you. I’m sorry it made things harder on you. I’m sorry that this is another thing in your life you have to handle, but you don’t have to be alone when you do it.”
“I know,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks. “And I love you for that.”
“In the meantime,” Dalton said, standing up. “Elon’s head is so messed up, he’s giving time off to everyone on a project due very soon. Girl, you are going to have some work to bust out tomorrow when you go back.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You don’t know if you can what?” he asked, turning to me.
“I don’t know if I can go back there and face Elon after what’s happened,” I said. “I don’t know how I feel about it all, and I think that maybe a clean break is the only thing that’s going to fix this.”
“Well, I can’t make that decision for you, but I can tell you I think giving up would be a mistake.”
“It wouldn’t be giving up,” I said. “It would be moving on from something that obviously isn’t going to work, no matter how much I wanted it to.”
“And what would you do from there?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, turning the phone over in my hands. “I’m not sure where I would go from there. Everything is such a mess.”
“It’s a mess, but you’re controlling that mess,” he said.
“You’re right,” I replied, standing up and wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Would you mind visiting with her for a little bit. I need to go make a phone call.”
“Sure,” he said. “I came here to see her anyway. You just distracted me.”
“Right.” I chuckled.
I patted my mother on the head and picked up my phone, walking out of the room. Slowly, I made my way through the hospital and down to the lobby. I walked outside into the sunshine and turned right, stepping down a stone path into a garden planted in the courtyard around back. I used to come out here when my mother first came to the hospital, sitting on the stone bench and just taking in the quiet of the area. There was never anyone there, and I would read the inscriptions on the stone benches, thinking about the people who donated them, wondering what their stories were. It felt like so long ago, but it really hadn’t been. I felt like I had aged twenty years in the span of two, and I was tired of fighting everything in my life.
I wanted security for me and Mikey, for my mother, for everything in my life. I wanted to feel
whole again, to try to move forward with my life, no matter what I decided to do with my mother. What I thought I had with Elon didn’t feel real anymore, and all the excitement had faded away. My heart hurt, feeling almost betrayed by him, wanting to forgive but remembering everything that was going on in my life. I sat down on the bench and held my phone in my hands, staring at the water running down the stone sculpture in the middle of the courtyard. I wasn’t sure how many coins I had thrown in there over the last couple of years, but I was pretty sure most of them were from me. I shook my head and dialed my phone, pulling it to my ear.
“Diamond Marketing, how may I direct your call?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to speak to Evan in Recruitment.”
Chapter 44
Elon
I stood in my living room all dressed for work, staring blankly out the window at the city. It was waking up, and I could see the cars starting to pile up in the streets below. I had called and texted Amanda, but she hadn’t responded, and I had this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I would see her at work, but there was something about the day that felt off. I sighed, shoving my phone in my pocket and grabbing my briefcase before heading down to the car. I stared out the window as it drove through the streets, passing by the large, looming buildings overhead. My drive to work was always my time to get my head straight, to build my motivation for the day, but on that particular day, it wasn’t working. The skies may have been clear and sunny, but I felt like I had a rain cloud following me around.
When I got to work, I noticed Amanda hadn’t come in, and my heart sank a little. I went to my office and sat down, trying to get focused on work, but it was no use. I couldn’t seem to get my mind wrapped around it. After about an hour of trying, I got up and grabbed my wallet, letting my secretary know I would be back later. I walked to the pit and looked out over the team, watching them work diligently.
“Everyone, could I have your attention? I’m going to be gone until the afternoon. If you need anything, please talk to Dalton or your direct supervisor,” I said. “And keep up the good work.”
I left the office and started to walk with no real destination in mind. I just wanted to clear my head, make myself understand what had happened the day before. I wound up in a small park off the beaten path, sitting down on a narrow stone bench overlooking a lush, sculptured lawn with small trees and bushes planted along the edges. I sat for a long time, trying to run things through my mind. There was no one else around. It was just me, the birds, and my thoughts, but still, I couldn’t seem to work out the issues plaguing me. Amanda was special. She was the kind of woman I had hoped my entire life to meet. She was the girl who stopped me in my tracks every time she smiled, and I couldn’t even get her to call me back.
What had I done that was so bad? I had thought about the quality of life for her, for her son, and for her mother. I did something that, from the sound of it, no one else had ever done for them before. I thought she would have been happy, even relieved, but instead, she was angry and pushed me away as fast as she could. I needed to talk to someone because my brain was not going to let me move forward until I got it out. I picked up my phone and called Marcus, knowing he would listen to me talk.
“Hey, man,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“Withering away in my own self-pity,” I said.
“Okay.” He chuckled. “Where are you? I hear birds.”
“I don’t know, some small park over near my office,” I said. “I took a walk to try to clear my head and ended up here. I figured I’d call and see if you had time to meet me for lunch. I could really use your ear right now, and I don’t think I can go back to work until I’ve worked all of this out.”
“Sounds deep,” he said. “Meet me at the deli by your offices. I’m in that part of town.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there in five.”
I headed over to the restaurant and found Marcus in the back, already holding our sandwiches. We ate there so often, he knew what I wanted without me being there. I tried to force a smile and plopped down in the chair across from him.
He took one look at my face and lifted his eyebrows. “You look like hell. Okay, go ahead. Spill it. What’s going on?”
“So, Amanda and I made up enough to work together,” I said, going back to the beginning. “But things quickly changed. We ended up sleeping together one night in my office.”
“I knew it,” Marcus said, shaking his head.
“That’s not the bad part,” I replied. “So, we went on a date. I went to her son’s birthday party, and during all of that, I found out her mom was on life support, and the whole reason she was thinking about taking the job from Diamond, the one she ended up turning down, was because she couldn’t afford her mother’s care.”
“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” he said.
“So yesterday morning, I went to visit her mom, trying to figure out how to help,” I said. “While I was there, I paid the back balance on the account and put enough down to get her through another month. I thought if I could take the financial stress off of Amanda, maybe it would help her come to terms with what to do about her mom.”
“That was nice of you,” he said.
“That’s what I thought,” I replied. “But when I got back and told her, she fucking flipped out on me, and now she won’t talk to me, answer my texts, nothing.”
Marcus sat there eating his sandwich, shaking his head. I unwrapped mine, giving him a minute to process everything. I knew he was going to tell me that he’d warned me, but what I was waiting for was what came after that, the part where he told me what I should do.
“I was worried about you getting involved with her,” he sighed. “Nothing against her. I’m sure she’s a great girl, but office romances never work. They always end up in a fiery display of hate followed by you not focusing on what’s really important. Don’t you have a big project going on?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I couldn’t wrap my head around anything other than her, so I went for a walk. The team’s back there now working on everything. I got the supervisor to cover because Amanda wasn’t in yet.”
“So, you get in a fight with your ad manager, and now neither of you is there to run the team?” he said. “Dude, you need to seriously get your head out of your ass.”
“I know,” I said. “But I don’t know how to do it. This girl has gotten to me in a way I’ve never felt before. She’s been twisted into my mind, and I screwed things up without even realizing I was doing something wrong in the first place. I still don’t understand how something so thoughtful turned me into this monster, treating her like she was a charity case or something. That’s what she said, that I had made her my project or something. It’s incredibly frustrating. Marcus, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make this right with her.”
“First of all,” he said, “you’re trying to figure out the wrong part of the equation. I told you before to leave her alone, and you didn’t listen. Your priority should not be on how to fix your relationship. It should be on how to fix your company. You need to get your head back in the game and focus on your business, not this girl. You worked too hard for too long to let anything get in the way of that.”
“How am I supposed to just put her out of my mind like that?”
“By thinking about what will happen if you don’t,” he said angrily. “If you lose Amanda, you will go on. You will recover from a broken heart just like millions of people do all over the world. You will go out at night, drink too much, get laid, and then get back on track. If you lose your business, you’re going to be up shit’s creek, bro. I know you can’t completely lose the company, but I know you well enough to know that having your life’s work sitting there under someone else’s control would drive you insane.”
“I would lose my company,” I said, shaking my head. “If Clayton got control of my seat, he’d change things until it failed. Then, he’d break up that company and sell it off so fast, my head wou
ld spin. There would be nothing left of it when he was done. Everything I built, all the people who worked for me, would disappear, and I would be left holding the bag at the end of the day.”
“You see, man?” he said. “You can live without a girl, and your life as a whole will go on, but if you lose your seat at the table, you will watch everything you built, your empire, your legacy, crumble around you. That’s the unfortunate circumstances of owning a company. Sometimes, you have to make the hard choices and pick one side over something like love. I’m sorry. I know you haven’t ever really found a girl you wanted to be with like Amanda, but that’s the cold, hard truth.”
“Thank you, man,” I said. “I knew you’d give me advice that meant something. I don’t know what will happen with Amanda and me, but you’re right. I have a project that needs to be finished in two weeks, and its success will keep Clayton far from my chair unless he has something else up his sleeve. I need to focus my efforts and remember what I’ve sacrificed for over the last however many years.”
“I hate to tell you things like that,” he said. “You know I want you to be happy.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “You have my best interest at heart. I better get back to work and get things rolling. This project isn’t going to do itself, and that team needs my leadership.”
“Good,” he said. “Call me later.”
“I will,” I replied, standing up and walking out of the deli.
Marcus was right. I needed to get my mind back on track, like I had told myself from the beginning. If things worked out with Amanda, that would be great, but if they didn’t, I wouldn’t die. I would have to go on. There was no reason to let my company fall to the ground in the process. I went back to work and glanced at Amanda’s office. She still hadn’t come in, but from the look of the chaos in the place, I didn’t have time to figure out why. She hadn’t answered me all day anyway, so there was no reason for me to continue to call and text her.
