Miss Independent, Volumes 1 - 4

by Kiki Leach

  “I’ve been pretty good without it so far.”

  “It’s been a few months. Give it three or four more and you’ll be reaching for it quicker than I ever was.” As Vanessa saw Harold coming closer, only stopping a few times to greet other people around her office, she leaned in to keep him or anyone else from overhearing their conversation. “Listen, I hate to even do this, but I don’t have any other choice. I need you to call Adrian and tell him that I will see him. Get me a time, a date, and an address. Make it short, sour, and to the point with this fool as soon as you hear his voice. You do it any other way and he might start to get ideas, and I don’t need any of this shit right now. But the only way that I can stop this from continuing on is just to give him what he wants in that respect. At least, somewhat.”

  “Are you sure? This man almost seems like a stalker.”

  “He isn’t. He’s just a persistent, egotistical asshole like most men his age or any other age for that matter. Just do this for me, alright?”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks--”

  “Oh!” Samantha hollered, spinning in her chair. She pointed to the vase, then flipped her hand, palm out. “What about the flowers?”

  She looked back at them one last time. “Burn them. Rip every petal from each stem and burn them to the ground. I don’t want anything from that man hanging around this office for any reason – I don’t give a damn how beautiful they are.”

  “But they are just oh so very beautiful,” Harold replied in a sharp and scornful tone, just as Vanessa had placed her hand on the frame of her door. He slithered up beside her like any other snake in the grass and plastered a smarmy grin on his face. “Who are they from? We’re all friends here.”

  “Fuck off.” She told him.

  He laughed. “Is that any way to speak to the former senior editor of a globally known newspaper – one with friends still in high places and now your fellow coworker?”

  “No. But if you ask me, I do think it’s the best way to speak to a blackmailing piece of shit with no true regard for anyone but himself. Now like I said before, fuck, off.” She turned.

  “Ah.” He bobbed his head. “So your mother told you about that.”

  “You think that she wouldn’t? After everything we know about you and all I said to you before in the conference room, you bet your ass I’m going to start asking questions as to why the hell things have become as they are around here – just like I’m certain everyone else in this building has already done and even more certain everyone in this city will start doing once they learn you’re working here now too. You may think you have my mother by the neck, but no matter what you think you’re holding over our heads, she still runs this place. And even if you did decide to drop that story like a sudden hurricane erupting throughout the middle of Times Square, it sure as hell won’t matter anymore than learning that a man who practically hates women had to go crawling to one for a job. So what’s worse? Me fucking my teacher in college or you having your balls yanked by two women, and not in a remotely sexual way?” She eyed him up and down and lifted a brow. He fixed his jacket and clinched his teeth, taken aback by what she had said. “That’s what I thought. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  She raced back into her office and tried closing the door, but Harold slid inside before she could. He traveled to the other side near her bookcase and she rested her hand on her waist. She looked to the ceiling and prayed to God that she could keep her composure, lest he sue her for aggravated assault if she attacked him again. She kept the door open just in case she went back on her own word and marched over to her chair to sit back down. She crossed her legs and bent forward to place her hand on her mouse, pretending as if she were busy working on yet another article when in reality, she had finished most of her work for the day and was only waiting around to hear back about Adrian.

  “Why didn’t you keep the flowers?” he asked.

  She glared at him for a few seconds before turning her focus back to her computer screen. “They’re inappropriate.”

  “Not as inappropriate as your relationship with a college professional when you were barely over the age of eighteen.” He smirked. “Which is why you received them in the first place.”

  She sat back in awe and folded her arms. “You son of a bitch – you put them back into my office.”

  “I saw them come in, saw your assistant read the card and toss it… It wasn’t that hard to figure out from there. They brighten the room. And you look like you could use a little brightening up.”

  “You really are a piece of shit, you know that? How did Adrian even manage to befriend someone like you? I mean it took you all of, what, five hours before you finally decided to cave into who you really are? Shit like this is exactly why you don’t belong here. Aside from being a misogynistic prick, you’re also low down and dirty as hell. You get a rise out of giving other people shit for things you claim you wouldn’t normally do yourself, though we all know you WOULD if given the right amount of cash for it. Your integrity means shit which is why I know that the only reason you didn’t spill about me and Adrian is because the price wasn’t high enough. How much did your boss promise you, hmm? A one thousand dollar bonus? Two? How about three for every word printed instead of four or five?”

  “You’re not worth that much to me, not even close. He might be, but not you.”

  “Eat shit.”

  “I have been,” he replied. “For the last six or so years. It was time for a change which is how I ended up here.” He went over to her desk and began fiddling with her pens, nameplate and sticky notes.

  Her agitation grew when she saw him touching her things. She snatched her nameplate back and put it to the side. “I was worth enough for you to continuously put me on the cover of that rag year after every damn year, even when I was barely in the public eye.”

  “There’s no accounting for public taste, V. The bottom line is, even if I didn’t think you were worth it, they did. Between the car wrecks, public squabbles and meltdown worthy breakups, not to mention the coke lines in the bathroom, you were the notorious bad girl that everyone in this town and beyond was obsessed with learning absolutely everything they could. Nothing was off limits. Your every move was calculated by the press.”

  “I know that. And God knows I have never relished in it, but I want you to get one thing straight, alright? No matter whatever shit you wrote about me back then, I never did coke. That was bullshit then, and everyone who knows me well enough knows that story to be untrue. I saw a friend nearly OD during my senior year in the bathroom of our high school because she couldn’t stop putting that shit up her nose and I swore to myself out of all the things I did, I would NEVER touch it. Your people saw me with her one time outside of a club when she did a line and ran with that story. From the moment it was published, everyone in this city, including my mother thought I was losing weight and sleeping all of the time because of coke and not because of flat out depression.”

  Harold carelessly opened his arms and leaned forward. “I don’t care what you did back then, Vanessa. I don’t care about the coke, or the sex, or whatever else. The point is that you sold, and you sold well. And after this reunion incident, you’re once again the most talked about woman in the publishing industry. I’m sure the kid who sold that original story to the press is still sitting on the mounds of cash he got for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to get in touch with him again for this story, that’s if he bothered showing up to the reunion at all.”

  She peered. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When you and that, uh…” He snapped his fingers three times to help him think. “Nathaniel Taylor broke up, that story was sold to the press in its entirety by one of your classmates, I think.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  He shook his head. “They sold the original story to Page Six. We just ran with what they had already written and rephrased a few things to keep from getting sued.”

 
She thought back on who the person selling the story might have been. Her immediate instinct was Sheila, but couldn’t imagine that even she of all people would go out of her way to humiliate herself in such a public manner. After racking her brain, Vanessa pushed the thought aside as she felt it was no use to keep wondering about it. Especially since she had more pressing questions on her mind at the moment.

  She sat up in her chair and rested her arms on her desk, peering at Harold as he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes from her dress. “If what you said about me is true, the whole selling papers and people being obsessed with my every move, why bother keeping my relationship with Adrian a secret? I think you’re bullshitting on the payday and would’ve gotten a pretty penny to make me look as awful as possible.”

  “Maybe.” He sighed. “I was tempted. I was really tempted to just write the article, take the money and run out of town to Nova Scotia or someplace before it came out to the public.”

  “Then what stopped you?”

  “Adrian. You might think I’m a shitty person because of what I’ve said to you or what I’ve done in my former profession, but he doesn’t. I promised him I wouldn’t and I wanted to keep my word. So no matter how much I was offered, no amount of money was worth me losing a friend over.”

  “What if he had said to hell with all of this and asked you to print it? Even if I didn’t?”

  “Then there would be no question that it would have been front page news for weeks to come. And I would’ve remained senior editor with no chance of ever stepping foot inside these offices.” He grinned. “Still think your public humiliation is worth more than me taking this job?”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  He started backing toward her door. “Why don’t you get back to me on that?”

  As he left Vanessa’s office, she sat back to think, then turned off her computer and gathered her purse. Samantha walked in with a note in her hand and smiled warily.

  Vanessa dropped her shoulders. “I know that look. Sheila again, right?”

  “Yes. She said it was urgent this time, something about Nikki.”

  “Nikki?” She panicked. “Are you sure you heard her right–? Did she say what the concern was about?”

  “I heard her, but she wasn’t specific. So I don’t know if it was really something serious or if she was just trying to get you to finally talk to her before the day was over. Either way, I suggest you call her back at some point unless you want me to keep giving you messages from her tomorrow morning before you even have time to sit down and drink your coffee.”

  She took the note from Samantha and dropped it in front of her. “I can already feel another migraine coming on,” she said. “What about Adrian? Did you ever get him on the phone?”

  “I did. He sounded so arrogant.”

  “Every man I’ve ever slept with thinks his dick is equivalent to his own mindset, and I was the one dummy who always led them to believe it more than they should have. What did he say?”

  “That he’s willing to meet you at his apartment tonight in Queens. He said he’ll be up until midnight but hopes you stop by before then.” She handed over the address. “If you want, I can go with you to make sure everything turns out alright.”

  “It’s probably best if I go alone because I fear if I have someone there with me, the person will need to testify against me in court if something happens to him. But thanks.”

  Samantha returned to her desk and cleaned up her space for the day.

  Vanessa dropped back in her chair and dialed Sheila’s number, drained and maddened before she even heard the woman’s voice on the other end. Luckily she didn’t have to worry about that as Sheila had failed to answer her phone. She left her a quick message, then grabbed her purse and headed out the door.

  Part Seven

  Nikki headed home after a mass shopping spree around the city, with bags hanging from her arms to her neck, and slammed the door shut once she got inside. It seemed as if the only thing she could think of doing to get her mind off of the disaster of running into Sheila at the spa, was to shop until she had no more money left to spend. Luckily when she ran out of her own, she still had William’s card to help pick up the slack. Though she wasn’t sure what he would say once he saw the bill from every expensive store in Manhattan that she could find, since she had only asked to use it for a few things, such as the spa and hair salon.

  But the shopping hadn’t made her feel any better, not in a way that she was hoping it would. In fact, it made her feel worse than ever. It was the first day she had managed to snag off from The Bean in weeks – thanks to Melanie forcing her to work more hours than normally allotted, which she generally would’ve been grateful for, had the conditions not been to spend as little time communicating with Oscar as possible while there – and that relaxing day was now ruined by Sheila’s unnecessary interference and bitchy remarks, as per usual. What’s worse is that part of her knew, despite the callous way in which she often used her words, that there was some validity to them.

  For the last few weeks, she and William had managed to be inseparable, mostly due to the fact that he spent every moment free from work that he could with her, if not at the townhouse, then at the coffee shop, a place in which Oscar wasn’t thrilled upon seeing him enter every other morning and waiting in the same seat just to get a glimpse of a woman he still loved with his entire heart, but knew he could no longer have.

  Little did he know that Nikki had felt the same way as well. As much as she tried to deny her feelings, hoping that they would evacuate as soon as she thought of becoming serious with William, she still loved Oscar with every bit of her soul. But there was no chance he was leaving his wife for her, especially now that she had planned to stick around for the long haul in the hopes of improving their marriage; her company back in California be damned, though Melanie was still planning to take meetings and produce as much as she could from her new/old home in Manhattan.

  It never sat well with Nikki that Melanie had decided to stick around. Not only because it meant the end of her and Oscar, but it meant working with her on a daily basis, which made things uncomfortable for all three of them – especially when Melanie felt the need to ‘mark her territory’ so to speak with constant kisses on Oscar’s lips, or innuendos made about his ‘manhood’ before the store opened, just to see if she could rile up her rival. Nikki often felt sick at the words she used to describe him in bed, though she was also convinced that despite them, Melanie hadn’t even managed to see Oscar naked since her return to town, let alone given his dick the proper test drive she needed to see if it still worked for her the same as it had when they first got married.

  Nikki’s feelings for Oscar ran strong and deep, but William was the breath of fresh air she needed to move forward in her life, and regardless of the idea of fighting against their attraction to please others due to their massive age difference, she recognized it. He was a single father of one (though her views on having her own children had reverted, especially now that she and Oscar were no longer together), smart, handsome and more importantly, he had a bank account that ran the height of the Empire State Building. Nikki would never own up to his money being a draw in their relationship to some extent, just as she never would have admitted while being with Oscar that his constantly giving her money and paying for her rent and food was a partial incentive in keeping her with him. Their time spent together and lovemaking undeniably played a hand as well, but Nikki was never known to turn down a handout from anyone, especially when it came from someone who she felt was doing it out of the goodness of their heart and wasn’t exactly expecting something in return; though she never minded thanking them for their constant generosity in her own way.

  As she struggled to make her way through the foyer, every bag now falling from her hands and throat, she gave up and kicked a few to the side, and went trotting to the kitchen to search for a beer in the fridge. With the bags she had managed to take along the way, she sat them on the coffee
table in the living room, popped the cap on her beer and sat back. She kicked off her shoes and looked at every sack, mainly wondering what the hell she was going to do with much of what she had gotten. For the most part, Nikki wasn’t the kind of woman to constantly shop her troubles away, but it was either that or imagine Sheila’s face on a lamppost outside of the spa and kick it until her feet bled. The longer she thought about it, the more shopping seemed like the most reasonable and much safer option of the two.

  She sat there for a little over an hour unmoving, thinking of the day and her plans for later with William – what he would say once he saw her in one of the many dresses she had bought, and about Oscar and what he couldn’t if he had, as he was no longer allowed to, though he never really was in the first place. When the front door opened, she heard the bags she had left behind in the foyer sliding across the floor as someone’s foot had managed to move them out of the way. She lifted her head when the door creaked shut and lowered herself on the couch, hoping that it wouldn’t be Vanessa coming home to give her more unwanted grief over William and his constant ‘over gifting’.

  It was something they hadn’t agreed upon from the moment Vanessa realized that William’s way of showing affection for her lifelong best friend was through materialistic items rather than anything emotional. The one thing Vanessa never wanted to admit about Oscar, considering his marital status, was that she could never deny his feelings for Nikki, because he showed them in more ways than buying her things or giving money – such as the time he showed up at the magazine unannounced to give her the ‘what-for’ on their relationship.

  She had yet to see William step up and do the same, or even confess to appreciating Nikki’s company in the passionate sense. She always believed he was more into the physical with very little emotion to be had, which is why he and his wife could never make their marriage work. She never had anything personal against William, nor did she dislike him or think he was a bad person. But she was never ‘down’ with the idea of him being the new man in Nikki’s life, as she never believed he was the one to make her truly happy.