The Wright Boss

by K. A. Linde

  “No idea.” He tried and failed to give me a look of innocence.

  “I’ll just be a minute.”

  I traipsed into my bedroom and stripped out of my travel gear. I changed into pajama bottoms and a T-shirt before towel-drying my hair. I looked like a wet dog but whatever.

  When I walked back out to the living room, Landon was sitting on the couch, holding a plain white letter in his hand. He was gently tapping it against the coffee table. His eyes found mine across the room.

  “What are you doing with that?” I asked, my voice small.

  “Just saw it in the pile of mail. You still haven’t read any of them, have you?”

  “No. Because I’m not going to ever read them. I don’t want to talk to him.”

  Landon stood to face me. The letter between us felt like a barrier. “You shouldn’t compartmentalize this the way that you do, Heidi. I know that you miss him. I know that you only allow yourself one day a year to think about him. But it’s here every single week as a reminder. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

  “No,” I said fervently. “I’m not curious. I don’t want to hear from the man who did everything he could to ruin my life.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is!” I cried.

  “You didn’t think that way about him in high school, and he was using then. He might have fucked up. He might have done horrible things. But he loves you. He put you through cheerleading. He came to all of the football games. He threw you that graduation party.”

  “Ancient history! I can’t forget about all the times that I had to take care of his drunk ass when I was the kid. I was the one who needed to be taken care of. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t make it go away.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Landon said with a sigh. He walked forward to me and handed me the letter. “But the last thing I said to my dad before he died was something horrible, and I would give anything to have one more day with him. One more moment to make things right. But I will never have that. You have that, and you’re throwing it away.”

  I felt like I had been burned with a cigarette. I recoiled back from the statement as tears sprang to my eyes. Never in the six years that my dad was gone had I once thought about actually reading his letters, actually talking to him. But I’d never thought about it like Landon had. If I could, wouldn’t I do everything to have one more day with my mom? My dad might be horrible. He might have ruined my life and his own, but maybe I was in the wrong for not giving him a second chance.

  Landon’s arms were around me as all these emotions hit me at once. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to decide today. I just don’t want you to ignore him forever and live to regret never having a relationship with him again.”

  “I don’t know if I can.” I sniffled.

  “You’ll know when it’s time.”

  I pulled back and peered down at the letter. My heart constricted. I didn’t know if I had the strength today. I needed more time to contemplate it.

  “Not yet,” I whispered. “Will you…will you be here when I’m ready?”

  “Always,” he told me. “I will always be here when you need me.”

  I leaned back into his embrace, my mind trapped on the box of letters hidden away in my closet. The thought of going them, of ripping open years of wounds, left me drained, and I hadn’t even touched them yet. I was scared of what I would find—that, as right as I thought I was about my father, I might also be wrong. What if I had wasted six years for nothing? And worse…what if everything I had done to shield my heart from him was for no good reason?

  Landon left later that night when I got a text from Emery, saying that she was on her way home. He needed to get his stuff home and change out of his own travel clothes. Plus, he didn’t want to run into Jensen just yet. I knew that conversation was probably going to have to come up again, but neither of us wanted it to be like this.

  Emery showed up with Jensen, as expected. It made me happy for my friend and jealous that she didn’t have to hide anything. But, when she saw me sitting in the living room, watching Moana, she shooed him out of the apartment, and we spent the rest of the night catching up while she finished some last-minute grading.

  “So, you’re actually going to read the letters?” Emery asked in shock.

  “I don’t know. I think…I’ll know when it’s the right time. Right?”

  “Lover girl, you’ve been waiting this long. Are you sure you’ll know? Maybe you should do it now and get it over with.”

  “No, Landon said he’d be here with me. I think I’ll need all the emotional support I can get.”

  “Well, I’m here, too.”

  “I know,” I said as I leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  “Oh, Heidi, so forward.”

  “You like it.”

  She giggled. “Totally. I would so be bi for you.”

  “Same.”

  We looked at each other and then burst into laughter. It was a fun night. A chill night. One that I hadn’t realized how much I needed. I had the best, best friend in the world. And I knew I was lucky to have known her my entire life.

  Our night ended too soon, and then it was back to the grind. I knew that Landon would be in early on Monday morning as usual, and I made sure to avoid his desk at all costs. I didn’t trust not to give myself away when I looked at him.

  I plopped down next to Matt.

  “Hey, Heidi!” he said with buoyancy I hadn’t seen from him…ever.

  “Hey, Matt.”

  “How was your weekend?”

  I froze momentarily, surprised by the question. “Uh…good. I didn’t do much. How about you?”

  “I met someone,” he gushed. “She’s gorgeous, and it just clicked.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t asked about my weekend because he actually cared. As per usual Matt. He had asked because he had news, and he wanted to share.

  “Oh, yeah? A new girl? That’s exciting. Where did you meet her?”

  “I was at a bar with some friends, and I met her there. Her name is Wendy, and she’s perfect for me. I just know it.”

  “That’s amazing, Matt,” I said with a genuine smile.

  If he had a girlfriend, that would mean he might stop asking me out.

  “Yeah. I can’t wait for you to meet her. I know she’ll love you.”

  I found that doubtful but told him how excited I was to meet her as well. I returned my gaze to my computer as Julia showed up at my desk.

  “Heidi, can we talk?” she asked, nodding her head toward her office.

  “Hey, babe. Yeah, totally.”

  I followed her into her office and sank into the seat.

  Julia slowly closed the door behind her. She stayed facing the door and sighed. “I want to know why you lied to me.”

  “What?” I asked in confusion.

  “Why did you lie to me, Heidi?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “You said that you didn’t want to go shopping with me this weekend because Emery was out of town.” She turned to face me. “But you were with Landon this weekend.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. How did she know that?

  “Right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “In Atlanta at a golf tournament.”

  “Yeah. How do you know that, Julia?”

  She didn’t answer my question. She slowly walked to her desk and pivoted the computer screen to face me. On the screen was a video of me and Landon out on the course in Atlanta. He had his hand on the small of my back, and you could clearly see me leaning in to kiss him.

  My hand flew to my mouth. “What…what is this?”

  “It’s one of many videos forwarded to Dennis this morning. Then, they ended up in my inbox.”

  Her hands were shaking when her eyes finally met mine.

  “I’m sorry, Heidi. You’re fired.”

  Thirty-Three

  Heidi

  Sho
ck hit me with the force of a tidal wave.

  I was knocked back, hurtling into oblivion, drowning in my own disbelief. I couldn’t process the words that Julia had said. They didn’t make sense. They weren’t logical. They weren’t something anyone had ever said to me.

  A couple of days ago, I had been promoted, and now…this.

  I opened my mouth to ask the most obvious questions. What? Why? How? But they didn’t come out. Nothing came out.

  Tears hit me in the backs of my eyes, and I fought with everything not to let them fall. I swallowed them, refusing to submit to such humiliation. I wouldn’t ask. I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t grovel. I certainly wouldn’t fucking cry.

  Not here.

  Julia was one of my closest friends. I knew this was killing her to have to be the one to tell me. But, as head of HR, this was part of her job. She’d complained about firing other people before. It was her least favorite part of human resources. She thought it should be handled in each department, but everyone was always foisting responsibility off on someone else.

  And now…she was…she was…

  I stood abruptly. “Okay,” I managed to get out.

  It sounded hollow and brittle. More a gasp than a word.

  “Heidi,” Julia said. There was anguish in her voice. Her eyes told me she wanted to reach out to me. Her body said that she wanted to comfort me. Her hands told me to stay…to figure out what was going on…to let her answer all the questions I had bubbling under the surface.

  But I bit my lip and took a frantic step backward. “Okay,” I repeated.

  “Are you sure you don’t—”

  “Yep,” I interrupted her.

  If I didn’t leave now, I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up high as I walked out of that office. And I needed that. I wanted to hold on to my pride until I was gone.

  I wrenched the door to her office open and stormed out of there like a thundercloud. As soon as I was out of her office, I went from near to tears to anger to pissed to wanting to fucking murder someone in about three seconds flat. My hands were clenched into fists at my sides. My heart was galloping at breakneck speed. My ears were ringing. I was seeing a tinge of red to everything.

  My head snapped into Landon’s office. I was ready to blow a gasket, but I was unprepared for him not to be there. The office was dark, and the door was closed. I never looked in there anymore for fear of this. Exact. Fucking. Thing. And then, the day that I did, the day after we’d gotten back from the PGA Tour Championship, he was missing.

  “Fuck.” I slapped onto his closed office door and then marched over to my desk.

  “What was that about?” Matt asked.

  He could clearly tell something was wrong. He looked confused and concerned. I just wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I held my tongue.

  “I’m going home,” I told him instead of the truth. I scrambled to collect a bunch of my personal effects. I’d worked here for six years. I couldn’t get everything in one trip, but I wanted to make sure I had the things I really needed.

  “Why?”

  I slammed my hand down on the paperwork I was organizing. “Do I look like I want to talk right now?”

  He shrank back. I was usually a sarcastic bitch, but I didn’t raise my voice.

  “No.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  I tossed everything I had managed to get together into my oversize boho bag, wiped any personal files and passwords I had off of the computer, and left everything else. I for sure thought Matt was going to try to say something else to me, but he didn’t. He just let me pass. He probably thought it was PMS or something equally sexist. That was the MO in the office.

  I left the office in a daze. I somehow made it out of the Wright Construction building, past the sign out front with the company motto, What’s Wright Is Right, and to my car without being accosted by anyone. Tossing the contents of my purse into the passenger seat, I threw myself into the driver’s side and just fucking sat there.

  My gaze drifted up the side of the building I’d worked at for so long, and everything hit me at once.

  I had been fired.

  I would never work here again.

  I had no source of income.

  Everything I had worked for was for nothing.

  My life as I had known it was over.

  The tears that I had been holding back with shock and anger released like a torrent from my body. Suddenly, I was sobbing into my steering wheel, my hands on either side of it, as I uncontrollably heaved up and down. A choking sound came from my mouth, and I tried to suck in oxygen that couldn’t seem to get to my brain.

  There was no oxygen. There was no air. There was nothing.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  My body shook as the tears continued to stream down my face, and I turned into a blubbering mess. I started to cough loud and desperately. My chest ached, my fingers and toes felt numb, and my head felt fuzzy. I hiccuped over the tears, fighting my body’s response to the horrible news.

  I was hyperventilating.

  I was having a panic attack.

  I needed to calm down.

  “Fuck,” I gasped out through the tears. “Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.”

  No matter how many times I told myself to stop what I was doing, it didn’t matter. Panic attacks weren’t rational. There was nothing that anyone could do to be logical about the situation. Calm was not a word that you even understood when it hit you. There was only that moment when your brain stopped functioning, you stopped breathing, and the tears refused to stop falling.

  It had been so long since I had an attack. Years, in fact. The last one had been the day when my dad was sent to prison. I hadn’t cried in front of him. I hadn’t said a damn word. He’d pleaded with me. Begged for one more minute with me. A chance. I’d coldly stared into his pale eyes that were so like mine and then turned and walked away. When I’d gotten back to my car, I hadn’t been able to leave the courtroom for nearly an hour.

  I couldn’t do that today.

  I couldn’t be here another minute.

  Despite the dangers, I revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. My breathing was erratic, and my tears refused to stop. My face was hot, and my eyes burned. Still, I didn’t stop. I didn’t pull over.

  I made it home without remembering a single thing I’d done to get there. As soon as I was inside, I went straight to the shower, turned the water on as hot as it would go, stripped out of my work clothes, and stepped under the spray.

  The tears eventually subsided to a low keening and chest-rattling breaths. I moved into the living room and turned on some mindless TV, staring at it, unseeing.

  That was how Emery found me when she got home after school. “Hey! You’re home early!”

  I slowly turned to look at her and then back at the TV. “Yeah.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked after seeing my splotchy red face and the clothes she had dubbed my Tinder breakup pajamas. Emery hurried to the couch and sat down. “Did you and Landon break up? What did he do to you? I’ll kill him.”

  “I…I…” I coughed over the words, trying to get them out. “I got fired.”

  Emery whipped back, shocked. “You got fired?”

  “Yep.”

  She gaped at me. “You’re the best employee they have. On what grounds could they possibly fire you?”

  “Probably fucking my boss.”

  “It’s just rumor and speculation,” Emery insisted. “I mean, what do they know? They’re grasping at straws. You can deny it. Landon will stick up for you. We’ll tell Jensen and Morgan. We’ll get this straightened out. They can’t do that. It’s unlawful.”

  “They have proof.”

  “What proof?” Emery squeaked.

  The tears came again when I thought about it. “Landon and I went to a golf tournament together this weekend, and someone took videos of us together. I watched one of us kissing.”

  “Oh.” Emery tucked her legs up underneath herself a
nd chewed on her finger. “Well…fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  I bent forward, putting my head in my hands. Emery rubbed my back and held me as I cried.

  “Who sent in the videos?” she asked after a couple of minutes.

  I sniffled. “I don’t know. I had to get out of Julia’s office…”

  “Julia?” Emery gasped. “She fired you?”

  “She didn’t want to, but…yeah.”

  “God. Okay, I’m going to text her and see if she’ll come over. Maybe we can figure out who sent it in.”

  I went back to watching the TV and contemplating how horrible my life was at the present moment when Julia showed up in my apartment.

  “Hey,” she said tentatively.

  “Come on in,” Emery said.

  “Is she…”

  “A wreck but not mad at you.”

  Julia deflated. “Thank God. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done at work before.”

  I dismissively waved my hand and then turned back to the TV. She was just doing her job. I couldn’t blame her. I was busy blaming myself and Landon for this catastrophe.

  “Did it say who that email was from?” Emery prodded.

  “No, it was anonymous.” Julia frowned. “I thought it was weird, but there were enough different images that we couldn’t think that they had been doctored. Then, Heidi agreed that they’d gone away together.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to fire me if I said yes,” I muttered.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I feel like the worst friend ever.”

  “How is Landon taking all of this?” Emery asked.

  I frowned and glanced away. I hadn’t asked about Landon. I hadn’t even checked my phone to see if he had texted or called. My fury was building again, and I didn’t know if I could handle seeing him when I was like this.

  “I have no idea,” Julia said. “He was in some meeting for the higher-ups all day. I never saw him.”

  “Does he even know?” Emery asked. “I mean…he has to know, right? You ran this by him first?”

  “I…I don’t know. I thought that everyone had done what they were supposed to do in this situation. It wasn’t my job to follow up with Landon. I mean…I thought he had already been questioned.”