What the Heart Needs

by Jessica Gadziala

  Then she wanted not only a lump sum of cash, but alimony. Apparently in a few months she had become accustomed to a certain lifestyle and expected him to provide her the ability to live lavishly for the rest of her life.

  He sighed heavily. He wasn’t even entirely sure how he had ended up married in the first place. Dan had been a particularly heated affair he had planned on ending. He just never got around to it. Which was probably due to a good sexual chemistry and Dan’s voracious appetitie for sex in increasingly new and different situations. She had been exciting and a challenge. And he had somehow allowed his dick to lead him into marriage. There was no other way to explain it.

  She was an awful, spoiled, selfish witch of a woman. And he had always known that. But he had signed over his freedom to her anyway.

  Then he had spent every single day afterward regretting it.

  She had spent money like water. She got shoes, jewelry and clothing until every closet in the house was overflowing. He had come home to find her entertaining men alone in the middle of the night. One after another after another. Until he finally told her to get the hell out of his house. He spent the next six weeks sleeping with every woman he found the least bit attractive.

  He wasn’t exactly proud of his behavior. While he had never really committed to exclusivity in his relations, he believed in fidelity. Dating was for screwing around. Marriage was for coming home to the same woman every night. But he justified his oats-sewing because of Dan’s own revolving door of sexual partners.

  Elliott shook his head. That damn woman was screwing around with his business and he wasn’t going to be able to allow that to continue. Stabbing his finger onto the fourth button on his phone, he heard the phone ring and Tad’s upbeat voice answered. “EM Corporation. Tad speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Tad, can I see you in my office,” he said and hung up without an answer.

  He heard the knock on his door less than twenty seconds later. It was unusual for him to call anyone into his office. Tad had probably never even been inside. He looked calm though. Curious but calm.

  “What is going on in my office?” he asked, bluntly.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific,” Tad responded, giving Elliott a lopsided smile.

  “Something is up with everyone. You’re the only person who I don’t sense something up with.”

  Tad sighed, caught between his obligation to fill in his boss and his desire to not pit himself against the staff, or worse yet, Hannah.

  “Is Hannah sick?” Elliot blurted out, cursing himself for it.

  “What? No,” Tad said quickly, looking shocked.

  “Then what is going on?” Elliott demanded, losing his patience.

  Tad closed his eyes for a minute. “Look. I really cant get into it, Mr.Michaels. It isn’t my place to tell you. It is Hannah’s business, not mine. But I can tell you that something is up with the staff here. And something needs to be done about it.”

  “Well that isn’t too cryptic,” Elliott said, leaning back in his chair.

  “I’m sorry,” Tad said, looking worried. “I really am but I am between a rock and a hard place here.”

  Elliott nodded. “I understand. I’m glad to get confirmation that something is going on though. That is isn’t just a weird feeling I am picking up on.” Tad nodded, tapping his foot nervously. “Go on back to work.” When Tad glanced at the door with anxiety, he smirked. “Just tell them I needed to discuss a raise with you. It’s probably about time anyway,” Elliott shrugged.

  “Oh,” Tad said, smiling brightly and standing. “Thanks. Really. Thanks.”

  Elliott waved a hand, brushing off the gratitude and dismissing him at the same time.

  Of course Tad wasn’t going to share private details about Hannah. Had it been any other employee, he might have gotten something. But it hadn’t escaped his notice that Tad had befriended Hannah almost instantly and the two were often seen working side-by-side. And he had heard Tad’s voice inside of Hannah’s office often, even more so as the time went by.

  But he could tell that Tad was concerned. Whatever was going on had him worried. And it included Hannah. And it was probably why she was losing weight and not sleeping.

  Maybe it was him.

  The thought burst into his head with a sharp, bright clarity. Maybe he was being a slave driver. It was something he perhaps always knew about himself. He had high standards. But before Hannah, no one had ever been able to live up to them. Maybe her ability to keep up was causing him to drive everyone else a little bit harder. And not everyone was capable of working at a brow-beating pace.

  It could easily be causing a morale problem. People were feeling overworked and underappreciated. It also made sense why Hannah seemed worse off than anyone else. She worked so closely by him. He expected even more from her. Every time she met his standards, he supposed he saw an opportunity and raised them.

  He needed to be more aware of his actions.

  Hitting the intercom button, he asked Hannah to come in for a moment.

  She appeared a few minutes later, apologizing for having to finish a phonecall.

  “I want you to leave at five with everyone else today,” he told her while she stood there, shifting from foot to foot.

  At his words, her eyebrows lowered, furrowing closer together. “May I ask why?” she said after a moment, looking completely confused.

  Elliott shrugged. She almost looked offended. He hid a smirk behind a quick cough. “I have dinner plans,” he said and watched her pull out a notepad and scan it. It was, presumably, his schedule which she kept in painstaking detail. “James just called and we need to discuss a few things,” he lied easily and watched her confusion disappear. “I wont be back in the office after so there is no need for you to be here. I’m sure you have errands you are running behind on with how often you are here.”

  Hannah nodded, looking almost uneasy.

  He groped for words to say. She just stood there, waiting for further instructions from him and all he wanted to do was find something to say to ease the vacant look in her eyes.

  “Just make sure the schedule is put together before you leave,” he clarified and could swear there was a look of dread in her eyes before she nodded and left the room.

  --

  He’s sending you home because he sees what a worthless piece of trash you are. Rot in hell, whore.

  Hannah sat down at her desk and brought up her email. She felt every bit a coward by emailing everyone to ask for their schedules for the next day. It was her job to go to each secretary and get it herself. Lately, Tad had just been showing up with the compiled list for her, saving her the anxiety of having to do it herself. She jotted an email really quickly:

  Mr. Michaels will be leaving the office early tonight. He will need you to send all of your schedules to me to be compiled before five o’clock. Thanks.

  And then CC’d all the secretaries.

  She couldn’t understand why he was sending her home. Even when he left for dinner meetings, he let her about her business. There was always more than enough to keep her there past eight every night. Sending her home was completely unnecessary. She would only have to push herself harder the next day to catch up to all the things she couldn’t get to for having to leave early.

  Of course, she figured, she could just disregard his order. She could stay late as usual and get all of her work done. Somehow she thought he would find out. But more so, she admitted to herself begrudgingly, she was worried about staying at the office late alone anymore. It was one thing when he was right there within yelling distance. But when the next closest person was a cleaning person three floors below… she couldn’t bring herself to muster the courage to stay.

  Though sitting at home all night was an equally unappetizing thought. What was she going to do? It’s not like she had any television to watch. She was never home enough to have needs that needed to be filled by running errands.
She had to clean Ricky’s cage but that would only take a couple minutes.

  Hannah sighed, deciding to spend her night cleaning. She wasn’t particularly a neat freak, but she went through phases when she was stressed or lonely that she spent hours or even days scrubbing every inch of her apartment. She hadn’t bothered taking out a broom or mop since she started at EM. It was probably woefully in need of a scrubbing. She could blast some music and clean until she felt a little better about her life.

  It only took four hours and three-times scrubbed over floors for her to feel like a giant had been lifted from her shoulders. She took her laundry and laptop she had just bought on the way home from work and sat in the laundry room. She took up all five washing machines at once and checking her work email. She figured she had followed EM’s instructions for leaving the office. He would never really know that she had spent out of work time working. And she doubted he would mind. He liked efficiency. She was sure he worked at home all the time. She was just living by his example.

  She answered a few emails that had been sent from the IT department and finance. There was a ding, alerting her to a new email in her inbox.

  She shrugged at the unusual, never-before-seen address and clicked it.

  You can kiss his ass all you want. He wont be impressed. He isn’t going to fall in love with you. Get over yourself. He will see you for what you really are- a useless piece of trash, a disposable washrag. I am going to break you down sooner or later. You might as well give in and leave now you miserable bitch… it is only going to get worse for you.

  With shaking hands, Hannah flagged the message in a saved folder and closed her laptop. It wasn’t weird that someone knew her work email- everyone at the office that she had contact with was familiar with it. But it bothered her that someone somehow knew that she was working from home. How could they know? A part of her tried to convince her that it was likely just a lucky guess but somewhere deep inside her belly an unease was planted and took root.

  She knew the message was right. She knew it was only going to get worse. Though she believed it was only because she was buckling under the pressure.

  Nine

  But then the emails started coming in waves, dozens, hundreds- filling her whole inbox and forcing her to try to sift through them to find actual work correspondence. Notes started to appear under the windshield of her car several times a day. Then she walked to her car to run to get lunch for EM and found someone had painted the word “slut” across her windshield in bright red lipstick.

  It wasn’t like her to cry in public but she leaned against her car and bawled her eyes out for twenty minutes, bent forward and her body shaking with sobs like she hadn’t experienced since her breakup with Sam when she decided to move away from Stars Landing. It somehow felt good to cry. But she couldn’t stop. She cried harder and harder, oblivious to the people passing her in the parking garage. Just as she was worried she could never stop the tears, she got a text from EM asking what the hell was taking so long to get her lunch. She hopped into her car, furiously trying to wipe the wetness from her face and squirting windshield washer fluid until the letters ran like blood.

  He wasn’t used to Hannah being behind schedule. She was chronically on time every day since he had hired her. So when she had been missing for over a half an hour, he had snapped and sent her a snippy text. A text he immediately regretted when he saw her burst into his office with his, hopefully still warm, lunch.

  She had been crying. From the puffyness of her eyes to the long red streaks on her cheeks from tears- he assumed it had been for a while. She hadn’t gone to get his lunch because she was crying.

  Elliott felt a strange sensation in his stomach, something like worry. Or sadness. And under that, concern. What was going on with her? If at all possible, she looked even thinner than she had the week before. Her smudges under her eyes were darker. She was getting worse.

  He was going to have to talk to her.

  The idea sprang into his mind and his entire body felt overcome with dread. He wasn’t the kind of man who was good at talking. That was for Tad. And James. Even with the best of intentions, his words often rushed out of him and sounded cruel and judgemental. And that wasn’t something he could afford with someone who was obviously already in a fragile state.

  He wanted to protect her from any more pain. It wasn’t something he had ever done for a woman before. No one had ever pulled on the buried, primal male urge to care for a woman. It was strange to realize he was even capable of feeling that way.

  “Hannah,” he said, his voice softer than it usually was. She jumped at the sound of her name and turned around, an eyebrow raised in a way that reminded him of the Hannah he hired, not this strange shell of her standing in front of him. “I would like to talk to you about…”

  “Is it very important?” Hannah broke in. She could sense a strangeness to EM then. A part of her picked up on his intention to talk about something she knew she didn’t want to discuss with him. “I really have a lot of work to get back to.” And probably another two dozen emails to delete. And a note or two to file away in a new decorative box since she had already filled the other to the brim.

  Elliott felt taken aback by her brashness and shook his head without realizing it. But she quickly picked up on it, and he saw relief wash over her face. “I guess it can wait,” he said. But for how long? How much longer could she hold on to the obviously thin thread of her sanity?

  He knew he should have called her back. He should have sat her down and forced her to tell him what was going on. There was no question that she was very burdened and he wasn’t sure exactly how long he had before she quit. Or worse.

  But something about the look of gratitude she shot him when he didn’t press her, held him back. She was still Hannah. She was still headstrong and proud and wanted to put forth a competent and efficient work persona, regardless of what was going on with her personally.

  --

  Hannah rushed home at five o’clock to grab the ticket the dry cleaner had given her the day before. How she had left it in her apartment was completely beyond her. She was never that absentminded. She told herself to relax. She had hours before the dry cleaner closed, but her frazzled nerves would never let her be calm about anything anymore.

  Closing the door, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. It took her a second to realize how foregin her face had become. She looked drawn, her face pinched with the skin pulled tight over her prominent cheekbones. Her jaw, which to her had usually seemed a little soft, was cut sharp and jagged. Of course her skin was still splotchy from crying earlier and her eyes were swollen.

  When did she lose so much weight? She had never been the kind of woman who could easily drop fifteen pounds. Whenever she had tried diet changes and exercise in the past, it had been an absolute struggle to lose even a pound or two. But then there she was- looking like a coat hanger wearing her usual clothes and she hadn’t even realized she lost that much weight. She knew her eating habits had been poor. Stress had driven her to coffee as her main diet staple with the occasional granola bar when her stomach would twist in a painful way- reminding her that she hadn’t eaten in more than twenty hours.

  Hannah shook her head, making a mental note to pick up something to eat after the dry cleaners. Italian food full of carbs and cheese. Or something fried- mozzerella sticks. Dessert- decadent chocolate milk shakes or brownies. She needed to pack on some calories and put some weight back on.

  She ran for the kitchen counter, greeting Ricky and grabbing the ticket from where she left it next to the coffee pot. As she turned, she noticed something white on the floor. Walking closer, she felt dread pulling her stomach into a fight fist. It was a letter. On the floor. In her apartment.

  Bending forward, she picked it up with shaking hands and opened it.

  You cant run. You cant hide. I will find you wherever you go.

  She dropped it onto the floor as if it h
ad scalded her. Whoever was out to get her had her home address now. It was one thing to know a coworker slipped messages under your door, or sent you threatening emails, or even wrote cruel things on your car. But when they found their way to your home to taunt you… that was something else altogether.

  With a sick stomach, and all ideas of possible food pushed aside, she grabbed the letter and stuffed it under a pile of old mail. She made sure the door was locked when she left, though she knew it wouldn’t stop letters from sliding under her door to haunt her later.

  --

  She barreled into his driveway with ease of her surroundings. Elliott looked out his study’s window when he saw the lights pull up. It wasn’t often she went to his house. Once in a while when he forgot something at work, she would bring it to him. But he hadn’t messaged her about anything.

  Hannah climbed out of the car and opened the passenger door, pulling out six hangers of suits wrapped in plastic. She usually dropped off his dry cleaning early in the day when he had a meeting. He probably never even knew how the clean clothes got in his bedroom. They were just always there.

  She hadn’t even considered that he might have been home. She didn’t even notice his car right in front of her’s in the driveway. She unlocked the front door, closing it behind her and starting for the staircase.

  “Hannah?”

  She froze, her heart thrumming madly in her chest. EM? What was he doing there? She turned toward the sound of her name and found him starting to rise from his desk in the library.

  “Oh,” her voice sounded breathless. “I didn’t know you were here. I was just dropping off the dry cleaning like usual.”

  He studied her for a moment, not saying anything. She took the silence as a chance to slip away and put the clothes in the closet and get out of there without having to have any kind of conversation with her boss.