by Claire Adams
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ian
Things were good—no, great—other than the little problem of Jonathan. I’d gotten a little sidetracked after Daisy first told me what happened, not just with Seamus, but also with Jonathan, and I hadn’t given it much thought. It wasn’t something I could just ignore, but I decided to wait to talk to him about it until Lynn had gone home for the day.
He was at his desk, looking something up on the computer. The door was open, but I knocked anyway.
He looked up. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Not much. There’s something I wanted to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”
“Daisy and I are back together.”
He looked at me, tight-lipped, and then gave the slightest of nods. “The two of you can’t seem to decide if you’re coming or going.”
“No help to you.”
I’d meant to say it as a joke, but it came out more like a challenge. He certainly took it that way, because he stopped what he was doing and stood up, came around his desk.
“You want to fight?” he said.
I almost started to laugh, but then I realized he was serious. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to fight you.” It would probably be a pretty fair fight, though. I was bigger than he was, but he had his martial arts training. But that’s not what I wanted to do. “I want to know why you did that, though.”
“Why I did what?”
“Why you leaked that information about Martin. You knew he’d flip out. Why would you try to sabotage us like that?”
“Us?” Jonathan laughed. “That’s a good one. There’s no us, Ian. This is your company. Yeah, I might play an integral part in running it, but it’s your company, and we both know that. But that’s just how it’s always been for you, isn’t it? Shit just always works out for you. I’m so NOT surprised to hear that you and Daisy are back together. Of course you’d end up with the girl that I really like! I haven’t liked someone like that in fucking ages, but who the hell ends up with her? You. Right. But I should have known. I should have known that it was foolish to get her a job here, and then to think that you’d actually talk to her for me. I should have known, because that’s what you’ve always done. Ever since I’ve known you, you basically just take whatever it is that I like and make it your own.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “And listen, Jonathan. The whole thing with Daisy—I wasn’t planning for that to happen. I’m not with her solely because I know you like her. That would be a shitty thing to do. I’m with her because . . . well, because I love her. And I’ve never loved anyone like this before. This isn’t something that I can just ignore. I’m not doing this to try to hurt you, and I want you to know that.”
He could barely contain his eye roll. “Give me a fucking break.”
“It’s true.”
“Yes, well, again, I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, this has been going on ever since you showed up in my back yard with a bloody nose, like some fucking abandoned dog that didn’t have anywhere to go. Do you remember how my mother fucking babied you? It was disgusting. But you didn’t care. You just waltzed right in there and made yourself at home. You think I wanted you there all the time? You think I liked suddenly having this pseudo brother around, this kid that could do everything better than I could?”
“Um . . .”
But he wasn’t interested in hearing a single thing I had to say. “Remember how she took us to baseball tryouts when we were in sixth grade? How you didn’t even like baseball? You weren’t even interested in playing, but you went along with it because my mother was excited and thought that we both wanted to try out. So she goes out and gets you all the shit, the glove, the cleats, the fucking stirrups. And then we have tryouts, and who makes the fucking team? Do you even remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I made the team. And you’re right—I didn’t want to play, but I did because your mother liked baseball so much.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Of course that’s what you’d remember. What you don’t remember is the fact that I tried out too, and I didn’t fucking make it!”
“You did?”
I tried to recall the memory of tryouts, but I couldn’t. Jonathan hadn’t been there though, had he? “I thought you didn’t even like baseball.”
“That’s what I started telling everyone after the fact, so it wouldn’t seem so pathetic. That here you were, the person who had probably never even picked up a bat, other than maybe a fucking whiffle ball bat, and you make the team, and I don’t. Do you know how many lawns I mowed and driveways I shoveled to earn enough money to buy my glove? But my mom just runs out and gets you one—before you even tried out! It was like she knew. I guess everyone just knows.”
“Jonathan.” I didn’t know what to say, though. I didn’t know if he was really telling me the truth, or if he was just making all this up in an attempt to make me feel bad. He wouldn’t even look at me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really had no idea about all of that stuff. If I had known that you were so into baseball, then I wouldn’t have tried out! I just did it because your mom kept talking about it. If you had told me that you didn’t want me to try out, then I wouldn’t have.”
“I wanted you to try out,” he said after a minute.
“But—I thought you just said you didn’t—”
“No, I did, actually. I wanted you to try out, and I wanted to be the one to make the team, and you didn’t. Or we both made the team but I was a starter, and you weren’t. I just wanted to be better than you. I wanted you to know that there were some things that I could do better than you could, that you didn’t always get to the one who came out on top. And same with Daisy. I knew that you’d think she was hot, but I thought we really had this connection. And I thought it would just really tick you off if I got the girl and you didn’t.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “So you’re basically telling me your entire existence is to get back at me? I mean, it sounds like you really hate my fucking guts, Jonathan. How have you been able to stand the fact that we see each other all the time? That we work together?”
“It hasn’t always been easy,” he said. “And I don’t hate you, Ian. I don’t want you to think that. But no one has ever made me feel more . . . shitty and inferior about my life than you have, and you don’t even realize it. I guess I just wanted one thing to work out for me, and not for you. But that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen after all.”
“Do you want to hit me?”
“Of course I want to fucking hit you.”
“Then go ahead.”
He gave me a suspicious look. “I thought you said you didn’t want to fight.”
“I don’t. But if you want to hit me, if you think that might make you feel better, then go ahead.” I’d always considered Jonathan a friend. No, we didn’t see eye to eye on everything, and we had different interests, but we’d known each other for so long, and we’d been through a lot. It hurt to think that the whole thing had been a façade, that he’d just been biding his time, wanting to get back at me for something I didn’t even realize that I was doing.
“You’re saying I can hit you.”
“Yeah. Wherever you want. Well, maybe not the balls. Go on. Punch me in the face if you want. I’m ready.”
He didn’t say anything right away, and I thought he wasn’t going to do it. At least I had offered.
But then he spun around and caught me right on the cheekbone with a thunderous right hook. Any harder and my cheekbone probably would have cracked; as it was my head snapped to the side and I felt something in my neck pop, though that sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The whole left side of my face though, felt like it was on fire. A giant pulsing white hot fire. My initial instinct had been to fight back, but I clenched my jaw and stood there, not doing anything. My eye started to water. Jonathan flexed and released his fist.
“Jesus,” I said, half-expecting him to jump on me and
start hitting me again, but he didn’t. “That’s some fucking arm you got there.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been working out, remember? That’s where I met Daisy.”
Touche.
“Thanks, though,” he said. “That did make me feel a little bit better.”
“Well,” I said, bringing my hand up to the side of my face and gingerly touching my cheek. “Now that you’ve got that out of your system . . .”
“I’ve been giving it some thought, though, and I think it’s time for me to move on.”
“Move on? From the company?”
“From the company, from the city, from this state. Maybe even the entire country. I don’t know. I want a change. Not just a change of job, but a complete change of environment. I think it would probably do me some good.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding, though I wasn’t quite sure what to think about the whole thing. My cheek was still throbbing. “It sounds like you’ve thought it through, so I’m certainly not going to try to change your mind. And hey—maybe it would be good.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe it will.”
That night, Daisy came over and we ordered take out because neither of us felt like cooking. I told her about my conversation earlier with Jonathan.
“So just like that, he’s leaving?” she asked.
“Just like that.” I pulled one of the cartons out of the paper bag and opened it. “I think this one’s the kung pao chicken.”
She peered into the container. “Yeah, it is. Wow. That surprises me. About Jonathan.”
“I know. I was surprised too.”
She looked at me, a piece of chicken held in between the two chopsticks. “Was this before or after he hit you?”
“After. Pretty much immediately after. I let him hit me though. Just so we’re clear.”
“Yeah, I’m still not quite sure I follow the logic in that one.”
“It was sort of . . . cathartic for him, I think. It’s not like we got into some sort of crazy brawl or anything. Which is what I think he wanted to do at first. So we talked about the whole leak thing, and then he hit me, and then he seemed to feel better and told me that he was going to be leaving. He didn’t say where he was going, though.” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s for the better. I know I’m going to have to eventually talk with Martin, and have to listen to him tell me I told you so, in regards to whose side the leak came from.”
“It might be better that he leaves,” Daisy said. “You wouldn’t be able to completely trust him again, would you?”
I shrugged as I opened up another container, this one containing egg rolls. “You know what’s weird is that I feel like I still could. Even after all that stuff he said, I still feel like if he wanted to stay, that we’d just move past this. But if he wants to go, I’m not going to stop him. It does kind of feel like it’s the end of an era, though.”
She set her container down and looked at me. “This can be the start of a new one, then,” she said. “For us, anyway. And I really believe now, more than ever, that as long as we stay true to our feelings, then that is what’s most important. Because if I had done that to begin with, we could have probably avoided a lot of the stuff that we’ve been through so far.”
I thought back to the day she first showed up in my office for that job interview. If you had told me then that I’d be sitting here now, feeling how I did toward her, I never would have believed it, but there you have it. Things sometimes worked out in ways that you couldn’t even fathom.
“We have been through a lot,” I said, “but honestly, Daisy, there’s no one else I’d rather go through it with.”
She smiled. “I feel the same way.”
Epilogue
Daisy
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said, taking a deep breath.
Ian squeezed my shoulders. “Of course you can,” he said. “You’re going to be great.”
I took another deep breath and tried to ignore the knots in my stomach. Everything seemed so surreal. I was about to walk out on stage, in front of a (large) group of people, and give a talk, as part of the TEDxBoston conference. My book, You’ve Got This: Overcoming the Quarter-Life Crisis, about my quarter-life crisis, had come out a few months ago and gotten some really good reviews in some very important places, and suddenly, it seemed, everyone thought that I had something important to say. And it had all started with that article I’d written at my mother’s encouragement, which, once posted on the blog, had been liked, retweeted, and favorited tens of thousands of times. Subsequent essays I’d written had later been compiled, and I’d written a few more to round out what had turned into a best-selling book you could now find in the personal development section.
Ian kept his hands on my shoulders, massaging them lightly. “I am so proud of you,” he said.
I took another deep breath and felt my anxiety quell a bit at the sound of his voice. “Thanks.”
People that I didn’t even know were hailing me as an expert on my generation, despite the fact that I felt like I still knew nothing. I mean, all I had done really, was written a book—and a rather short one at that—about my experience. I spoke about it candidly, and didn’t sugar-coat anything, and ultimately, I guess I found my happy ending, because Ian and I were still together, because I’d put my college degree to use, because I finally felt a measure of contentedness with my life that I hadn’t before.
So that made people believe I somehow had answers that could help them, too. The idea that I was helping people made me feel good, even though it seemed crazy that I would be someone people would turn to for advice like this.
Even my mother had been begrudgingly happy for me, despite the fact that the deal for her own book had fallen through and she was currently looking for a publisher.
“And after your book signing, I’m going to take you out to celebrate, and then we’ll go pick up Aaron.”
I smiled, thinking about Aaron, who was almost two now. We picked him up Saturday afternoon, and he stayed with us until Monday morning. He was definitely not the handful that everyone told me he was going to be once he was a toddler. He was actually really fun to be around, and I enjoyed the time he was with us. Even though Ian and I weren’t married, I’d settled into the role of step-mother much more easily than I thought I would have. Eventually, I knew, Ian and I would tie the knot, but for now, living together and learning how to be parents to Aaron was good enough for the both of us. And maybe, some day, Ian and I would have a kid of our own, but there was still plenty of time for that.
Right now, I had a talk to give.
Ian leaned down and gave me a kiss. “You’re going to be great,” he said. “I love you.”
I kissed him back. “I love you, too.” Then I took a deep breath and stepped out onto the stage.
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THE BOSS
By Claire Adams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Claire Adams
THE BOSS #1
Chapter One
ARIA
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the heartfelt and endlessly awkward confession of romantic allegiance that one of my customers was currently delivering. Would he notice if I stealthily put my headphones on?
On a normal day, I let men down easy. An 8-hour shift at the bank immediately following 48 hours of no sleep and two very difficult midterms does not constitute a normal day. I squinted at the gentleman in front of me, who seemed mesmerized by the palms of his hands based on the way he was staring at them. Mitch? Mark?
“And, you know, I come here, like, e
very day at the same time because, you know, like, that’s when your shift is,” he was mumbling, eyes firmly on his palm. “Sometimes I, like, just come and deposit some cash only to withdraw it the very next day for no other reason than to see you.”
Really? I could have never guessed. It’s pretty normal for people around here to make daily deposits and withdrawals of exactly $200 without fail for a whole month. Moron.
“Listen,” I said finally. He looked up and made eye contact just for a split second—long enough for me to notice the droplets on his horn-rimmed glasses. Sweat? Oh God. “I am really flattered but-”
“But girls like you don’t go out with guys like me.” I could almost hear the whimper in his voice now. “I get it.”
Shit.
“No, no, no, no! I’m engaged,” I blurted without thinking. “To – to…” Surveying the room frantically, I pointed at the only logical direction, cringing with fear and embarrassment at the thought that this interaction might have an audience. “To him. My boss. He is very possessive, so you should be careful. He owns the bank and he is well-connected. If he learns of this, he has the power to ruin your credit, and believe me, he will do it. You should find a different branch to go to from now on to be safe – switch banks if you have to! It’s in your best interest.”
The man I was pointing at flashed a crooked smile, his eyes firmly rested on his computer, and I felt my chest fall. Don’t be silly Aria, there is no way he can hear you. He was at least 50 feet across the hall, inside his office,
