by Vivien Vale
“Thank you,” I say.
Hull shakes his head. “Don’t thank me. If you don’t find out anything in the two days I’m giving you, you’re firing Miss Brown. If you don’t do it I’m not even going to hesitate to withdraw.”
I swallow hard. If I don’t find anything I’m either going to lose Carly or lose the company. That is a hell of a choice to make.
“I’ll be back here on Friday, Meyers,” Hull says. “You better have something to show me.”
I nod. The other investors – all quiet, still – get up. They walk in a line out of my office with Hull leading the way. The symbolism isn’t lost on me.
When they are gone I lean back in my chair and sigh deeply. This is a big mess, bigger than anything I’ve been in before. And to think I could have prevented it all if I didn’t sleep with Carly.
But I wouldn’t change it for the world. The time I spent with her, with Scott and without, has been worth it. No matter what happens. We just must get to the bottom of this, sort out whatever went wrong with Emma and get her to cough up that fucking sex tape before even more damage is done.
I get up and open my door. Carly sits at her desk, looking miserable
“I’d like to talk to you,” I say. She looks up and nods, getting up immediately. I wait for her to cross the office space to my door and let her walk in, first. I close the door behind her.
“Is everything okay?” she asks. The blinds are still drawn and I step closer to her. I wrap my arms around her and pull her against me in a hug. It isn’t sexual at all. I just need to feel her against me, to know what is real and what isn’t.
She hugs me back, holding on until I let go. When she steps back, her eyes search my face.
“What did they say?” she asks. “Did they withdraw?”
I shake my head and sigh, turning to my chair. Carly sits down in a chair opposite. The desk is between us and I don’t like it, but we are at work and being appropriate is better.
“Not yet,” I say.
“Yet?”
I hesitate before I fill her in. “Hull gave me forty-eight hours.”
“To do what?”
“Find something worth our while. Or fire you.”
Carly’s eyes widen. “Me?” she asks.
I nod. “He says it’s bad publicity whether it’s true or not and you seem to be at the center of it.”
Carly looks down at her hands and I watch her intently, searching for a reaction.
“Well, he’s not wrong,” Carly says.
I frown. “That’s not what I was getting at,” I say.
“No, I know. But I am at the center of it. We can’t really argue about that.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“What if you take your forty-eight hours and find nothing?” she asks. “Will you fire me?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“You’ll lose the company.”
She is right. I feel sick to my stomach when I think about it. But losing Carly seems so much worse. I don’t know when she has become a priority that high on my list, but there it is.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
Carly smiles and it’s warm and gentle. “Kevin…” She swallows. “You won’t lose me. In fact, I’ll leave.”
“What?” This is going wrong.
“No, just hear me out. What if I leave? The sex tape hasn’t come out so my reputation is still fine. I can get another job. You won’t be pressurized to find anything so soon because I’m gone, and you’ll get to keep your funding and save your company.”
“I can’t let you do that,” I say.
“Kevin, I told you I’m not going to let your company fold because of this. It’s the best way to handle it, don’t you think?”
“But you won’t be here,” I say.
Carly smiles. “You’re right, but we can still see each other. I don’t have to walk out of your life, just the company.”
She’s making a hell of a lot of sense, but I don’t want to do it this way. I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want her to work for someone else. I want her with me. I realize my determination to keep her is about so much more than just her job. I want to keep her all to myself.
“I think we need to confront your sister, instead. What’s to stop her from doing this again when you’re somewhere else? I don’t know what she’s playing at but if we can fix the root of the problem, everything else will follow suit.”
Carly nods. “You’re right. That will be better.”
I’m relieved. It seems like she doesn’t want to leave, either. She is willing to take one for the team and that’s admirable, but she wants to be here as much as I want her here. It’s good to know.
“How can we confront her?” I ask. Emma is Carly’s sister. If anyone knows how to handle it, it is her.
Carly looks at her hands, thinking. I watch her, taking in her porcelain skin, the dark hair that frames her face. Her eyes are dark, pensive. Her face is riddled with concentration. She’s set on finding a way to make this work for me. It means so much to me I don’t know how to put it into words.
She’s such a beautiful person in so many ways.
“I think I have an idea,” Carly says, looking up at me. Her eyes are impossibly big.
“What?” I ask.
“I have to deal with this myself,” she says. “If I tell you, you can’t get involved.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because it’s my sister and I need to deal with her myself. But I think we can fix this.”
She takes a deep breath and nods as if she’s confirming it to herself.
“We have to fix this.”
Carly
Emma isn’t answering her phone. I know she’s at work – she is a finance manager at a company that won’t allow her time off unless she puts in leave or something is wrong.
She won’t be home in the day.
I leave the office, with Kevin’s permission and drive to her apartment. Ron won’t be there, either. He is barely in town as it is and as far as I know he still has his own place.
I’ve had a key for Emma’s apartment since she went on holiday with Ron a year ago and asked me to take care of her place while she was gone. She never asked for it back and it’s always a good idea to have a spare key to someone’s house in case of emergencies. Or, in case of having to break in and find a sex tape.
Routine stuff.
I park in front of the building and sneak to her front door feeling like a thief. I fight the urge to look over my shoulder.
I unlock her door and close it again behind me, locking myself in her apartment.
I look around. The place is always so damn tidy, it’s impossible to think that someone lives here and it isn’t just a show house. My place is never this clean. Is cleaning all she does when she comes home? I’d hate to know what she thinks about my place when she comes to visit.
Where am I going to start? I must find that tape. Three people’s careers depend on it.
I already rummaged through her bedroom once before but I was upset, then, and I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. Now, I know.
The downside is that the SD card is a hell of a lot smaller than a tape of some kind, or even a CD. Which means that it will be so much harder to find. But it is only two, I have some time to get through the house.
I start in the living room. I search in every little container, underneath ornaments, behind books and in vases and potted plants. I feel like a thief, an intruder, combing through Emma’s belongings, but it must be done.
I didn’t realize how many ornaments Emma has until I must turn then over one by one.
The living room is clear as far as I can tell.
I make my way to the dining room and open plan kitchen. I sigh. There are just as many ornaments in this room. Does she collect the stuff? God.
One by one, I lift them, searched them and put them back where they belong. I work my way through the dining room, the kitchen and the spar
e bedroom. I find nothing. No memory cards, nothing scandalous at all. Not even something I can use against her for blackmail the way she’s messing up my life. Part of me hopes I will find something – anything – I can use against her as leverage. But Emma’s life is as clean and pure as a sheet. There is nothing to use against her.
She’s being a bitch and she is so damn slippery there is nothing I can do about it.
In her bedroom, I feel like it’s a lost cause. The memory card can really be anywhere. What if it isn’t even in the apartment? What if she hid it in her car or put it in her purse so that it’s with her permanently? If I’m trying to hide something like that, it’s what I would do. I don’t think Emma is cunning enough for something like that, but she planted a camera in my home, recorded me having a threesome, tipped Raven Publishers about me sleeping with Kevin and threatened them with a sex tape. That’s a lot of cunning for a woman who’s so self-righteous lately.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” Emma asks behind me and I spin around. My heart beats in my throat, adrenaline rushing through my veins. I didn’t hear her come home, unlock the door, walk all the way to where I am in the main bedroom. “How did you get in?” she demands.
“The same you got into my apartment when you aren’t welcome, either,” I say.
Emma’s face isn’t friendly. She opens her mouth to say something but I’m sure she doesn’t have a foot to stand on and she seems to know it, too. She closes her mouth without saying whatever is on her mind.
“It’s trespassing,” she says.
“Yeah, I know how that feels.”
I can’t read her expression.
“So, are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?” she asks.
I sigh. “What’s going on, Em? Why is this happening? I don’t understand.”
I talk in a low voice. Usually when I’m not defensive, when I’m not being a bitch, Emma gets over her mood and we sort it out. The best way to get her to let go of a fight is to be the one that says that I want to fix it.
This time, it doesn’t work.
“Let’s start with why you’re at my house before we get into anything else,” she says. “Or are you going to keep avoiding my question?”
I shake my head and sigh. “You’re being a real bitch,” I say. “I want that tape. You know that I want it.”
Emma folds her arms over her chest.
“So, because I don’t want to give it to you, you’re breaking into my house and looking for it?”
“I didn’t break in, I used the key. But yes, I’m looking for it. I want it, Em. I need that tape.”
Emma laughs with no emotion. “I should call the cops on you for trespassing.”
“Okay,” I say. “You do that. Then the lie will be complete.”
She frowns at me. “Excuse me?”
“You want to play this game, be someone else, I can be a bitch, too.”
Emma shakes her head. “Who the hell do you think you are? You’re in my house, calling me out on my behavior, but I’m not the one sleeping with two guys at once. I’m not the one sacrificing my career through what I’m doing.”
I shake my head. “And what does it have to do with you? They’re nothing to you, my career and whether I tank it, has nothing to do with you.”
“Seriously, you were the golden one in our family. You were the one going to Stanford, graduating with honors…and you’re throwing it all away. I’m not going to support you when you lose your job.”
“I never asked you to,” I say. We glare at each other. Emma looks so different – the sister I always spend time with, tell everything to, laugh with, is gone. I don’t know who this person is that stands in front of me, but I don’t know her.
“I’m not going to stop looking until I find it,” I say.
Emma laughs and this time it’s sarcastic. “You’ve always been so damn stubborn. But it’s fine, go ahead. Turn the place upside down, see what you can find.”
Either, she is bluffing or she knows that I will never find it. It doesn’t matter which it is, it makes me worry. I doubt myself and my ability to find something that small in an apartment this large, even if it is here. I don’t usually doubt myself, but everything is different now, isn’t it?
“Are you going to stand there and watch?” I ask when Emma shifts her weight to one leg and watches me as if she expects to be a spectator to my searching attempts.
“I have nothing better to do with my time,” she says. “I got off work early today, my boss has a family emergency.”
Go fucking figure, I think. The one day that I need Emma to stay at work during normal work hours, she got off work early.
I open Emma’s closet. Her clothes are neatly folded and stacked, the hangers arranged side by side in color groups. It is annoying.
“What are you getting out of this?” I ask as I search. I open shoe boxes, looking in them one by one.
“I’m not getting anything out of it,” Emma says from the door. She leans against the doorpost, getting bored.
“Then why ruin so many lives?” I ask.
Emma blinks at me. “What are you talking about? I’m just showing you how this works, how you can’t do whatever you want without repercussions.”
I stand up and turn to face Emma.
“What?” I ask. “You’re trying to teach me a lesson?”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Emma nods and I can’t figure out what she’s thinking, again. Lately, she’s been so hard to read. It is so unlike her.
“You can’t just fuck around and not have it bite you in the ass, Carly. Everyone gets bitten in the ass at some point.”
“And what, because I haven’t been burned yet you want to do the honors?”
Emma looks unsure. “If you put it like that it sounds bad.”
“It is bad! God, you’re not mom, Em. It’s not your job to teach me what life is like. I’m old enough to deal with my own consequences.”
Emma shakes her head. “You never have to deal with the consequences. You’ve never has anything go wrong. You’ve just been dancing and fucking your way through life and I’ve had to work so hard to be in the same space and it’s unfair.”
“Is this what it’s about?” I ask. “You think it’s unfair? I worked hard too, you know? If you have something against me, fine. But getting Scott and Kevin to lose their jobs is a whole different game you’re playing.”
Emma blinks at me. “What are you talking about?” she asks.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
Emma just stares at me and I realize that whatever she’s been trying to do, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as things are turning out to be.
“Your little tip and your sex tape threat has the investors for the company ready to leave. Kevin has a group of people financing the next step of the company. If he loses these investors, the company will fold. It’s not just my job, Em. It’s a whole company.”
She blinks, looking unsure.
“Are you making this up?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Why would I make it up? Why do you think I’m so frantic to get that damned tape?”
Emma shakes her head as if it’s just a dream and she can wake up from it. “I don’t mean for it to be that big. I just…” her voice wavers and I see now that she has no idea how big this has gotten. “I wanted to show you that you can’t just do what you want and get away with it, that even you will get caught one day.”
I shake my head. “Em, you have no idea what this is doing.”
Emma looks like she’s going to cry. She looks like the scared child that was betrayed by her father so many years ago, the little sister I vowed I would protect. My heart goes out to her and I hug her. She is about to screw my job and the two men I care about, and I’m consoling her.
“Let’s sit down, have a cup of coffee, and talk about this,” I say.
Emma nods. Together, we walk to the kitchen where she makes us coffee. We don’t speak muc
h in the kitchen. I know she’s thinking, her mind running through everything that said. I want her to think about it all before we speak again. This is where Emma comes to her own conclusions.
When the coffee is done – instant coffee is always the easiest – Emma hands me my cup and we walk to the living room together. After I spent so much time going through her stuff I feel like I know Emma’s place better than I know my own.
We sit down and sip coffee in silence.
“Is there even a tape?” I ask Emma.
She hesitates before shaking her head. “I never put in an SD card. I have no intentions of seeing you with two men. God.” She shivers.
I frown. “So, if there is no tape, how did you know it is the three of us and not just me and Kevin?”
Emma pulls a face at me. “I’m not stupid, Carly. I can see how you flirt with them both, how comfortable you’re with them both and how they don’t hate each other for being that comfortable with you. I didn’t know for a fact but it was a very calculated guess. Besides, it seems like something you would do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
Emma pulls an oh-really face and I sigh, nodding.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “So, you wanted to teach me that I can’t have fun without consequences and it blew up in your face.”
“Everything sounds bad when you say it that way,” Emma says.
I look at her. She sips her coffee, looking unsure, small, shrunken in on herself.
“There’s not exactly anything good about this,” I say.
Emma nods. “You’re right. I don’t know. I thought I would just scare you.”
“Can’t have fun without consequences, right?”
“It’s ironic,” she says.
Ironic isn’t quite the word I was thinking of, but it will do.
“Will you fix it?” I ask Emma.
She looks up at me. “Me? How am I supposed to fix this?”
“You can call them and withdraw your allegations. Stay anonymous if you must but admit that there is no tape, it is a false alarm. Or something.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Emma says, looking nervous.
“You can’t just leave it like this,” I say. “They don’t know who you are but you have to do something. We have forty-eight hours before they pull funding.”
