The Boss

by Abigail Barnette

  I stared at him, willing him to look up, to see the tears already spilling down my cheeks. "I can't believe this."

  "Sophie, please- "

  "I can't believe you're doing this to me again!" I knew I probably shouldn't raise my voice because of the other patients, but I couldn't help it. What the fuck was going to happen now? Did I tell him about the pregnancy? Did I just go on my merry way and deal with it all on my own? Here he was, basically telling me to break up with him over a job, and I was incubating a fetus he helped make. So much for not being in this alone. "What is wrong with you?"

  "Everything is exactly the same as it was six years ago." He was so calm, so maddeningly calm. "I'm watching you, about to make a huge mistake, and what can I do besides leave to prevent you from making it?"

  "You've never prevented me from doing a damn thing. You just don't want to feel responsible for my choices." I shook my head in disgust. "And you talk about me having a problem admitting things. You're willing to run away because you don't want to feel guilty."

  "That's not fair!" he snapped. "Look at me, Sophie. I'm a middle-aged man in a fucking hospital bed. What if I'd had a heart attack and died? What if I'd had a stroke and been paralyzed? Would you really want to be tied to me for the rest of my life? Caring for me while I was sick or dying?"

  "Oh for fucks sake, you're not ninety. You're in your forties!" Had they given him a handful of overreaction pills along with the painkillers? "What 'rest of your life?’ We're not married, we're dating."

  "And maybe I'm at the point in my life where that isn't enough anymore. I love you more than I reasonably should. I've tried, Sophie, I have really tried not to push for too much, too fast, but that seems to be the path we're on. If it isn't what you want, then we need to let each other go now, before we wind up bitter and unhappy!"

  I don't know that I'd ever seen Neil so... angry. And hurt. My god, he was hurt. Because he thought I didn't want him.

  What a fucking idiot.

  Even though I was furious with him, even though I knew I shouldn't want him if he was willing to do this to me, I did. I knew I should be happy to be rid of him.

  And even though I knew it was hopeless, even though I knew now that we wanted polar opposites from this relationship, I had to try. "I love you."

  Finally, he held my gaze for longer than a few seconds. His eyes - god, his eyes... I’d never really stood a chance - were glazed with unshed tears. Maybe it should have made me feel vindictively better to see that he was miserable, but it was hard to hate someone lying in a hospital bed. "And I love you. Don't ever doubt that."

  "I don't." I wiped at my cheek with my fingertips. I didn't doubt that he loved me. Not for a moment. He loved me enough to let me go, to not ruin my life when we knew we wanted different things. And that almost made me love him more. "But you're really an asshole."

  I stood up and walked away. I didn't look back at him.

  "Take a few days to think it over," he said, sounding far more tired than before. I felt so guilty, that we had argued in the hospital. I was a terrible girlfriend.

  "I won't be angry if you decide to take the job," he continued. "But you said you weren't looking for a commitment from me. Letting this opportunity pass you by, choosing me over this job... that's a commitment. You should be honest with yourself, and with me. Don't pass up this job expecting that it won't change anything between us. It will."

  I turned, wiping my eyes quickly. "Fine. Give me a few days."

  "I'll call you. When all of... this is over." He gestured to the bed. "I just want you to be happy, Sophie."

  "You have no idea what would make me happy," I sniffed miserably.

  "Neither do you," he pointed out gently. "You told me that you just got your life, and you weren't ready to share it with anyone. I don't want to lose you. But I will let you go, if it's what you need."

  When I left the room, Emma was standing outside the door. She'd heard every word, goddammit.

  She tried to say something, then stopped, and shook her head. "I suppose I might see you... again? I'm not entirely sure what to say, after all that."

  I didn't have the time or the energy to engage her. "Just make sure he doesn't do anything stupid while he's in here."

  Everything I needed to know was all laid out in her expression. She thought he'd already done something stupid. Maybe she could talk some sense into him.

  I got a cab home, despite my unemployed status and dwindling bank account. I just couldn't bring myself to cry on the subway in front of strangers.

  * * * *

  Places look different when you're sad. I stepped into the apartment and hung my coat up on the same peg I hang it on every night, but it looked wrong there.

  I heard laughter from Holli's room. I tip-toed to my bedroom. They were having a good time, there was no reason for them to come running out to console me. I would still be emotionally shattered in the morning.

  I didn't bother to turn on my bedroom light. I didn't want to see myself in the mirror. As silly as it sounded, I was afraid I would look pregnant. I knew my tummy was still mostly flat, and the little curve at the bottom would be there, fetus or not, so there was no reason to scrutinize my body quite yet.

  Because the metaphorical human heart is a cruel son of a bitch, when I lay in bed, all I could think about was that day six years ago.

  "First time going to Tokyo?"

  "No, but I'll bet it's yours."

  A tear slid from my eye and dripped into my hair.

  "So what, are you like, from England or something?"

  "No, this is the accent I use when I try to pick up women in airports."

  Not only had he broken my heart, but he'd ruined one of my favorite memories. Great.

  For a bitter moment, I wished that Neil had never come to Porteras. That he had remained Leif, the mysterious stranger from my one unbelievable night. I could have held onto him then, at a safe distance. I could have just kept on being myself - or whoever I’d thought I was before he’d come back into my life.

  If our flight had never been delayed, if I'd just gone to NYU right off the bat, I would never have met him. I wouldn't be in the predicament I was in right now. That filled me with so much panic, I could barely breathe. One rash decision, and I had really fucked things up for myself this far down the road? How could I ever make a serious choice again, knowing that?

  And now I had to make a really big decision.

  There was no way I was having this baby. I knew Neil well enough to know that he would want to be a part of its life, whether he'd planned to have another child or not. And while that was admirable, I didn't want to be tied to him like that. I couldn't imagine trying to get over loving him while parenting a child together, apart.

  And I didn't want a kid. I didn't care that people said, "it's different when they're yours." The thought of spending hours on a park bench, watching some grubby toddler play in a sandbox... my skin crawled at the notion. It would be different when it was mine? Yeah, it would be real, and I would be miserable and trapped in a life I’d never wanted. That wasn’t fair for a child, and I wasn't about to go through what my mother had gone through when she'd chosen to keep me.

  Adoption was... not an option. I didn't want to be pregnant. I really didn't want to give birth, no thank you very much. I'd have to explain to everyone I knew that I was having a baby and giving it up, and they'd all want to weigh in with their opinions or try to get me to change my mind. Would I have second thoughts every time a well-meaning stranger touched my belly? Maybe a stronger person could withstand all of that, but not me.

  Then there was the other really big decision. Did I let Neil go?

  He was right. If I turned down this job to be with him, I was making a commitment. It would be stupid of me to see it any other way. No one passed up the opportunity of a lifetime to casually date someone. If I didn’t take the job, I could end up resenting Neil and destroying everything we had together, anyway.

  But I couldn
't work for Gabriella. Not when she thought she could freely make ridiculous demands over my personal life.

  And yes, fine, I did feel more for Neil than just your usual casual relationship stuff. Holli was right, I was never planning to do the happy-family thing... but if I ever were to do it, it would be with Neil. I didn't want to break up with him. I couldn't imagine my life without him. He'd become my closest friend and the only lover I'd ever actually, well... loved.

  I picked up the phone then remembered the time. Then I decided I didn't care. It didn't matter if Gabriella had some amazing place for me in her amazing company where I would be amazingly successful. She would micromanage my life more than Neil would. And at least I could reason with him and get him to back off.

  Maybe that was what a relationship actually was. Just learning to be able to stand the other person and make them happy. What a concept.

  When Gabriella answered the phone, she sounded confused. "Sophie Scaife is calling me. At this hour. Which seems odd, because I thought she wanted a job - "

  "I don't want the job." I blurted. "Not if you think you can tell me what I can and can't do in my personal life. You, or Jake. It's never going to happen."

  "You can't date the owner of a competing publication if you want to work for me. That's not negotiable." She said each word carefully, rolling them around her mouth like a fine wine. I could perfectly visualize her facial expression, her big, blue eyes wide in her deceptively kind face.

  "I understand. Thank you for the opportunity." I'd said "Thank you," and not "fuck you," right?

  "Goodbye, Sophie."

  She hung up, and I sat staring at my phone for a long time. I felt like I hadn't really lost anything. I was just as unemployed as I had been before the phone call. I was just as pregnant. My boyfriend was just as hospitalized. And possibly not my boyfriend. I had no clue where we would go from here.

  I could walk away from all of it, I realized. I could go, have the abortion, break up with Neil, tell him I'd taken the job, and start completely over. Everything would go back to the way it had been before Neil had walked into Porteras.

  But I could never go back to the way things had been the day before that flight to Tokyo had been delayed. I could never un-know Neil, or stop feeling the way I felt about him. I would probably never stop loving him.

  I could stay with him. I could have his baby. Or not. The clock was ticking, and I didn't know what I was going to do.

  What the hell was I going to do?

  Abigail Barnette is the alter-ego of author, blogger, and funny person, Jenny Trout. Writing as Jennifer Armintrout, she made the USA Today bestseller list with her debut novel, Blood Ties Book One: The Turning. Her novel American Vampire was named one of the top ten horror novels of 2011 by Booklist Magazine Online. As Abigail Barnette, she writes award winning erotic romance. When she’s not writing, she’s sleeping or otherwise incapacitated.

  She is a proud Michigander, mother of two, and wife to the only person alive capable of spending extended periods of time with her without wanting to murder her.