“Are you okay?” he asked finally, the million dollar question finally coming from his lips, too. I hated that question and wished that people would stop finding reasons to ask that of me. I hated myself for constantly being in the position that obligated people to make that query.
“I’m fine,” I said, firing off my standard answer.
“So what happens now?” George asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got a very scared intern sitting in my office, realizing that he just screwed up big time. Based on the incident I could let him go, or I could write him up and place documentation of this in his file. You’re in management; what would you suggest I do?”
I placed my elbows on the desktop and steepled my fingers. I was flattered that he was including me in the decision, but at the same time didn’t want to make that call. I wondered how much Jeff had told him. If he had admitted to the fact that he had obtained my last address of record, George would likely have fired him on the spot. I doubted that Jeff would do anything really harmful with the information, he didn’t seem to be the crazy stalker type. He did know a little more about my personal life than I would have liked, but I was willing to chalk that up to an unhealthy obsession with me that I hadn’t done anything to squash.
“I want a written apology on my desk tomorrow morning, a copy of which will be inserted into his file, so nothing snarky. I want this to clearly state that he will no longer research my background or my personal information, or that of anyone that I associate with outside of work. I want his supervisor informed that he must be assigned to a specific lunch hour, which will remain the same unless there is a concrete need to change this. I will be informed of his lunch schedule, as well as any and all changes made to this so that I may plan my own break accordingly so that it won’t coincide with his. He is no longer allowed to distribute mail to me or any of my staff. I don’t even want to see him in my department; he has no reason to be here. Fair enough?”
George nodded. “I think you’re being rather generous, considering. I can only imagine what was said before I showed up, given what he said in front of me.”
“He saved the best for last,” I admitted, “and none of it needed to be said, even if it was partially true.”
“I’m sorry, Lauren.”
“For what?”
“I shrugged off his crush on you just like everyone else did. I never thought that he would act on it.”
“Me, either. I guess when I was dark and brooding, it was more palatable to him than me being happy for a change. On Friday night, when Matthew was waiting for me in the parking lot, I could tell that Jeff was jealous. He just wasn’t ready to do anything about it yet. If you think about it, it’s really kind of funny. I doubt anyone would want to trade places with me given the crap I’ve gone through over the past six months. But he obviously sat and stewed about it all weekend and was ready to give me his wrath once he came in.”
“And he gave you an earful.”
“Yeah, I heard all about it.”
“Well, I’m off to give him the good news that he didn’t wreck his career entirely. I’ll see to it that the letter is delivered to you first thing tomorrow, though not by him. And if you’re worried about leaving tonight, just ask Bob to walk you to your car. Or I’ll do it. Either way.”
“George, to be honest, I think I could take Jeff if I really had to.”
This garnered a snicker. “I think you’re right.”
“Thank you for saving the day. With at least a little of my reputation intact.”
“You’re welcome.”
The rest of the day was spent trying to recover from the lunchtime incident. I decided that the most effective way to address the rumors with my staff was to call a short, informal meeting after everyone returned from their own respective breaks. Not everyone had heard what had gone on yet; if I could get to them first it would save me a lot of grief. Fortunately, I felt like I was able to save face pretty well. It was definitely to my advantage that the majority of people here liked me.
At five o’clock I was more than ready to go. I packed up my desk just as eagerly as the rest of my department. Without being asked, Bob hovered around my office, ready to escort me out. I wondered if George had covertly arranged for this to happen. Whatever the case, we both pretended that this wasn’t planned and made small talk out to the parking lot.
Secretly, I was a little relieved that Bob had felt the need to come to my rescue. With my car parked on the very edge of the lot, I did have to pass by where Jeff parked. If I made a huge circle around his car, it would look like I was scared of him and I didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. This way I could stride purposefully past him as if I hadn’t a care in the world.
I had no clue where Bob normally parked or even what he drove. Just as I considered asking him and telling him he should park closer to me starting tomorrow, I realized I had different concerns. My fears of Jeff badgering me after work were misappropriated. There was, however, someone waiting by my car.
Bob picked up on the way I tensed visibly. He was familiar enough with my routine to know that I parked out that far so that no one else would park beside me. He probably also realized that he didn’t recognize the other car as belonging to an employee, which it didn’t.
A blue Honda Civic was parked next to the Sonata, in the same place it had been the evening after Thanksgiving, when Matthew had gotten out of the passenger side and scared me half to death.
Chris had come to see me, and given Matthew’s description of events, I doubted he was here to congratulate me on our burgeoning relationship. I was about to get lecture number two of the day.
Shit.
Chapter Nineteen
I considered pretending that I hadn’t noticed him. Maybe I could head straight over to my car, my eyes focused solely on my target, unlock my door, climb in and take off. After all, he wasn’t perched outside his vehicle. It wasn’t as if I’d be ignoring him completely; perhaps I’d just been preoccupied. I could plead innocence if he called me out; his wasn’t the only older model Civic that drove around in Fort Wayne. He’d given me one ride, long ago. I could claim I hadn’t placed the car.
Instead I forced myself to walk up to his driver’s side window, displaying way more confidence than I felt. The window was rolled down to provide ventilation; it was a warm day and he had shut the car off, meaning he had been here for a while.
“Hi, Chris,” I said, proud that I managed to keep my voice level.
He jumped slightly and I stifled a giggle. I had caught him off guard. The thought made him seem less threatening, at least until he spoke.
“Hi, Lauren,” he replied.
I met his chocolate brown eyes straight on for a mere second before shifting my gaze to the concrete below my feet. With his dark hair and eyes he could have been Gracie’s long lost relative, but the similarities ended there. Mainly she liked me and he didn’t.
“So, what’s up?” I asked finally, the silence excruciatingly loud.
“Are you busy?”
“No.”
“Good, because we need to talk. Hungry?”
I nodded. “Lead the way.”
I wasn’t about to give him the option of suggesting that I ride with him. One trip in that car had been awkward enough for me, and Matthew had been in the passenger seat protecting us from one another. That had also been before the fallout from the birthday fiasco, before he’d had a reason to hate me.
As I rounded the back of my car, my head turned instinctively in the direction of Jeff’s parking spot. Sure enough, he was standing at his car watching my exchange with Chris. Though I doubted he could tell from this distance that my latest visitor was also a guy, he shook his head at me all the same. We locked eyes for a split second. His were filled with nothing but disdain. I shrugged and got in the Sonata.
Chris chose one of the two hamburger joints by the interstate. It wasn’t a long enough drive for me to totally freak myself o
ut. I was glad that we would have the hustle and bustle of a fast food restaurant at prime eating time as our background. For a moment I had been afraid that he would direct me to the Mexican restaurant that Matthew had taken me to on Friday and we’d be forced to sit inches away from one another with zero distractions.
We parked beside each other and got out of our respective vehicles. He didn’t wait for me, instead walking quickly towards the building. I did a modified run / fast walk to catch up to him. One of his steps was more like three or four of mine. By the time he got to the door I had cut the distance between us to one that simply would have been rude had he not held the door open for me. Reluctantly he did, though I half expected him to slam it in my face.
There was a long line at the counter and we stood in silence as we waited. For all it was worth, people probably thought we were strangers. In a way we were. The only things we had in common were Matthew and to a lesser extent, Blake. Without those connections we were nothing to one another. It was easy to see the feeling was mutual.
He ordered first, not offering to pay for my meal. I didn’t exactly insert myself into the conversation between him and the cashier, either. If I was the bigger person, I would have jumped right in, added my combo to the order and paid for it all, but I wasn’t. I had a sneaking suspicion that an act like that wouldn’t cement me into his good graces anyway. I didn’t want to appear like I was trying to buy his loyalty. I also didn’t want to unintentionally insult him by suggesting that I made more money than he did, which I was pretty sure was true. The last I had heard, paramedics were grossly underpaid.
Once he got his food, he took off in search of a table and left me at the counter by myself. As I waited for my own hamburger, I silently wondered if he would even allow me to sit with him. Perhaps we would occupy adjacent tables and communicate via gestures. Maybe I should give him my cell phone number so we could text each other instead of talking.
I didn’t allow him the opportunity to deny me a seat. I plunked my tray down across from him with way more bravado than I felt. He had selected a table with four chairs; I sat down in one and placed my purse on the one beside me.
As I unwrapped my sandwich, I felt his eyes on me, silently appraising me. I let him continue this until it made me horribly uncomfortable. When I had finally had enough, I placed the burger on the tray with a thud and glared at him.
“What?” I asked harshly. I was taken aback at my tone, but Chris didn’t even flinch.
“You should have gotten stitches for that.”
My face turned beet red out of a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Unaffected, Chris picked up a french fry from his meal and dipped it in the pile of ketchup on his wrapper, swirling it around. I wanted to grab the damn thing and shove it up his nose.
“Everyone notices the head wound,” I sighed, “don’t tell me you’re about to touch it, too.”
“And risk getting my fingers bitten off? I don’t think so.”
We ate in contemplative silence for a few minutes, staring at one another. It wasn’t the easy lull of conversation that passes comfortably between friends. This was the deafening sound of a battle brewing, of the most intricate kind of chess match about to take place. I was acutely aware of my heartbeats; I counted them for a moment in an attempt to calm myself down. I could feel my blood pressure rising along with my nervousness.
“As much as I enjoy sitting here and staring at you,” I said at long last, “you told me you needed to talk to me. Here I am. So talk.”
Again I was surprised at myself. I hated confrontation, yet I was instigating it. If anything, I had expected myself to throw myself at Chris’s feet, begging for his mercy and his blessing to date his friend. However, the stand-off with Jeff earlier had left me on edge and I was taking that out on my current companion.
Chris still hadn’t said another word, so I took the chance to modify my last statement. “I’m sorry. I had a really bad day at work. This one guy who’s been crushing over me for a while started talking shit about Matthew and I’m just tired of defending myself right now.”
I hadn’t meant to tell him all that. It had just come out in a rush. Afraid he would leave here and blab everything to Matthew, I did my best to remove that thought from his head.
“Don’t tell him,” I pleaded, “he would just worry about what he’s done even more than he already does. If he knew that I was out there sticking up for him he’d feel beyond guilty.”
“Fair enough,” Chris said, “as long as you promise me you won’t tell him about our little date tonight.”
I snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, Chris. My worst date with Eric was better than this. You don’t even rate on my top ten.”
“On your worst date with Eric, he stood you up. Which led to the whole reason that I’m here right now.”
“Which is?”
I took a drink from my pop, sucking thoughtfully on the straw. Chris had the advantage here. He obviously knew bits and pieces of my story, if not the entire thing. The only thing that I had on him was that he used to date Blake and for some unknown reason things had ended very badly between them. I seriously doubted that my ex-roommate had told me the whole story. I never received full disclosure from Blake about anything in her personal life. I guess that was her right, but having all of the puzzle pieces certainly would have come in handy at this point in the game.
“Matthew’s in love with you.”
I swallowed my drink in a gulp, choking a little as it went down my throat. Of course I already knew. Matthew had told me this very thing himself. But to hear it from Chris was a different story. This was the blunt, raw truth, spoken from the lips of someone who hated me.
“And you don’t approve.”
Chris shut his eyes and took a deep breath. “I didn’t,” he admitted finally.
“Yeah, I could tell. So why did you tell him what happened Thursday night with your friend?”
He ignored my question, instead continuing on his planned course. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t typically approve of any of the people he dates.”
It didn’t make me feel better, but I stayed quiet.
“If you haven’t noticed, he has a tendency toward addictive behavior. It usually comes back to bite him in the ass. He’s had it as long as I’ve known him. It explains a lot, the string of hearts he left broken in high school and college. The alcohol and drug use.”
He paused, looking pointedly at me. He was gauging my reaction, betting that Matthew hadn’t told me everything. Though Chris was right, I held my ground and didn’t flinch. Drug use? Maybe he had gone through an experimental phase when his parents were still bankrolling his lifestyle. Didn’t lots of spoiled rich kids smoke joints or try painkillers? I’d spent plenty of time with him, enough to know that he wasn’t still using whatever Chris alluded to.
Sufficiently pleased with my lack of reaction, he moved on. “After he got out of jail, things kind of calmed down on the girlfriend front. He stopped serial dating and started serial one night standing. I’m pretty sure that he taught Blake some of her tricks, or maybe vice versa.”
He couldn’t hide the pain that washed over his features at the mention of Blake. I pretended not to notice. Inwardly I was beginning to soften towards him. He was understandably skeptical due to his own experiences.
“And the man whore behavior continued for years. He never let himself get emotionally attached to any of them. I never met most of them. I didn’t want to know how many there were, and he never told.”
I replayed Matthew’s conversation with me from the morning after we had slept together for the first time. He had admitted to several dalliances. I supposed the word several could be far encompassing – what I had considered it to mean sounded like a gross understatement according to Chris’s account.
Quietly, I folded the wrapper around the remainder of my hamburger and pushed it away. I wasn’t hungry any longer. Something that resembled sympathy reflected in Chris’s eyes.
> “Am I upsetting you?”
I shook my head, not trusting my voice.
“It says a lot about you that you brush aside the arrests, the jail time, all of the ugly stuff like it doesn’t matter. But when I bring up the women, you outwardly flinch.”
“I did no such thing,” I said with little conviction.
He snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“So that’s why you drug me here? To let me know that I’m just another conquest? To laugh in my face? If you don’t meet most of his women why am I different? Because you gave me a ride home one night? Because you think I have dirt on you just because I lived with your ex-girlfriend?”
“You’re not a conquest, Lauren. Everything changed the day he met you. At first, I wrote it off as even more self-destructive behavior. Even you would admit you were a bad choice, being firmly in a committed relationship with someone else.”
It was my turn to snort.
“He’s never loved anyone before, Lauren. It begins and ends with you.”
My hands needed something to do. I impulsively grabbed my cup and slid the straw up and down, the lid squeaking as I did so. Chris reached across the table and circled my wrist with his large hand, effectively stopping my nervous tic.
“That’s really annoying.”
“Sorry. I just don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything. Just listen.”
I nodded, prompting him to proceed.
“I’ve listened to hours of him recounting your fights with Eric. Of how he would have treated you so much better. How you always gave Eric the benefit of the doubt, even when it broke you in two. How Eric didn’t deserve you, how no one did, including himself.
“At first I wrote it off as just rambling, of him having a crush on you simply because you two saw each other so much.”
“I did the same thing,” I admitted, forgetting my vow of silence.
Chris pressed his finger to his lips. I shut up.
“I really didn’t think you would ever return the favor. I warned him away from you for many reasons, one being that once you found out everything you would be scared off. Doubly so when he told me what had happened to your mom. I wouldn’t have blamed you, and neither would he.
Shattered Page 17
