PLAYED: A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE

by Wild, Nikki

  I ignored his tantrum. It wasn’t easy—I could feel my cheeks beginning to scald and my throat tighten. “What sort of crisis?” I managed as I took in another deliberate mouthful of rice. I tried not to wince as my tooth sunk into a shard of carrot.

  “One of last month’s interviewees showed up,” he answered, and I could tell by the tone in his voice exactly which one it was. “Again.”

  I finally looked away, heaving a sigh through my nose. Last month, Miguel had wanted to hire a few more salespeople and had put out an open call on Craigslist. We’d received hundreds of applications, and he and Ross, our staffing manager, had decided on group interviews being the most efficient way to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Unfortunately in their enthusiasm, they’d made promises they couldn’t keep, and some of the prospective hires had to be told they either weren’t good fits (mostly due to some background check revelations) or that there simply wasn’t enough room for them on the team.

  Except that Ross refused to tell them that. He just dodged their calls, allowing each and every one to go to his voicemail and directing me to say he wasn’t in the office. Miguel had declared the matter was “beneath him” and that Ross would just have to deal with it.

  But when Ross didn’t deal with it, it suddenly became my problem. Suddenly I had to let someone down regarding a decision I hadn’t even been a part of. Suddenly I had to bear the brunt of their anger and frustration. Me, the woman who was constantly reminded that she was “only” an administrative assistant and not a manager.

  “Isn’t Ross around?” I asked, though I was sure I already knew the answer.

  “He’s at lunch. And you are our front desk girl, so this seems like it falls under your purview.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You know what he’s here about, don’t you? It’s been a month, and Ross hasn’t returned his calls. He’s probably furious.”

  Miguel shrugged. “Part of your job, Madison, is to handle customer service issues. If you can’t hack it, well, then…”

  He trailed off as he always did. He never actually said he’d fired me or that I should look for some other job, but the threat was always there hanging in the silence. He knew it. I knew it. But he didn’t have the guts to utter the words out loud. He was that type of asshole, the one who did everything in his power not to do his own dirty work, not to seem like the dick that he really was. If I went to HR to complain now and said, “He made me feel as though my job was in jeopardy,” Miguel could come right back and say, “I never said that.” And it would be true. The bastard sure knew how to wiggle.

  “I’m entitled to a lunch break,” I reminded him, but I knew I was losing the fight. There was no point, really. We both knew he wasn’t going to make Lacy take care of it. When it came to reminding people about the nature of their job, I was the sole target.

  “Like I said, you’re two minutes over.” Miguel’s gaze flicked to the clock. “Five, now. You’d better get back to your desk and take care of this before it becomes a payroll issue.”

  I slammed my plastic fork down onto my tray and stood, making sure to scrape my chair all the way back across the floor. I tossed the tray hard into the garbage can, maybe too hard, because as I passed Miguel he stepped directly in my way.

  “And stow the attitude,” he said, a smugness lifting the corners of his lips.

  I stared at him for a moment, and in that time, something just… snapped. I was sure this was a bad idea. I was almost certain I would lose my job. But in that one exhausted, frustrated, hungry moment, I lost my temper and brushed past him, thumping my shoulder into his as I careened down the main hall.

  “Hey!” he called after me. I could hear and feel his footsteps pounding the carpet behind me. “Madison! Don’t you dare walk away from me when I’m talking to you!”

  I ignored him, continuing on my path. As I passed Ross’ office, I could hear the soft sound of his Pandora station and see a light on from under the door. I tried the handle. It was locked.

  “Ross!” I said, banging hard enough for one of our clients to poke his head out further down the hall. “Ross, you have Mr. Davies here to see you!”

  “I’m not in,” he said. I could practically taste the cowardice in his tone.

  “You’re a manager,” I said, for once reminding my so-called betters of their positions rather than the other way around. “And you’ve been ignoring his calls for a month. Just come out and tell him he hasn’t been hired. It’s not that big a deal!”

  Ross didn’t answer, and by now, Miguel was catching up. I shook my head, snorted, and strode toward the front desk again. Even in heels, I was quicker than Miguel’s fat ass.

  “Maddy,” Lacy said as I came into view around the corner. She was texting while Mr. Davies sat in one of the reception area chairs. She brushed a dark lock of hair from her face and tried to pretend like I hadn’t just caught her slacking off once again at work. “Mr. Davies is here for…”

  “For Mr. Culling,” I finished, smiling at Mr. Davies. That smile felt wrong and wild, but the momentum of my anger was thrusting me forward now. I couldn’t stop. “I’m Madison Hearst. We’ve spoken on the phone.” I extended my hand for his.

  Mr. Davies stood up and hesitated a moment. My eyes fell to his left hand, the one that was shriveled and tucked against his side. Some kind of accident, I’d been told. But I didn’t need that one. I only needed his right.

  After a time, he grasped my hand in his good one. “I remember. You helped me with my application before my interview.”

  “I did,” I said. One might have thought our very own staffing specialist would have been able to do that, but alas, Ross wasn’t terribly familiar with the application process—nor anything else of particular value, it seemed. “And I apologize that Mr. Culling hasn’t returned your calls. I assume you’re here about the status of your background check and interview?”

  Mr. Davies nodded. I turned slightly over my shoulder to see Miguel hanging back by the offices, keeping out of sight of Mr. Davies. His face was turning redder by the second and he had a look of unease about him, almost as if he knew what I was going to do.

  I’d been lying for Ross and Miguel for far too long. I was going to tell Mr. Davies the truth, and that was something Miguel was desperately afraid of.

  “Mr. Davies,” I said, turning back to him, but this time without a smile. “I’m afraid Mr. Culling has been avoiding you.”

  Lacy gasped. Miguel made a strangled sound like a pig that had just been stuck in the belly. I continued:

  “Your background check came back fine. Your resume was all in order. Everything was perfect, really—except your arm.” I slowed my words, taking care not to injure Mr. Davies at all in my anger toward Miguel, Ross, and the rest of ExecuSpace. “Mr. Culling felt that, as a salesperson, the arm would keep clients from signing on. He didn’t have anything concrete to reject your application on, and he knows discrimination against disabled people who can adequately perform the job at hand is illegal, so he figured that simply avoiding you would do the trick.

  “But now you’re here speaking to me because he refuses to come out of his office and face you himself, and because our general manager thinks that an administrative assistant making ten dollars an hour is better equipped to explain these things to you than, say, a manager. I apologize on their behalf, Mr. Davies, and on behalf of a company that you really, really don’t want to work for, anyway. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

  Mr. Davies looked at me for a very long time. I knew how I looked on the outside—calm, perhaps cold even—but on the inside, I felt like shit. It wasn’t that I had done anything wrong. I was upset because in the four years I’d worked here, I’d failed to change a damn thing about this awful company, and people like Mr. Davies were going to pay for it. None of this would ever come down on Miguel or Ross’ shoulders. It was only nice people, hardworking people who would bear the burden of ExecuSpace’s moral void. And I hated to be the one who had to inf
lict it.

  “My… arm,” he said at last, and I nodded slowly. “But it’s not an issue. I can write just fine. Drive, even. I don’t see what my arm has to do with being a competent salesperson…”

  “It doesn’t,” I assured him. “It has nothing to do with it at all. But Mr. Culling feels that the perception of ExecuSpace might be marred by someone who doesn’t look like the rest of us do, and for him, that’s cause enough not to hire you.” I saw the look on his face, the slump in his shoulders, and added: “I really am sorry, Mr. Davies. But after a month of being lied to, I thought the truth might—”

  “The truth does nothing for me, Miss Hearst,” he snarled, a surprising rage blazing in his eyes. I could see they were watering. They glimmered like hot coals. “A job is what I need. And even a shitty one for a shitty company would have been enough for me. But you people don’t give a shit about men like me, do you? All you see is a withered arm and you think that means I’m trash, that I can just be tossed into the gutter. You didn’t even have the decency to consider me for the position, did you? You just saw the arm. That’s all.”

  I pursed my lips. This was exactly what I’d feared. Not only was Mr. Davies upset by the news, but he was taking that out on me, the nearest available target. I had to swallow the compulsion to invite him back to Ross’ office and knock on his door until he opened up, but Miguel would probably just call security and have them haul both Mr. Davies and myself out.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “If you’d like, I can get you the number for our corporate office in Virginia. There’s a woman named Patricia who could hear your complaint…”

  “That’s enough,” Miguel said, finally loosening himself from the doorway and practically pushing me out of the way. “Mr. Davies, I’m Miguel Herrera, the general manager for ExecuSpace. Unfortunately, you just weren’t a good fit for the criteria we’re looking for right now. I’m sorry no one’s gotten back to you sooner, but we’ve all been very busy—”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” Mr. Davies asked him, his face taut with barely-contained rage. “You must, because as much as I think your receptionist there could give a rat’s ass about what happens to me, at least she had the decency to be honest.”

  I felt my own knot of anger and tried not to grimace. “Receptionist” was something of a dirty word amongst personal and administrative assistants. Even secretaries were higher up the food chain. A receptionist was a person who did the least amount of work in the industry, someone who answered a phone and filed a few papers, maybe. Lacy was a receptionist—barely. I didn’t appreciate being compared to her.

  But I understood that this wasn’t about me. This was about Mr. Davies and his embarrassment at the treatment he’d endured. Though I’d meant for the truth to be helpful to him, I knew that it couldn’t have been easy to hear, and I tried to accept his hatred gracefully.

  Miguel, however, was showing signs of cracking. I could see his brow lining with deep wrinkles and the muscle in his jaw was steadily twitching.

  “Sir, I assure you, what Miss Hearst has said is in no way representative of our company’s values or beliefs. She is obviously misinformed.”

  “Then why?” Mr. Davies demanded, his voice rising. “Why won’t Mr. Culling return my calls? Why did you decide not to hire me?”

  Miguel sneered. “We’re not under any legal obligation to disclose that. In fact, our HR department discourages us from—”

  “Fuck your HR department!” Mr. Davies railed, getting so close to Miguel’s face I could see spittle marring his skin. “And fuck you!”

  Before Miguel could retaliate, Mr. Davies left, storming off through the doors to the elevator with steps that shook the office floor.

  As the weight of his anger dissipated, I felt another sensation flooding in. What I had done was, objectively, the right thing. I’d given a man honestly when no one else would, and I’d stopped being the whipping girl everyone wanted me to be. I’d stood up for myself and for my own values. But at what cost?

  Miguel turned to me. I raised my chin, doing my best to look confident, but not smug. I was preparing to defend my decision when the words I’d been dreading left his mouth.

  “Get your things and turn in your key card. You’re fired.”

  Almost without thinking and with shock softening the blow, I removed my lanyard and threw it at him.

  “You can’t fire me. I quit five minutes ago.”

  I grabbed my clutch from the front desk, turned, and strode out the doors, following Mr. Davies. Miguel was yelling something at me, but I couldn’t hear him—probably some clichéd movie-villain line about how I’d “never work in this town again.” He seemed like the type.

  The blood rushing in my ears was deafening, and I could feel my body quaking as I pressed the button for the elevator car. Equal parts relief and dread seeped into me, but I tried not to let either one win until I heard Lacy’s shrill voice calling to me over the baritone roar of Miguel’s furor.

  “But Maddy! I don’t know what all you do! Send me an e-mail with everything once you get home, okay?”

  And then I finally let the dam burst. I laughed.

  And as the elevator car finally reached my floor, and as it descended to the next, and the next, I laughed and laughed some more.

  My laughter died as soon as I hit the lobby.

  It wasn’t until I’d shown myself out through the revolving door that I realized the tears brimming in my eyes weren’t the funny ones. They were hot and stinging, tears of rage, desperation, and utter despair. Soon I realized that I really wasn’t laughing at all anymore, not even in that hysterical way people do when they feel like they’ve got nothing else they can do to chase the pain away.

  No, I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard it hurt, so hard my chest felt like it would split in two, so hard I was sure I could feel my ribs starting to cave and poke at my lungs.

  I was standing on the sidewalk of one of the busiest streets in the city bawling my eyes out in the afternoon rush. Cars and taxis whizzed by too fast for me to see anything more than the blur of their movement, but somehow I was certain that the dark eyes inside them were all on me. Passersby craned their necks to ogle at the crying woman slowly wandering toward home, fascinated by me like I was some kind of moaning spirit haunting 47th Street, a jilted bride still searching for her lover or a desolate mother seeking her long-lost child.

  They made the whole thing feel more dramatic than it was, but for the most part, they all left me alone. That was fine by me. The last thing I needed at that moment was a stranger’s pity.

  I steadied myself for a moment on a parking meter near one of those pruned-just-so trees cities put up along the sidewalks to imply they weren’t completely destroying the environment. It was every bit as fake as the offices I used to pretend to work for. I could feel cold sweat making long trails down the lines in my palms despite the shade, and my chest felt like someone had taken the muscles and stretching them out paper-thin. I knew what it was. I’d experienced it before. In fact, panic attacks had become a common occurrence since I’d started working at ExecuSpace, and even Zoloft couldn’t seem to keep them at bay. Human beings weren’t meant to work the way ExecuSpace expected them to. Human beings weren’t meant to endure such constant, debilitating stress.

  As I sucked in long, slow breaths, I tried to entertain myself with happier thoughts. It’s for the best. Think about your health. Think about your peace of mind. This job couldn’t have been good for you. Even if it was putting food on the table, who’s to say that you wouldn’t end up in the hospital for stress a few months down the line? It’s not like they offered health insurance. You were one medical disaster away from being destitute, anyway…

  It was all true. But the fact remained that I wasn’t one medical disaster away from financial ruin anymore. Now, thanks to a rage that had been building for far too long and a mouth that didn’t know when to seal itself shut, I was already there.

  I changed tracks on my train of
thought, trying to get a grip on something solid—a plan, maybe. The damage was done, and there was no way to undo it, but what I could do now was find a way to move forward.

  I knew the job market. I’d been searching for a replacement position for months now in secret. I’d only had one interview, and that position had offered even less in the way of compensation. Still, I was sure I could find something, but time was a factor, and I had no safety net.

  That particular thought made my vision blurry and my blood boil. It didn’t have to be like this…

  The reason I had no safety net had a name, and it was Mother.

  My mother, Amanda Hearst, didn’t believe in being supportive. She believed in “tough love,” as in, “you better not screw this up, honey, ‘cause you’re on your own.” She had made it clear to me from a very young age that my mistakes were my own. My successes, however, she attributed to her stellar parenting. Classic mother.

  “Those other kids failed because their parents let them,” she’d tell me, her carmine lips twisted into a smug smirk. “If it wasn’t for me and how hard I’ve pushed you, you would be just like them.”