by Nikky Kaye
“Fine.” He spun in his chair to stare into the darkness. I looked up to see his pained reflection in the window. “You’ve made it pretty clear that I’m not in charge of you. You want to be on the same level as me, then I can’t—I shouldn’t stop you from making that decision.”
He mumbled something to himself that sounded like “something, something fucking asinine.”
My throat closed up—not that I knew what to say anyhow.
“I know I can be a bit controlling. But you—your work—is valuable to me, Madeline.”
So maybe there it was. He wanted my head instead of my heart. So why did it hurt so much?
He cleared his throat. “I’ll back off, but you have to promise me something.”
“What?” I moved toward his desk. I ached to touch him, to kiss him and promise him anything and everything. But I’d never been able to keep promises before, so I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to do so now. Just trying to make this separation now was taking more strength than I thought it would.
He didn’t turn around, instead catching my attention in the reflection in the window. The light in the office was brighter than the lights outside, and the floor to ceiling glass was almost a murky mirror before us. I felt like Alice, wanting to go through it to be with him.
“Promise me you’ll tell me if you need anything. Anything. I’ll be there. Please trust me on that.”
His reflection turned hazy as my eyes filled with tears.
“Yes, sir.” My voice wobbled on “sir,” but it was a term of endearment now—a quiet promise of respect instead of teasing.
“And another thing?”
I nodded, not sure if I could speak anymore without totally losing my composure.
“Please look for another job that will appreciate your skills.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and let out a frustrated huff. “Because now I really want you to quit again.”
He swung around in his chair again, studiously not looking at me while he flipped the laptops open to wake them up. His lips pressed together in a tight line, and I had the horrible feeling that he was doing everything in his power to marshal his self-control.
The silence between us was tauter than the ropes course at the lodge as I picked up my purse off the couch.
“Wait, Madeline.” I heard his chair creak a little and a drawer open.
When I turned back to him, I saw my panties folded neatly on his desk, as far away from him as his reach could extend. Burning with humiliation, I snatched them up and shoved them in my coat pocket.
“You can start on Monday,” he said gruffly, blinking at the screens in front of him.
I hesitated, waiting to see if he’d say anything else. He didn’t.
“Yes, sir.”
And then I left, closing the door behind me. I only briefly considered using the underwear to wipe away the tears falling down my heated cheeks.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
GAGE
When Monday rolled around, I could barely speak to her. Although, I was a little out of practice, having not used my voice in a few days. I’d spent the weekend hibernating in my gaming beanbag and working on the January updates on my laptop.
Okay, perhaps I’d spent more than a few hours trying to figure out how to update the biometric software in our most popular app to measure the effect of a broken heart. I was surprised that someone hadn’t done it yet, but then I wasn’t able to make that breakthrough either.
Christmas was in less than two weeks, and the office was rumbling with discontent now that “Angry Santa” was stalking the halls, yelling at all the elves to crank up production.
Anybody who thought I hadn’t seen the disturbing memes being forwarded about me obviously forgot that I was also on the “Reply To All” list.
I tried to focus on what needed to be done before January first. Although things had been busy for a few weeks, I did my best to get Madeline up to speed—through email. To her credit, she didn’t point out that I was being a completely pussy by not talking to her. Her politeness and professionalism threatened to push me over the edge, and my mood grew darker as the days grew shorter.
In approximately two months, we needed to both send out a wide blast and target narrow markets to grab those users who had fallen off the New Year’s resolution wagon. Happit needed to catch on, big time. Our investors and our fourth quarter relied on those subscribers, and so far, my Marketing Director had nothing to show me.
Thankfully, Bobbie had headed back to the lodge the day before to catch up on some work there, so there was absolutely no excuse for Aaron to try working from home. I needed him in the office. He came in early every day, but by Thursday afternoon, he still hadn’t produced the storyboards I needed to see for the February campaign. The clock was ticking, and my patience was already in short supply.
I cleared my throat in front of Madeline’s desk to catch her attention. Her eyes widened as she looked up at me, before she blushed and stared at her computer again. No, I hadn’t missed the shock and hurt in her expression at the simple fact that I was making an overture to her. That brief grunt was the closest I’d gotten to a conversation with her since she asked for her job back, dumping me in the process.
It was close to the end of the day, and several of my minions had already cut out early. I was annoyed and frustrated and pissed off and hungry and horny and everything in the world just sucked right at that moment. I cleared my throat again.
“Madeline?”
She blinked at her screen, the reflected light making her look almost sickly. “Yes, sir?”
My stomach flipped just hearing her say those two words. “I need you to go see if Aaron needs help.”
At first she didn’t respond, her fingers pausing on her keyboard. Then she replied in a monotone, “You could have emailed me that, sir.”
My hands tightened into fists at my sides. I was trying, goddammit. “Well, I’m asking now.”
“Why?”
“Because you have a knack for this stuff.”
“No, why are you asking?”
Now her gaze shifted back up to me. I hadn’t known brown eyes like hers could radiate coldness instead of warmth before that moment. Hurt pierced through her veil of well-mannered tolerance, stabbing me in the gut before her expression flattened out again.
“You’re asking me in person,” she pointed out unnecessarily, making me feel like even a bigger asshole.
“Isn’t it about time?”
I definitely wasn’t making any new friends this week, and I didn’t have so many that I wanted to alienate everyone in the office as well. And the simple truth was that it was killing me to see her every day and not have contact with her. To not help her with her coat. To smell her hair as she passed me in the hall, or watch her pad in her stocking feet to the little kitchen for a cup of coffee.
I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that she usually still got me a cup at the same time, only she waited until I was away from my desk before she put it there for me. And yes, the fact that it was cold by the time she snuck it into my office made me a sullen jackass. But she wasn’t exactly beating down my door either.
God, we were so fucked up.
All I wanted was to pull her into my arms and tell her that she was smart, beautiful, and she could do anything she put her mind to. But if she didn’t know it herself, then me telling her wasn’t going to change anything.
And yeah, it was pretty shitty of me to take out my frustration on her—and the rest of the office—but I didn’t even have a good excuse.
“Is Aaron okay?” she asked. I envied him the softness with which her mouth said his name.
“I don’t know. Bobbie went back to the mountains and his work isn’t done. That’s all I know.”
I raked my hand through my hair for the twentieth time that day. It was probably all sticking up like a troll doll, but I didn’t care. I’d abandoned my suit jacket at lunch, and my sleeves were rolled up to my elbows and my collar
unbuttoned to the vee of my plain white undershirt.
A month before—hell, maybe even a week before—Madeline would have eyed me with admiring hunger and maybe even felt me up on my office couch. Now her eyes flashed with sympathetic understanding, but that was all.
“Are you mad at her?”
What? “Who?”
“Your sister.”
I wasn’t following. “For what?”
She lifted an eyebrow as she rose from her chair. “For doing her job?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, of course not. She’s a grown-up; she knows what she’s doing.”
Maddie’s surprised smile nearly made me trip over my own two feet as I followed her down the hall. God help me, I wanted to fall into that smile like a freshly made bed, or a bed on which I’d freshly laid her.
We rounded the corner to find Aaron’s office door closed. My knock was cursory, my greeting terse. “Aaron, I need those storyboards.”
“You’re forgetting a word,” Maddie murmured behind me.
“Now.”
She shoved past me, throwing a reproachful look over her shoulder. “I meant please.”
Aaron was more rumpled than I was, but I was more shocked at the change in his wardrobe. His pinstriped prep school shirts had been replaced by plaid flannel, and he wore motorcycle boots instead of Italian loafers. He looked a hipster had thrown up on him.
He also looked like he was about to vomit himself.
“I don’t have them.”
“What the hell, Aaron? I relied on you to get this shit done!” Thank god, we didn’t have any TV time purchased, but I wanted to get the web ads finalized and some podcast scripts and time placed—before the New Year. I wanted to scream, and I was damn close to it until I felt Madeline’s hand land on my arm.
“I know, I know! I’ve just been so busy…”
Distracted by my sister’s unplanned pregnancy was more like it. I snorted, crossing my arms.
“That’s not helping, Gage.” Maddie’s soft voice eased my hair trigger. “How far behind are you? What do you need?” She cut right to the heart of the matter.
“I sent the brief to the agency.”
“Okay, that’s good.”
“Two days ago.”
“That’s bad.”
My Madeline—the mistress of understatement. I started to say something, but her hand closed over my mouth. Her fingers were cold and a little clammy, like she was nervous or something.
“When did they say they would get stuff back to us?” she asked him, dropping her hand and flexing it a little. Her motions almost distracted me from Aaron’s response.
“The twenty-ninth.”
Shit. My frustration flared again. “Goddammit, Aaron. There’s no excuse—”
“Fuck you, Brian! And fuck your ‘no excuses’ bullshit! The world is not black and white, and sometimes shit gets in the way. Did you know that I had to take Bobbie to the hospital three times in the last month to get rehydrated from her puking her guts out? Or that your mother decided to fuck off to Mexico for Thanksgiving and left her dog with us?”
I blinked. “My mother has a dog?”
“Focus, Gage,” Maddie sighed, lightly touching my back.
“She’s been trying to get a new apartment or figure out a new job and it’s not easy for anybody, not that you care!”
“My mother?”
“Bobbie!” he yelled.
An angry black man who had a few inches and fifty pounds of muscle on me was not something I needed in my face right now. He looked ready to punch me in the throat.
“Get off your high horse for one minute, okay? It must be nice to be perfect and live in your perfect, overachieving world, but the rest of us—sometimes we fail. Okay? I failed and I’m owning it, and it would be nice if you could help us instead of shitting down our throats all the time.”
I stumbled back, and this time Maddie didn’t catch me.
“Okay you guys, separate corners.”
Aaron whirled around to face the window, his shoulders moving up and down as he breathed heavily. I opened my mouth then shut it. What could I say? He was right. His phone rang on the desk, vibrating an inch across it with Bobbie’s face on it. We all ignored it.
Maddie cleared her throat, breaking the near violent tension in the room.
“Let’s just try to work together like grown-ups, okay? Gage, this campaign is your baby, so try to take some responsibility and let’s get it done. I can help. Aaron, I’m pretty sure you showed me the brief you were working on before I left, right?”
He nodded stiffly, his back still turned to us.
I looked over at her. She was watching me carefully with a strange look on her face. It was knowing but not smug, yet empathetic but definitely not toward me.
Holy shit. I was being infantile and selfish and an overall prick—and I had absolutely no excuses for it. If this was the way I acted with friends who were also co-workers, then it was no wonder that Maddie had backed off from our relationship. I couldn’t blame her. In fact, I was damned grateful that she even wanted to work for me again, much less with me.
A heavy sigh whooshed out of her as she glanced at the phone buzzing on the desk again. “Okay, let’s get this done. Because we can do it.”
Aaron held up a finger and answered the phone. “Hello?” Frowning at us with a hand gesture that looked like “five minutes” he left the room, leaving Maddie and I alone with each other.
The silence was uncomfortably empty, swollen with unspoken promises and apologies. But I wouldn’t let it be for long.
“I’m sor—” I started.
“It’s okay, Gage.” She walked over to the window where Aaron had been standing, her arms crossed in front of her. I was beginning to think I needed industrial blinds for these windows so everyone didn’t become hypnotized standing in front of them.
I shook my head. It really wasn’t okay. I had no real justification for the way I’d been acting—like a petulant brat whose toy got taken away before he carelessly broke it.
“Madeline, I want to tell you—”
She interrupted me again. “It’s okay, I said. I don’t need to hear any apologies from you.”
Her impatient words cut through me, as though what I had to say was so insignificant that she couldn’t even be bothered to waste thirty seconds of her life listening to it. Fuck. She wasn’t even going to let me say sorry.
But when she turned back to me, it was with a gentle smile on her lush lips and no malice in her eyes. She wasn’t irritated. She wasn’t even angry.
She’d already forgiven me for being an asshole, and probably deep down understood why I was—more than I certainly did. It was downright humbling, and probably exactly what I needed—not that I wanted to admit it. It was just one more example of how I needed help communicating, of how I needed her.
Aaron shuffled back into the room, distracted by his thumbs skimming over his phone. When he finally looked up, the strange energy between Maddie and myself gave him pause.
“Uh, everything okay?”
Not even remotely. “Yeah, fine,” I grumbled. “Let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MADDIE
Christmas came and went so quickly, I barely noticed it. My parents kept things pretty simple, as usual, and other than a few phone calls from friends, it was a quiet and private day. Despite my parents trying to make the holidays festive for me, after so many years of being disappointed at Christmastime, I usually bypassed all the hoopla.
In my experience, good tidings to all men didn’t always include kids in the system. I had one or two caseworkers who really tried and went out of their way to make sure I got thoughtful presents, but I stopped asking Santa for stuff pretty early on when he failed to deliver on the whole “family” request.
My fingers itched to call Gage, but I didn’t want to interrupt his own family time. Bobbie had sent me a “Merry Christmas” text full of holiday emojis and mentione
d that Gage was in the mountains with her and Aaron and both their mothers.
My NYE resolution is to appreciate my family more. So I don’t kill them. LOL she wrote. I doubted that she was actually laughing out loud, though I did.
But her text made me think.
In my insecurity about my own birth mother, I had lost sight of the generous gift that my parents had given me—themselves. I spent the day after Christmas wallowing in a pity party, followed by a shame shindig. Then I made a kickass turkey casserole for dinner and apologized to my parents.
The next day my mother and I spent the day hitting sales to get stuff to decorate my room. It wasn’t until I got home and unpacked all the bags that I realized I’d subconsciously replicated the colors in Gage’s bedroom. By the day after that, I couldn’t hold off on texting him any longer. I thought about calling him, but was half afraid I would clam up once I heard his voice. In the end, what I came up with was:
Hope you had a good holiday. Any big plans for New Year’s?
His response was almost immediate. About to drive back from lodge. Where are you?
Home
Can you go to the office?
I blinked at the phone, puzzled. Like Ebenezer Scrooge himself—or maybe Scrooge McDuck—Gage had given everyone the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. As far as I knew, nobody was in the office except for a couple of IT people working overtime because they would be working from home anyways.
Is there something you need?
I’ll let you know when I arrive.
It looked like I was headed to work, then. I didn’t mind, really. There was only so much online shopping I could avoid sitting around at home.
The brutal truth was that I missed Brian Gage—a lot. I missed the dark slashes of his frowning eyebrows, the lines around his eyes and mouth when he grinned at me, the overwhelmed feeling I got when I was around him.
He made me feel like I was the only person in the world, but at the same time like he needed me more than anything. It was a heady sensation, especially when coupled with his smell, taste and touch.
