“Things will get better, Bree,” I told her, still cuddling her “I promise. It won't be like this forever.”
As I said that, though, I thought of Diane and Sean. He was still a nightmare. I wondered if Diane had ever been like Bree.
That was a really interesting thought, and despite the fact we'd been in the middle of a really serious conversation and I wanted to think more about Sean and Andrej, I was peacefully drifting off to sleep when Bree woke me up again.
“Well, at least nothing else can happen today,” she reflected. She sounded less miserable.
My eyes flew open. “Jesus Christ, Bree!” I said, briefly tickling her. “There's this thing called sleep. I thought you said you wanted it!”
She squealed, pushing my hands away from her. “I'm sorry!” she said. “My brain won't switch off!”
“Your what?” I asked her sarcastically, and she shoved me.
“Don't be mean!” she told me as we settled back down again. “I was just saying that nothing else can happen today.”
“No?”
“No,” she said, pausing. “Because it's tomorrow already.”
I groaned. “You dag,” I told her, and ruffled her hair. “I can't believe you woke me up to tell me that.”
I could feel her smiling against my shoulder. “And you broke up with him,” she confirmed. I made some sort of vaguely affirmative, sleepy noise. “And that means you're single.”
Wait, that was news to me. I opened my eyes again. “I am?”
“Well, you didn't ask me out yet,” she said, looking up at me from under her hair. “Not properly.”
“It's the twenty-first century,” I pointed out. “You can actually ask me out, you know.”
“I know,” she conceded. “But I kind of like all that traditional stuff.”
Since my eyes were open, I rolled them. “Fine,” I said flatly. “So, Bree, do you come here often? Can I buy you a drink?”
She shoved me in the stomach again, giggling. “Do it properly!”
What did that even mean? I'd never asked anyone out before. “How?” I asked her. “'Will you go out with me?' Is that 'properly'?” She nodded. “Fuck, this is awkward. Bree, will you go out with me?”
She was giggling, and instead of giving me an answer, she just said, “April 29.” I gave her a strange look, and she smiled up at me from under her lashes. “April 29,” she repeated. “That's today's date. You have to remember it, because it's going to be our anniversary. Here,” she said, and reached across me down to the floor, feeling around in my jeans for my mobile, which she retrieved. “I'll put it in your phone.”
I pushed the phone aside. “You don't have to,” I said, taking it from her and putting it back on my jeans.
She looked a bit worried. “Why not?”
I smiled. “Because there's no way I'm going to forget it, Bree.”
Bree's smile was so big it squeezed the last of the tears from her eyes. “You always make me feel really good about myself,” she said. “Even though I'm totally hopeless.”
I put a hand gently behind her head and guided her lips down to mine. We lay there for a little while, softly kissing and gently touching each other. After the evening I'd had it was comforting, and there was no pressure in it. No urgency. We were both so tired it never would have led anywhere, anyway. It was just nice to be close to her and cared for, and finally, finally I felt her relax.
It was such a relief, everything that had happened in the last couple of days. The bandaid had nearly been ripped off, it was all nearly over. All that was left was work; I'd have to go back in tomorrow so I could cut those last few threads away and just be finally free of it all.
Since Bree and I were both exhausted, it wasn't that long before we stopped and lay down again, cuddled against each other.
Then, for the first time ever, I went to sleep wrapped in my girlfriend's arms.
Bree was a restless sleeper. At several points in the night I had to rescue the doona, or shift her elbow out of my ribs, or battle through her hair to find oxygen. I was a little under-slept as a result, but it was worth it: I had a pretty awful dream about Henry and waking up to Bree drooling peacefully on my shoulder was the perfect remedy.
Despite my dull headache, I probably got about six hours in the end. That was all I needed, but Bree was one of those people who looked dishevelled and disoriented all morning unless she got a full eight. So while I was rushing around trying to figure out if I could make any of the shirts Bree and I had bought together look at all good with Henry's suit pants and the ties he'd left here, Bree lay on the couch and grumbled.
“Isn't that Henry's suit?” she asked about my pants. “Didn't he want it back?”
The blue shirt looked kind of okay with the black pants, I decided. And at least there was a tie that matched it. “He told me there was no point in giving it back to him, because he wouldn't be able to wear it again.”
“Because of the blood?” I gave her a look, and she made a face. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” I presented myself to her. “I feel bad about wearing it, too, but I don't have anything else. How do I look? I can't wear the jacket until it's been dry-cleaned, but this is okay by itself, yeah?”
She looked me up and down, but didn't say anything about the actual suit. “Why are you going back?” she asked, clearly not impressed that I was. “Do you think anyone's actually expecting you to go back after what you did yesterday?”
I shrugged, ducking back into the bathroom to check the knot on the tie and make sure my hair didn't look like something out of a cartoon. “Probably not,” I called back to her. “But I don't want Sean to think he's wrecked my life, and I messed up a couple of things on the project I want to set straight.” John's career, for example. I still felt really guilty about that. “So, I might as well go in and resign properly.”
Bree continued to disapprove of me going in, and I continued to ignore her, leaving a 20 and my keycard on the kitchen counter. “Don't lose that one, okay?” I told her, and then headed off to work.
They hadn't disabled my security pass, so I swiped myself in and went up in the lift with everyone else. No one recognised me until I got to 36, and then as I walked out of the lift, someone shouted and the next second I was surrounded by a group of men.
“Jesus, it is true,” someone said and clapped me on the back. “Fuck. Hey, Mark, check it out, it's Mini! Can you believe it?” “Hey, guys, Mini actually came back!” someone else said, and then they were all talking to me at once and I couldn't understand them.
“Min,” I corrected everyone as I kept walking. “And I'm not here for long.”
“Were you always a guy the whole time?” someone asked, and then other voices said things like, “Nah, mate, I swear she has boobs in there somewhere,” and, “Well, where are they now? Maybe they were fake,” over the top of all the gossip about my body, someone was yelling, “Shut up, you idiots, I want to know what she did to Sean Frost!”
It was actually pretty funny, but I wasn't going to answer any of those questions. I just kept walking until I left them all at the door of Oslo and shut it behind them. Sarah was already in, of course, and she looked from the loud door to me and burst out laughing.
“What are you doing here!” she said with a big grin, spinning her chair around to face me. “Not that it's not great to see you! I'm still enjoying second-hand glory from that stunt you pulled yesterday.”
She stood up to hug me briefly and then leant away from me to examine my eye. It was patchy and bright red, I'd spent a minute or two this morning inspecting it myself. “Did you go pick a fight as the final test of your manliness or something?”
“What, I'm not man enough already?” I asked her. She gave me a look, and I chuckled. “Actually, Bree's brother and I had a disagreement. It's a long story.”
“'A disagreement',” she repeated sceptically, “grown-ups normally disagree with their words, Min. Not their fists.”
“Hey, I used my w
ords,” I protested as she finished disapproving of my injuries. “Like I said: long story.”
“It sounds like a long story,” she agreed, and then got straight back to why I was here. “Anyway, are you back here to beg for your job or something? Because don't bother. I know they can't actually fire you right now because of the formal complaint, but Jason will dedicate his life to making yours hell.” She leant in, clearly about to say something juicy. “Diane had to put Omar as Acting Marketing Manager while the complaint is investigated against Jason, so Jason's just a marketing clerk for now. He applied to take his annual leave for the next couple of weeks so he didn't have to slum it with the rest of us, but, get this, HR said no it wasn't enough warning and wouldn't give it to him. Can you believe it? They're going to make him serve out the investigation as a regular clerk.”
It took a couple of seconds to process that. Wow; Jason as my peer? It was almost worth begging for my job just to experience. I considered actually doing that for a least a few seconds before dismissing the idea. I didn't want to be hanging around bumping into Henry, and there was still the matter of Sean Frost lurking around, waiting to strike. Jason being temporarily demoted didn't change my mind about wanting to leave Frost.
Besides, if I stayed here, I had a feeling Bree would find some way into the building for the sole purpose of dragging me out by my ear.
“Fuck, I wonder if Jason will get demoted for good,” I said aloud.
Sarah shook her head. “Probably not,” she said. “As much as that would be the best thing to ever happen in this department.” She paused. “Actually, scrap that, the best thing to ever happen here was when Ms Min Lee rocked up dressed as Mr Min Lee and just rolled the whole of management and sold a multi-million dollar contract in 20 minutes.” She shook her head incredulously at me. “Aren't you worried that by coming back Diane's going to eat you alive?”
I shrugged. “I actually came in to resign.”
“Oh,” she said, and then her smile faded. “Oh. Of course.”
I made a face. “I'm sorry, Sarah,” I told her. “I feel bad about leaving you here, but I can't do this.”
She blew a stream of air threw her mouth, and nodded. “No, I get it,” she said. “But yeah, it's going to suck around here without you...”
“You were okay before I arrived,” I reminded her.
She laughed once. “Yeah, because I didn't know what I was missing!” She beckoned me over to her computer. “You want to see what you missed yesterday? It's great. I kept all the best ones just in case they fired you and disabled your email.”
I pulled a chair up next to her and she showed me a string of emails that had the two photos the Sales boys had taken in the meeting yesterday: the one of me looking triumphant up the front of the media room and the one of Jason looking red-faced and furious. The first email was just the raw photos, but, in the grand tradition of Marketing, all the ones that followed had been altered. Some of them had text, some of them had other places and people transposed on them, and my favourite was one that had a speech bubble next to my head saying, 'who da man?' and a speech bubble next to Jason's head saying, 'U'.
“I hope you saved that one,” I said, pointing at it. “I want to use that as my wallpaper.”
“You bet,” she said, and kept scrolling through them. “Jason actually sent around a memorandum telling us to stop sharing photos but the second Omar introduced himself as Acting Marketing Manager it all started again. Jason disappeared as a result. So either he discovered the joy of hiding out in toilets or he went home early like you did. Either way: score!” When we were done looking at the photos, she leant back in her chair. “So what did you do yesterday, anyway? Or should I say... who did you do?” She was smirking.
“Am I that predictable?”
She tilted her head. “Yes. But you also said Andrej punched you, so...”
I told her the abridged version of what happened after I left yesterday, minus why I had a go at Bree's brother. I wasn't sure Bree would be happy for me to tell anyone the details. Sarah probed a bit about why I was so angry at him, but left it after I asked her to. From her expression, I think she was going to try and get the story out of Bree herself, anyway.
“It's good that you finally broke up with Henry,” she concluded when I was done. “I mean, obviously it's terrible because he's a great guy, but, yeah. You met Gem and ten minutes later you two had more chemistry than you and Henry probably ever had. And, honestly? I don't know Bree that well, but you've been different since you met her.”
“I think it was probably a long time coming,” I said, and then winced, remembering Henry's expression when he'd 'delivered' Bree. “He's a really nice guy, though. Really nice. I still care about him.”
“Are you two going to stay friends?” she wondered, and I shrugged. “Yeah,” she agreed. “It's hard to know right afterwards.” She slapped her thighs. “Anyway! It sucks you're leaving and I totally don't forgive you for it, but do you need help getting your stuff home? I don't have my car with me, but Gem and I can help you carry stuff back in boxes at lunchtime if it's not too heavy.”
We were discussing the details when the door opened sharply. I saw Sarah's expression and guessed who it was before I turned around, myself.
Word had obviously spread like wildfire that I was here, because Diane was leaning in the doorway with her eyes fixed on me. “Good morning,” she said to us both, and then gave me a look that said, 'get in my office this very second'.
I shared a tense glance with Sarah who immediately tried to look busy and productive, and then followed Diane out of Oslo, down the corridor and into her office.
“Close that outer door, too, Cadence,” Diane instructed her assistant, who hurriedly followed her instructions.
Even though I literally had nothing to lose and I'd been expecting this to happen anyway, being ushered into Diane's office and having both doors shut was intimidating. Everything about Diane was intimidating. And even though she could fire me on the spot and it would have exactly the same effect as what I was actually planning to do, my heart was pounding. I may still have been a bit afraid she would make me feel like an idiot again. She was certainly capable of making me feel terrible if she wanted to.
“I think by now you're familiar with how this goes,” she said, gesturing at the seats opposite her desk. I sat in one, and she sat opposite me.
She considered me for some time before she spoke. “I'm surprised to see you here after what you did yesterday.”
It looked like I was getting that dressing down, after all. I didn't say anything to her, I just nodded.
“Tell me, Min,” she said. “How do you think I should react to what you did yesterday?”
There was no point in pretending I didn't know where this was going. “I think you should fire me on the spot for gross insubordination.”
She had not been expecting me to say that. To her credit, she managed to look only mildly surprised. “Believe me, I would,” she said impassively. “But there's a formal complaint pending and by the looks of things,” her eyes dipped, and that was her only subtle reference to how different I looked than I had on Wednesday, “it's not vexatious after all.”
She didn't elaborate, she just sat and watched me closely for what felt like eternity. I had no idea what she was thinking, and fuck, she was good at being terrifying. There was seriously nothing she could do and still she was making my knees shake.
“So as not to cause you the distress you've been experiencing in Marketing,” she said eventually, “we've had you transferred down to Administration. They have a very large Data Entry job they need extra hands with at the moment, so they'll definitely appreciate the help.”
Very diplomatically put, I thought, for what was essentially a forced demotion just like Jason's. “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate the consideration. But I actually came into work today for the sole purpose of formally resigning.”
Her eyebrows went up a fraction. “You'll give the
customary four weeks’ notice, I presume?” I didn't think for a second that she didn't know how I was going to answer that.
I took a deep breath, and shook my head.
She sat back in her chair, resting her elbows on the arms of it and lacing her fingers. She didn't bother telling me my pay was going to be docked for it; she'd probably checked my file and seen I had nearly three years' worth of annual leave banked. Losing a month of it wasn't that big a deal for me.
I didn't wait for her to speak this time. “Also,” I said, “I need to talk to you about John.” She didn't answer me, she just waited for me to continue, so I did. “It wasn't his fault Sean found out about Pink, it was mine. So if he's been stood down because of that, I'd like to ask you to reconsider that decision. It's not fair otherwise. I don't want him to be held responsible for something that's my fault.”
She looked somewhat amused, like she'd entertained the impassioned request of a five year old. I didn't understand why, until she asked for confirmation, “We fired him because of the Facebook leak?”
I was confused. “Isn't that what happened? I thought that was why he’s not here.”
“I hadn't heard that one, to be perfectly honest,” she said with a humourless smile. “Usually I do have some idea what's going around the floor.” She looked me in the eye. “Min, shortly after the leak, John resigned because he decided marketing wasn't for him. He's working in Canberra for the Australian Bureau of Statistics. You can apologise for him and to him if you like, but according to HR, he was delighted to get the job.”
“Oh...”
“Mmm,” she echoed me. There was a certain finality in her voice when she told me, “And while I'd love to accept your resignation verbally, it needs to be in writing, especially given the complaint that's being investigated. An email will suffice.”
Under My Skin Page 77
