by Julie Olivia
So I laugh, because I never want to hear the words ‘break up’ come from her mouth again.
“Fran,” I say through broken laughs, “I’m not breaking up with you.”
“There’s something more going on then,” she insists. Her arms cross in front of her chest, and her expression shifts from anger to concern.
Of course she’s concerned—I look like a maniac.
“I’m not an idiot,” she continues, cocking her head to the side. Her weight shifts from foot to foot, and she narrows her eyes at me. “Blimey, are you okay?”
I shake my head. The irony is almost ridiculous; I hadn’t realized I was laughing again.
“You are so far from an idiot,” I say. What I don’t mention is that this woman was smart enough to stump two hackers giving it their all in a full-on assault on her company, for a solid two months—maybe more depending on how long Ryan was at this before dragging me into it.
“Okay, Joker, then what’s going on?” she demands, her concern fading and frustration replacing it more and more by the minute.
In the midst of this madness, all I want to do is grab her by the arms and kiss her. I want to kiss her and never stop, carry her in my arms across the city until I’m weak in the knees, hoist her up to the top of the Empire State Building like King freaking Kong and proclaim how proud I am that she’s mine.
I run my hand through my hair, placing a hand over my chest to ease the tickling mess of nerves in my heart. I pull off my glasses, wiping them on my tux coat and replacing them.
“I’m your hacker,” I say with a small shrug.
She squints at me, pausing to take in my words but shaking her head as if maybe she misheard me. “What is this, the start of a ballad?”
“No,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’m Stuart. I’m the person who…who…yeah.”
My sentence fades out because I see her face transform before my eyes. Her eyebrows, once cinched in the middle, ease into a type of restful calm. She stops mid-everything. She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t breathe. I think maybe reality stopped moving around her.
“Bugger off,” she mutters, almost a faint whisper.
“Yes, I should.”
“You arsehole,” Fran says breathlessly, a hitch in it pausing her before she starts talking again. “I’m losing my job because of you.”
“Which is actually probably for the best,” I say. “Now that I think about it.”
“What?” she hisses.
I take in a deep breath and exhale slowly. “Do you know what your company sells?”
“Software,” she answers, like a rebound upon fire.
“No.”
She squints, “Software packages?”
“Stop being cute,” I say, and she purses her lips. I find my own mouth twitching up in a smile. She’s cooling down and being sarcastic again—all good signs. “Why else would I get into your company? For the fun of it?”
Fran exhales, leaning against the railing near me. I can practically see the wheels turning over and over in her mind.
“Maybe?” she says with a shrug. “No, no I don’t imagine you would.”
I take a step down the stairs, getting just that much closer to a skeptical bull just raring to see red. “I didn’t even know you until a couple months ago. I didn’t even know the name of the company you worked for until two days ago when I saw your screen and it just so happened to be the company I’ve been trying to steal from.”
“Fine,” she says sharply. “What am I missing then? What big-ticket item do you need to steal from some software company? Hm?”
“They do animal testing, Fran.”
“Come again?”
“Animal testing. That’s what’s going on behind closed doors.”
The air stills once more, only a small breeze blowing past, but the chill cuts through us like glass.
“I am the closed doors,” she mumbles.
“Did you bother looking behind you when you shut them?” I ask.
Fran tenses, and I know I might have gone too far.
“Why are you lying to me?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Fran,” I say, daring another step down toward her. She doesn’t move. “What would even be my motive?”
“Because everyone lies. It’s just…universal. Men do that. Men…”
“My friend and I hacked into your company to bring it down because they test on animals,” I state, splaying my hand out on the railing, trying to ease my way closer. I don’t know who hurt her to make her so distrusting of men, but it doesn’t matter because I’m now the one contributing to it. “It’s as simple as that. Software sales is just a front. Fran, if I had known—”
“Known what?” she snaps.
“That it was your company, that it would have cost you your job…I would have never.”
“You could go to prison,” she blurts out. For a moment, I feel the string connecting us get swiped at, clawed by a kitten trying to break down the cage that traps it in. She feels cornered.
“I could,” I say, and the reality of it hits me harder than I expected. I knew I was going to come clean to her tonight. There was no other available option once I discovered we were this entwined together, but I was so caught up in correcting our mess that I almost forgot about my own fate—a fate that could deny me any form of freedom at all.
“Are you going to turn me in?” I ask.
Even though Fran’s eyes are narrowed and her fists are clenched by her sides, I still find myself trusting her. Something in me knows she wouldn’t.
She sniffs, and I see the glaze over her eyes starting to form. My chest drops like an anvil. Tears are the last thing I wanted to see. Based on how quickly she finds another random spot to the side, away from my eyeline, she must be fighting them hard.
“Fuck, Owen,” she says, her tone sharp, the rare curses leaving her mouth like a knife. “You are a felon. You committed a felony.”
I flinch. She isn’t wrong, but I try not to think about it. I try to focus on her.
It’s quiet as a tomb, and I don’t want to be the one to break our silence. I feel if I say anything, our brittle tether, pulled taut as can be, will snap under the weight of our truths.
“I think we should break up,” she mutters. The words are low and shaky, but I still hear them loud and clear like the city streets blaring horns in my ears.
I inhale, sharp and painful, feeling a sting at the back of my own eyes and an itch at my base of my nose. I can’t remember the last time something made my face grow this warm, if ever.
“Didn’t expect that,” I say, running my hand through my hair again, loosening up every last bit of gel I painstakingly put in it for tonight.
It’s karma, I think, for all the times I broke up with people and ripped out women’s hearts by working too late and obsessing over work too much. I didn’t pay attention to the wonderful women who chose to love me. Yet somehow, I, the man who couldn’t commit, finally found the woman of my dreams, a woman who is much too good for me in every way—too beautiful, too smart, too bold. And now she’s leaving me. It honestly makes sense.
“I just need to think,” Fran mumbles.
I nod. She nods.
I turn toward the door again, seeing the faces of the murder mystery crew pressed against the windows—noses smashed, palms whitened, eyebrows furrowed.
And I let Fran walk away.
22 Francesca
I came to New York to avoid bad relationships with bad intentions and to bask in the fruits of my labor with a too-good-to-be-true job. It’s two months in, I’ve already experienced a breakup, and I’m very much unemployed by my very too-good-to-be-true job.
Rubbish. This is all pure rubbish.
My boss still has not called me, but I now understand why he was so upset. The first thing I did upon returning to my apartment Saturday night was scour our network for signs of animal testing, and since I knew what to look for thanks to Owen, I found evidence of illegal activity within ten m
inutes. It was a cleverly hidden folder nestled deep in filing structures that would impress even a teenager excellent at hiding their porn. What I found was a goldmine of scientific studies—all with animal subjects. It took the company five minutes to cut off all my access, but not before I copied over a couple files to my personal hard drive.
I have absolutely no earthly idea what to do with the information. Anything I turn in could potentially lead back to Owen if they keep digging. Oh, bloody hell, some of it could surely lead back to me for being their penetration tester. Shouldn’t I have known, they’ll ask. Should I not have been aware of the wrongdoings of the company I was providing security for?
Silly of me to think it was charming how this cute little start-up didn’t have a corporate structure with an appropriate human resources department. Who needs it, right? Did I sign any NDAs, or a policy claiming I would be implicit to their operation? Now I wonder if I’ll even be paid for the last two weeks. I could file for unfair labor practices, but I’m sure legalities on pay are the least of their worries after what I found.
I spent the first couple days after the party attempting to parse through every moment of my job that could have led to me missing out on this very crucial pillar of our company. There were the obvious signs: I was never given a proper tour of the office space. I had very little cross-training with other departments. I rarely found insecurities worth more than just a keystroke or two. I’d never heard of this company prior to them approaching me. Even when I did search for them, the internet turned up next to nothing.
The signs were there, but I was so thrilled to be leaving England and David and all the mess there that I didn’t use my own two eyeballs to realize I was walking into another disaster.
When they offered me the job, I was told I would be the one and only penetration tester, but what company in their right mind has only one pentester? Were there many other employees at different layers of this operation, scattered around working remotely as well? Was there one firewall blocking another blocking another, so that the hole ran too deep and was impenetrable? Would that even make sense?
Firewalls all the way down…
And how does this all tie in with Owen? Was I the last protective measure and Owen broke the seal? Was this break-in part of his business model, or is this just a contract on the side? Is Emma involved? How deep does it go on either side? And, worst of all, why do I believe him—that he had no idea who I was or how I was involved?
My bad history with men should have warned me against this. How did I let my guard down so quickly? How did I let my own firewalls break down and burst into tiny embers, only to be stamped out by the boot of this weird feeling blooming in my chest?
Love, do they call it?
Love.
Instead of inciting a graceful uplifting feeling, the four-letter word only makes my entire body shudder.
Of course I fell in love with a bad man. It just wouldn’t be normal Fran fashion not to, would it? And what would a woman in love do with the information sitting on that hard drive? Would she turn her lover in? Or would she let it lie by the wayside to rot, hoping against hope he doesn’t land in prison for the rest of his life?
Owen gained his information fair and square—at least, as fair as an illegal activity can warrant. He’ll be exposing the immoralities of the company soon, and I’m sure I’ll have the NYPD or FBI knocking on my door in a week or so once they trace the information back to the last security employee. The files on my external hard drive only incriminate me more. If anything, I should delete them.
After developing a horrible migraine, I transition from thoughts of corporate espionage to lying on my couch and watching aquatic documentaries via Lara’s recommendations. The gentle swish of the fish tails mesmerizes me into some dulled-out passive state. My brain can handle this for the time being.
Leia doesn’t seem to mind our switch back to documentaries. Her eyeballs are locked on the screen with fish floating around, just projections for her to inevitably pounce on and knock the telly off its stand. I may have bought a papasan recently, but I’m not splurging for a new entertainment system. Without a job, I won’t be splurging on anything for a while—maybe a roommate to help with bills, but that’s about it.
I hear a soft knock on the door that causes me to jump, my hand flying to my chest. Are the cops already here? Is my fate already sealed in stone? I look to Leia, my loyal companion. Her fur twitches, but her eyes don’t flinch from the fish swimming on screen. She’s too busy for intruders. Guard cat, my arse.
“Honey?” Lara calls from other side of the door, and my heart rate eases. She’s already creaking it open. I’ve been keeping it unlocked for her during the afternoons. She insists on visiting once or twice a day since the party, and after having to leave my pit of despair to unlock the door for her every time, I just decided to leave it unlocked. Smart in New York? Probably not, but she brings food with her to serve as a sacrifice to my wallowing god.
“Come in,” I say, and between the slit of the door and the frame, her little nose pokes through before the rest of her piles in behind it.
“Have a minute?”
“Only if you can recommend another movie. Leia is two seconds away from killing that clownfish and my only source of entertainment.”
“I’ve got something better,” Lara says. I twist in my comfortable placement on the papasan, feet spread out, remote balancing on my knees and the bag of crisps she left for me last night still half open on the floor. We both give my position a once-over, and I just shake my head slowly left to the right, daring her to say one single word about my current state.
Lara scrunches her nose as she walks across the apartment and adjusts my haphazard blanket, covering my unladylike spread legs that relax out butterfly-style in the egg.
She knows Owen and I broke up. She also knows I lost my job. I only told her that my company had a complication with my hiring process. I said they preemptively overstaffed, that they must not have accounted for my travel funds or something, which is absolute poppycock to begin with because they didn’t help with my travel in the first place. That should have been my first massive red flag right there.
Since then, Lara’s been supplying me the odd assortment of junk breakup foods while also mixing in fruits and veggies that sustain my health to some degree because I’m now the sad, unemployed neighbor.
“I want to tell you something,” she says, placing a grocery bag on my coffee table. I lean over to peek inside: a bunch of bananas and beef jerky.
I reach in, and she swats my hand.
“Listen.”
“Ouch,” I respond childishly.
She purses her lips, lines across her upper lip pulling taut. “You know, when my Richard died, I thought I would be lost forever. But you know what he left me? A purpose. Do you want to know what that purpose is?”
“What?” I practically whisper, feeling guilty that I was grabbing for food when we were apparently about to have some heart-to-heart.
Lara’s starry eyes at talk of her late husband dull as she arches an eyebrow at me, glancing from my messy top knot all the way down to my half-rolled socks.
“Well, my purpose didn’t involve sitting in my own filth, that’s for sure.”
Oh, never mind. Heart-to-heart over.
I follow her glance down to the crumbs strewn over my chest, on top of my white t-shirt that may as well be some artsy tie-dye of tea stains where I’ve been lying prone and placing cup after cup on my stomach while I drink myself into oblivion. I’ve never been one for alcohol to ease pain, so tea is my poison. It holds the comfort of home, when Natalie used to make me a cup after every breakup. Normally I’d stop at one or two, but Owen warranted more. I’m just happy Lara hasn’t seen my kitchen sink yet.
“I’m getting good at wallowing,” I mutter.
“Well, get good at something else. I’m gonna let you in on a secret: just because life gives you lemons doesn’t mean you need to be put off by the so
ur taste.”
“Do I make lemonade?”
“Make a mixed drink. Richard left me with a project, and I think I’ve cracked it.” Her tiny wrinkled fists clench together at the words. “I have a lead.”
She digs into her pants pockets, which hit right at her ribs with how high she has the waistband pulled up. It’s the stretchy kind, and I wonder if maybe she’d let me borrow a pair. I’d kill for an elastic band about now. But my thoughts die in their place as she whips out a folded piece of paper, unfolding it to show sticky notes—all of them green and covered in blocked lettering.
I’d know those stickies anywhere.
“You were snooping in Owen’s bag,” I murmur.
I was so distracted by the high tensions the night of the party that I hadn’t considered that maybe Owen was telling the truth. But he was right. He hadn’t lied to me about anything up to that point; why would he start now?
However, I also hadn’t been given any reason to believe Lara would snoop through another person’s property. She’s a sarcastic old bat, but she keeps to herself. She’s a retired widow. That’s all she is. Is she not…?
“Hackers know hackers, Fran,” Lara says. I look from the note back to her. She folds the piece of paper back up and pockets it again.
“Okay, back up…” I say, shifting into a sitting position, waving my hands in front of my face, trying to wipe away the spiderwebs that have accumulated in my mind. “What is this project of yours, again?”
“Finding hackers.”
“Owen isn’t a hacker, though,” I lie.
She purses her lips again. “I don’t know him.”
“I do,” I say, almost a small shriek until I run a hand across my face and try once more. “I don’t think he’d do anything.”
I struggle more than I should have with getting the sentence out, and Mrs. Detective Lara Whoever She Apparently Is doesn’t seem convinced by my answer.
I can feel my migraine coming back on. What happened to my life here? New York was supposed to be a fresh start, but now London is looking to be so much safer. There weren’t boyfriend hackers, questionable companies, and old lady ex-detective-marrying neighbors ready to penalize both of them in one fell swoop.
