by Holly Rayner
Mia expertly delivered one news segment after another. Jeff watched her with bored, dead fish eyes. He was so used to her success, she suspected he didn’t see it anymore. Her eyes flittered from his balding head to the man standing behind him, behind the rest of the production crew, and she suddenly felt her stomach churn. She pushed through the final words on the autocue, feeling the color drain from her face.
Sure enough: there, watching her deliver the report, was James. His eyes were focused, assessing her. It was as if he was really hearing her, truly understanding the message of her segment. At any other time, she’d have taken pleasure in that fact.
“CUT!” Jeff called out.
Mia bowed her head, trying to quell her queasy stomach. She asked the runner for some water, and it came swiftly. The cool liquid rushed over her teeth and swam down her throat, an assurance that she could feel something other than nausea.
Jeff was standing before her then. “That was pretty good, champ. We’re going to take an hour lunch break now then I want you back here, all dolled up and ready to go again. Okay? And no spinach for lunch, just in case. You remember the Great Tooth Incident of 2015.” He gave her a broad smile. Was this his way of relating to her?
“Sure, Jeff.”
“You look kind of pale. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied. She rose unsteadily from her seat, her eyes flitting toward the back of the production crew. James had disappeared once more, but he couldn’t have gone far. “See you in an hour,” she called.
She teetered in her heels for a moment before finding her balance again and marching toward James’ office. In her racing mind, she knew she needed to tell him about the pregnancy. She would go crazy if she didn’t.
TEN
Mia elbowed her way through the production crew, incredibly conscious of her bulbous, bloated belly. She hoped she hid it well beneath her blazer, but she knew it would be noticeable soon enough, and the production crew would be quick to point it out. She gave them preemptive, dirty stares.
Finally, she inhaled fresh air in the hallway, stretching her arms back. She saw James’ office door like a beacon of light, calling out to her. She hadn’t seen the office without its Christmas decorations, and her face grew warm thinking about the tinsel strewn all over the floor. God, she’d been crazy that night.
Mia tapped her fist against the mahogany door and waited. Each second seemed filled with promise. Finally, James called out, “Come in.”
She twirled the door handle and let herself into the stunning, sunlit room of her past.
The moment James saw her, his eyes brightened. He moved to a standing position, gesturing toward the chair in front of his desk. Around him, his office was plain, without a single hint of Christmas remaining. It looked naked.
“Mia. I’m so glad you stopped by. Please, sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee? Water?”
“I’m all right, thanks,” Mia said, her voice tentative. She sat down across from him and swept her left leg over her right, hoping the move would halt her rapid shaking.
“Mia, first of all, I want to thank you,” James began, leaning heavily on his left fist. “I know they give you some of the lesser-quality news segments, but you always deliver them with such zeal. You are one of the most professional people at this station, probably across all of my news stations, and I needed you to know that.”
Mia felt her eyebrows rise; she certainly hadn’t expected this sort of conversation. She felt her mouth roll out a brief, breathy thank you. “It really is a pleasure to come to work every day.”
Satisfied, James swept a finger over his brow, righting the hairs. “In fact, I was just thinking that you deserve a promotion for all the work you’ve done. I’ve just learned that Charles will be going on paternity leave in about six months, which means we’ll have an opening for some of his standalone segments. Perhaps you want to take on some of those?”
Mia felt like kicking the desk—this conversation wasn’t going the way it should. She felt like a stranger in front of him, not like someone who had removed her dress for him, who had allowed his heavy breath and kisses on her neck. Not like someone who had been surrounded by his scent, who had collapsed with him on this very floor in a fit of passion.
And now, on top of everything else, he was offering her a promotion—she hadn’t wanted to sleep her way to the top, yet that was exactly what it felt like.
Mia realized she hadn’t spoken in far too long. James eyed her curiously, tilting his head, before glancing at his wrist. “Ah—” he said. “It’s time, already! I’ve just come in from Chicago to meet with Jeff about some of the plans for the upcoming months. As you know, he gets nervous if I’m late for meetings.” He gave her a quick wink. “Do you mind if we postpone this discussion about your future for later?”
She opened her mouth and closed it, like a fish. Before she could process what was happening, James was standing up, taking long strides toward the door. Her brain was in panic mode, like the moments right after a car crash. The impact made her do silly, but perhaps necessary things.
Mia reached out her hand as he swept past her and latched onto his arm, feeling the strength in his bicep. She swallowed, her eyes searching his. “James. I actually came to your office because I have something to tell you.” In the corner behind James’ head, she finally caught a glimpse of a spare bit of tinsel, which somehow hadn’t been rescued by a single cleaner in the weeks since their encounter. Had he left it there on purpose?
“Oh. Well, do you think we could arrange a meeting for another time?” James asked. His voice was brisk, professional.
“I mean—it won’t take long,” she whispered.
“If you can tell me what you want to say in less than 45 seconds, then I’m good to hear you,” James said, laughing a bit at the ridiculousness of his schedule. “I’m always on a timer.”
“Not when you tried to go to Chicago,” Mia whispered. She felt her voice crack.
“No. I suppose the snow had other plans for me.”
Mia tittered. She felt her confidence wavering. She felt the words she wanted to say—that she was pregnant with his child, that she was sure of it—faltering and diving somewhere down her throat, behind her lungs. She couldn’t scavenge them. She inhaled and exhaled, sensing that she was wasting his time. Anxiety riddled through her.
“I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate this job. I love working for you, and I love working for SNO News. It’s been a great honor, and I would never do anything to screw that up.” She shrugged, hopeful that the tone of her voice presented more meaning than the words were worth.
“Well, thank you for saying so. I always love hearing that from my employees,” James said, nearly crushing her heart. “I’ll talk to you later, Mia. All right?” His eyes searched hers for a moment, as if assessing if there was something more.
But Mia clammed up. “Okay.” She studied her shoes as she he exited the room.
She felt like a foolish girl. James might well have assumed that she’d entered his office to profess her love for him, and he wouldn’t have been entirely wrong. She wanted to keep his baby for a reason. She wanted to raise it as her own. And she wanted to see what he thought about being part of her family for the rest of his life, in one way or another.
But as James’ footfalls moved further away, toward Jeff’s office, Mia began to face reality: that her only chance to tell James the truth about the pregnancy had probably just slipped through her fingers. She looked at her hands, then, and cursed quietly to herself.
This feeling of disappointment was familiar to her, matched with her memories from the children’s home. She remembered a day, just two years before she’d been adopted, when she’d fallen in love with a thirteen-year-old boy named Hank. Hank had bright blue eyes like a ‘90s boy band member, along with the swoopy blond hair to match. She’d swooned like a true 12-year-old every evening at dinner. Her friends had rolled their eyes at her, reminding her that she was “f
ar too young for him.”
But Mia had always been a romantic, despite of—or perhaps as a result of—her unfortunate circumstances, so she’d decided to tell Hank the news of her love the afternoon before the Christmas party. It was generally her favorite part of the year. She liked it even more than the party itself, given that she’d been allowed to decorate the entire tree by herself since age 10. It was a responsibility usually given only to the oldest children, but her argument had been the stuff of future news anchors. She’d convinced them.
Mia had stood by the naked Christmas tree, near Hank, who was speckling tinsel around the dining hall, pell-mell. By his body language, she could tell he didn’t give a single care about Christmas, that, to him, it was just another lonely, garish day. He flopped a bit of tinsel around his head and showed off to his buddies, donning a silly voice and pretending to be a princess. Mia found herself giggling, despite the childish humor.
After she’d decorated part of her Christmas tree, she’d marched toward Hank, who was standing beneath a sprig of mistletoe, bouncing from one hand-me-down Nike to the next. He hadn’t gone through puberty quite yet, and his height was approximately her own. Mia had slinked up beside him and made aggressive eye contact, determined to get what she wanted.
“What is it?” Hank asked, his face disgusted. “What do you want?”
Instead of answering, Mia snuck a single finger skyward, toward the mistletoe, as if that explained everything. She closed her eyes and stuck out puckered lips, waiting for Hank to deliver her perfectly romantic first kiss.
But Hank recoiled from her with a physical, wretched reaction. “Did you guys see what this idiot just tried to do?” he cried out. Several of the boys had begun to cackle, and Mia’s face had grown warm, panicked.
“It’s just the Christmas spirit,” she’d said. She remembered that she’d said something similar to James, all those weeks ago, tucked safe away in his office. “It’s tradition.”
But Hank had run away from her, rushing toward the Christmas tree she’d spent the morning dressing up. She’d had a vision for the tree that year, and it was slowly coming together. Its bulbs were gleaming in the dining hall light. Outside, in the yonder window, Mia saw that it was snowing.
That day, Hank had kicked the Christmas tree with the energy of an anxious, abandoned, 13-year-old boy. Mia’s carefully decorated tree had fallen harshly to the ground, tossing decorations toward the corner and spreading pine leaves all over the cold floor.
Hank had looked at it proudly, like a dog that had eaten the homework, but she hadn’t given him his moment—she hadn’t wailed, and she hadn’t told on him. Rather, she’d marched toward her tree, wrapped her tiny arms around it, and tipped it back to a standing position. For the rest of the day, she’d ignored the childish catcalls. She’d focused only on honing her tree, on repairing what before had been beautiful.
Hank had flittered from Mia’s mind not long after that, but she always remembered how stunning that tree was. It had put all the others in the dining hall to shame. Beyond anything, she was proud of what she could create when she was forced to do it alone. She’d been proving people like Hank wrong ever since.
The Billionaire’s Christmas Bundle Of Joy can be found on Amazon by clicking here.
