by Josie Kerr
“What about that one woman?” Mick asked.
“I’m not sure she’s really looking for another job, which is unfortunate, because I have a feeling she’d be perfect,” Rory said. “So, how’d the other thing go?”
“I got the contract. I’ll be flying back and forth to Vancouver for the next three to four months,” Mick grinned. “It’s all coming together, Rory.”
Rory cocked his head at his friend. “What about the other other thing?”
Mick sighed. “I didn’t wear it at all today.”
“But you’ve got it on now.”
“Yeah, but just until I go to bed. I’ve not been wearing it at night for the past few weeks.”
“Okay, Mickey. Now that you’ve got the contract and the studio, you need to get your personal life sorted. Having these two businesses is going to make you a very dull boy. You need to have some fun and not be a bitter workaholic.”
“Kind of like you, Rory?” Mick said. Rory worked more than any sane person should.
“I have a social life, Mickey. I go out and blow off steam. You should as well.”
He knew that Rory’s social life generally consisted of semi-anonymous hookups with 20-something-year-old girls. Yeah, that was so not happening with Mick.
“I blow off steam….”
Rory laughed long and hard. “Oh, you’re a wild man all right, with your cigar on your porch of your 100-year-old house.”
“This is a 130-year-old house, thank you very much. Oh, and the upstairs family is selling. They don’t want to deal with a rental anymore. I’m tempted to buy it, but I’ve got enough on my plate already. Do you know anyone that’s interested in a Victorian apartment?”
“I could move in,” Rory said.
Mick choked on his drink. “What?”
Rory cackled. “Can you see me here?” he asked, shaking his head. “Oh, lardy!”
“You’re my best friend in the world, Rory, but I’d move out if you moved upstairs.”
“Trust me, Mickey, the feeling’s mutual. Hopefully a nice, but not too nice, lady will move in.” Rory wiggled his eyebrows and Mick laughed.
“Oh, Jaysus, Rory. Leave it off, b’y.”
*****
Ashley Richards looked at her friend with absolute disgust. She couldn’t believe Em was waffling about accepting the interview.
“So, let me see if I understand what you’re saying, Em: you hate your job, you hate the work environment, and you feel unappreciated and unacknowledged, but you’re not going to accept the interview with the company you’ve been talking about for the past week because you’re a chicken. Right?”
“Um, yes?” Em answered. Boy, not taking the interview sounded really dumb when Ashley put it that way.
Ashley huffed. “Em, you have lost your goddamn mind if you don’t do this. What have you got to lose? If you decide it’s not for you, you don’t have to accept a job if they offer it to you. And didn’t they actually call you? That’s a big deal.”
“Well, yes. But you don’t know what a fool I made of myself with the principal of Tara Security Systems, Ashley. I totally started babbling.”
“You always babble when you get nervous. Hell, you babble when you’re not nervous,” Ashley laughed.
“In Gaelic?”
Ashley paused. “Okay, maybe it was worse than it usually is, but Em, I am so going to kick your ass if you don’t go to this interview. And I can totally catch you, because you’re not very fast,” she grinned. “You have to do this, sweetie.”
“I do, don’t I?” Em chewed her lip. “It’s kind of a start-up, though; what if it fails?”
“So what if it fails? You’ll get another job, but more importantly, you’ll be out of the Holbrook Firm and away from Tripp.”
Ashley had never been a fan of Tripp Holbrook and had never been shy about making that fact known. When pushed, Ashley admitted that there wasn’t anything in particular that made her not like Tripp; it was just his inherent Tripp-ness.
“Em, you have been propping up Tripp for years. He doesn’t value you, personally or professionally. Everyone knows that if you hadn’t been covering for him on that last project, the Holbrook Firm’s reputation would have gone down in flames. How many times has he presented something to the partners as his own idea when it was actually yours? And I’m not even going to start on the way he treats you outside of the office. You need a break from Tripp. Like a permanent break. Forever.”
Em sighed. She knew Ashley was right. Hell, they had the exact conversation, but reversed, when Ashley was miserable with her former real estate firm and that horrible boyfriend, Richard.
“Okay, one thing at a time, Ash. I’ll do the interview. It’s a start, right?”
Chapter 2
September
Em sat staring at the offer letter in her hand. It was real. It was really, really real.
She hadn’t truly believed it when the recruiter called yesterday with the verbal offer, and when she said that a written offer letter would arrive shortly, boy, she didn’t exaggerate: the letter came by courier within 20 minutes of their conversation.
Better yet, the offer included a 90-day lead time to wrap everything up at her current job so she didn’t leave anybody in a lurch. The substantial bump in pay, plus a nice signing bonus, plus quarterly bonus, only sweetened the deal. It was perfect. No more crawling under desks to find out that some partner had “accidentally” unplugged his computer and no more cleaning up viruses from work computers infected by downloading porn from contaminated sites.
Em thought back to her interview with the charismatic Irishman. He had truly seemed to value her ideas. He asked interesting questions during the interview, and she thought he answered her own questions candidly.
Em sent Ashley a quick text: “Got the dream job.” Seconds later, her phone rang.
“Woo! Now you can get a new place and a new boyfriend!” Ashley gushed.
Em snorted.
“That converted Victorian is for sale, you know, Em,” Ashley said nonchalantly. “You know, the one that you drool over whenever we pass it? I think it’s a sign.” Ashley knew very well that her best friend saw portents everywhere.
“Really?” Em said, trying very hard not to sound interested. “Oh, Ashley, it’s too big. What would I do with a place that big?”
“It’s just the top floor that’s for sale; the bottom floor sold about five years ago. The upper apartment was a rental and the owners don’t want to deal with it anymore. And guess who the agent handling the property is?” Ashley sounded very pleased with herself.
“Ash, that’s great! Congratulations!”
“We can go see it tomorrow.”
“Ashley, we’ve talked about this. I am not buying a house, at least not yet. Tripp and I are looking around for a condo, probably at the Belle Avalon development.”
Ashley scoffed at Em. “My doubts about you actually buying a house with that asshat aside, you’re not a condo type of girl. You’re a converted Victorian type of girl, and you know it. And besides, I thought you wanted your own place?”
“Well, now that I’m not going to be working with Tripp every day, maybe things will get better between us.” Em cringed as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She sure hoped things improved, but they couldn’t get much worse. She sighed. “I guess it couldn’t hurt to look, could it?”
“Yay! You’re going to love it!”
*****
“What do you mean, you got another job? What about our team? What am I going to do?” Tripp Holbrook both sounded and looked like a petulant child.
“You stick out that lip much more, you’re going to step on it,” Em said.
Tripp rolled his eyes. “God, I hate it when you get all folksy.”
Em glared at him. “Tripp, you know I’ve wanted to move in another direction for quite some time. This is a perfect opportunity to do so. Besides, I’m not starting for a good three months so I’ve plenty of time to wrap things up and
get you up to speed. Suck it up, buttercup. You’ll be fine.”
“Wait, you’ve already accepted the job? What did Dad say about it?” Tripp sounded frantic.
“Your father was pleased. He actually knows the fellow that I’ll be working with. He thinks it’s a great opportunity.” Em resisted the urge to stomp her foot and add a snotty “So there!”
Tripp clenched his jaw. “Since you’ve got this fancy new job, I suppose you’re going to want to move into a fancy new house and get a fancy new boyfriend.”
“Actually, I don’t want to move into a fancy new house, I want to move into a fancy old house. I don’t want to move into a soulless condo or some suburban McMansion. There’s this converted Victorian that I’d like to take a look at. And as far as ‘fancy new boyfriends’ go, you, Tripp, are plenty fancy. Heaven save me from any man that’s fancier than you.” Em shuddered.
This was the same argument that they had been having for the past five years or so and it was getting very tiresome. Maybe it was time for a clean break. At 42, Em had never lived by herself; she’d always had roommates or boyfriends.
Tripp rolled his eyes. “We don’t need a big place, Em, and certainly not as big as a Victorian.”
“But it’s just the top floor. It’s been divided into apartments. You should see the yard, Tripp. The house sits on a big wooded lot; it’s nice and private and has lots of character.”
“You mean it’s a dump that’s surrounded by lots of trees, Em. You think you can live without central air conditioning and lots of electrical outlets for your computers and stereo equipment? I doubt it. And besides, it’s not like we need to have a yard for children.”
And there it was.
“That’s not fair, Tripp,” Em said quietly. “That’s not fair at all.”
They stared angrily at each other until Em left the room. Em’s cat, Beauregard, hopped up on the kitchen cabinet and glared at Tripp.
“What the fuck are you looking at, cat?” Tripp pushed the cat off the counter and stormed out the door.
*****
Mid-October
Tripp stormed into Em’s shared office. Tom scurried out of the office, citing the urgent need to dust the servers.
“What in the hell were you thinking, Em, filing a complaint with HR about Robertson without going through the proper channels?”
“According to the HR manual, I only needed to have one conversation with my supervisor about said questionable behavior, and I did, so I escalated.”
“Now, Em...” Tripp began, but she held up her hand.
“No, Tripp. Don’t ‘now, Em,’ me. I’ve talked to you many, many times about Robertson’s rude and lewd remarks, about him calling me into his office to ‘see about an issue with a video deposition’ that turned out to be some sort of ridiculous office porno, and about his general harassment. Yesterday after work, he cornered me and put his hands on me when I said I wouldn’t come to his house to ‘check out his personal equipment’.”
“He’s 62 years old, Em! He has no idea about technology.”
“He grabbed my boobs, Tripp! With both hands, like he was honking them! And his pants were unzipped!”
“He’s got prostate problems. He’s always in the john. He probably just didn’t mind his zipper.”
“Okay, Tripp, this? This is why I went to HR. I don’t need you excusing his bad behavior because he looks the other way when you screw up.”
“When I screw up? You were the one who ordered all the wrong equipment for the Williams project; equipment that, by the way, can’t be returned.”
“And who was the person that filled out the spec documents, Tripp? Hm? And who was the person that insisted we go with this new vendor, the vendor that hadn’t gone through the official approval process but amazingly ended up on the approved vendor list?”
Tripp fisted his hair in his hands. God, Em infuriated him. Always asking questions, always looking deeper into things. She needed to just do what her supervisor told her do and do it with a smile on her face.
“You know there’s going to be an investigation, Em. It’s going to be his word against yours. He’s a partner, and you’re just a tech support monkey.”
“You’re not going to back me up, are you?” she said with a laugh of disbelief.
“I’m not seeing any issues except with your behavior and your attitude.”
“Well, it’s a good thing that I documented all the times that Robertson has said inappropriate things to me and had Tom sign a witness statement.”
Fuck. Did she always have to be Little Miss Hospital Corners?
“Em, sweetheart...”
“Oh, now it’s ‘sweetheart,’ is it? God, I should have just gone to Tara right when I got the job and not tried to do the right thing and not leave anybody hanging.”
“Well, you’re not doing a very good job here at the moment. You’ve been distracted and you’re making mistakes, like on the Williams project.”
“You’re not transitioning anything, Tripp. I’m going to be gone in six weeks and you’re going to be screwed because no one’s taken over my projects.”
Tripp barked a laugh. “Oh sweetheart, you’re not that indispensible. And you’re not going to win this little thing with Robertson. You’re the one who needs to suck it up, buttercup.”
And Tripp walked out the door.
*****
“I can’t believe you just walked out of the Holbrook Firm, Em. Good for you,” Ashley was saying as she cleared out the closet of her guest room. “Honey, why do you look so miserable?”
“Because I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, Ash.” Ashley cocked an eyebrow at Em, waiting for her continue. “I seriously hoped that the break would do us some good. I was only at Holbrook three days a week, and only for a few hours at a time. I didn’t usually even see Tripp during the work day. But at home, the new job’s made things even worse. We don’t talk, we don’t do anything.”
“Anything anything?”
“We haven’t had sex in over a year, Ashley, way over a year. I guess I was naive, thinking things would be better, huh?”
“No, you’re just an optimist and a romantic. I’m sorry, Em. Even if I think Tripp’s the asshattiest of the asshats, you love him, and that should count for something. But in the meantime, you can stay here for as long as you want.”
“Thanks, Ashley,” Em said. She gave her best friend a tight hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Still be being humiliated by the dirty old man and living with the asshat. Oh!”
“What?”
“What did the father of the asshat say? Have you talked to Ed?”
“I haven’t, but he left a very interesting voice mail on my cell. He offered me the contractor’s rate for ten hours a week, exclusively off-site, to write documentation about the projects that need to be handed off.”
“That’s great, right?”
“Yes! I mean, I still need to be available, but now I can actually go to the Tara client sites, something that Rory’s wanted me to do since I took the job. I mean, I can’t be out of town for weeks at a time, but I could go on two or three day spec trips.”
“And you’re hoping that since you’re not in the office and not at home, Tripp will come to his senses and realize what a good thing you two have?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m hoping.”
Ashley looked at Em and shook her head. The woman is completely delusional. Tripp is going to move onto the next cute support worker faster than shit through a goose.
*****
December
“Lucy, I’m home!” called Em.
“I’m in the kitchen, Ethel! Get your ass in here!”
“Always the demure one, Ashley,” laughed Em as she perched on a barstool. “Hit me, barkeep.”
Ashley slid a Scotch in front of Em. “I don’t know how you drink that, Em. It’ll put hair on your chest. Good God a’mighty.” Em shrugged and grinned. “So are you sta
ying put for a few weeks?”
“Yep! I’m back until the middle of January, so enjoy my company for the next month because then I’m back on the road. Rory actually wanted me to come to Portland with him the week before Christmas, but I’ve already committed to delivering the documentation then.”
Ashley froze where she stood. “You’re going back to Holbrook?”
Em shook her head. “I’m not going back to Holbrook; I’m just delivering manuals and making sure that Tom’s not buried.”
Ashley raised her eyebrow at her friend. There was no way that it was going to be that easy. Em squirmed under Ashley’s steady gaze.
“What aren’t you telling me, Em?” Em tapped her fingers on the bar, her drink untouched in front of her. “Ermengarde Maude Davidson, what is going on?”
Em squeezed her eyes shut so she couldn’t see Ashley’s head explode. “Tripp and I have been talking. A lot. About stuff. And other stuff.”
“Oh my God, Em. You’ve had phone sex with Tripp, haven’t you?”
Em laid her head on the bar. “Yes,” she said in quiet voice. To her surprise, Ashley started laughing.
“Thank God, Em. I mean, I’d rather you didn’t with Tripp, of all people, but anyway, what’s done is done, and I’m not going to even ask you how it was. But I am going to ask you if you know what you’re doing.”
“I think I do. I do care for Tripp. He’s different since I’ve left, and I think that if we don’t live together or work together, this can work.”
Ashley looked at Em. Em had a hopeful smile on her face, the first she had seen in a long time, and that little spark had returned to her eyes.
“You really think this can work?”
“Yeah, I do. And I need you to help me go shopping.”
Ashley perked up. She was always game for shopping.
“This must be serious, Em. You’re going to let me take you lingerie shopping?”
