Sam’s absolute delight, though, is helping calm me down. I’m not at all convinced he’s right, since things go wrong for me far more often than they go right, but he did get me a job I’m good at and help me make the video I needed to win the contest, so maybe he’s the good luck charm I’ve been looking for all my life.
If only his luck extended to finding Will. Then my life would be perfect.
We turn a corner, strolling along toward the coffee shop that’s become our regular hangout place, and I see Eric from work walking toward us with a tall blonde woman pushing a stroller. I’m more bothered by the woman, since Eric’s been flirting with me more each time I see him and his suggestion that we get coffee some time as I left work today pleased me, but Sam mutters, “Damn it,” and I look over to see his face going pale and his eyes fixed on the stroller.
Eric sees us and stops dead. His eyes flick from me to Sam and back again, and his face looks as horrified as if someone showed him how his body will look when he’s ninety.
The woman glances at Eric, then follows his gaze to Sam and me, and she looks horrified too.
To my surprise, Sam tightens his grip on my arm and pulls me closer. I have no idea what’s going on but I’ve never seen him this upset.
He takes a few more steps, until we’re in front of the still-unmoving couple, then says, in a cold dead voice that sounds nothing like his usual, one word. “Melinda.”
The name registers with me, and I look down at the kid, shocked. This must be the one Sam thought was his. So does that mean Eric is... was...
“And Eric,” Sam says in that same voice. “And Jackson. Happy little family.”
“How do you--” Eric cuts off and clears his throat, but he was talking to me and I know what he wants to know.
“Sam and I were on that show together,” I say, trying to sound as cold and calm as Sam did, which is hard because I’m furious at what these two did to him. “And I guess if you’d known I knew him you’d have acted differently at work, wouldn’t you? More... professionally?”
Melinda turns her head sharply to look at Eric, and pleasure at causing him trouble stalks through me.
“Of course, I wouldn’t have let you flirt with me if I’d known you were the scumbag who cheated with this...” I can’t think of a good name to call her, and Sam might stop me anyhow, so I just give a disgusted gesture in her direction.
“Hey!” Melinda snaps.
I laugh. “Hey what? Denying it?” I look into the stroller again, and notice the kid’s bright blue eyes. Bright like Eric’s. Yeah, he’s definitely Eric’s kid. Poor Sam.
Poor stupid Sam.
Why did he just let them both walk away? They should have paid.
They still should pay.
And they will, if I have anything to say about it.
But apparently I don’t, because Sam murmurs, “Let’s go, Ashley,” and guides me past them before I can speak again. I give first Eric then Melinda a dirty look as we go, since I’m not sure which one I hate more. I’m not thrilled with Sam either: why is he leaving them unpunished again?
Once we’re past and around the corner Sam says, “Hold up a second?” and drops my arm so he can collapse back against the wall of a nearby building. “God, that sucked.”
“Well, yeah, because you let them get away with it.”
He raises his head and stares at me. “Not like I had a choice.”
“Sure you did. Public humiliation, telling them off, making them pay.”
Sam sighs and slumps further. “It wouldn’t change anything.”
“Of course it would.”
He pushes himself upright. “How? Ashley, you always say that sort of thing but I just don’t see it.”
“I do.”
He stands silent, obviously waiting for my explanation.
I don’t have one, at least not one that would work for him. I know I’m right. I know he’d feel better. He’d feel alive, and he’d know he hadn’t let them walk on him. Like how I feel better trying to find Will than I did just sitting around being hurt.
But he won’t understand. He’s too passive. He’s never going to learn to stand up for himself.
I could tell him that, but he’s already hurting and I don’t want to make things worse for him. I do, badly, want to make them worse for Eric and Melinda but I don’t know what I can do to her, although my mind is racing through possibilities for making Eric’s life hell at work. In a subtle way, of course, so Billy doesn’t find out.
“It won’t help,” Sam says, apparently taking my silence for backing down instead of being busy plotting. “Can’t change the past.”
Such a blast of fury tears through me that I can barely breathe. “But you can make up for it. You can punish them and then you’ll feel better.”
Sam’s eyes widen. “I wouldn’t, actually. I loved her once and he was my best friend. I hate that we’re the way we are.”
“But it’s their fault! So if they suffered too things would be better for you. They should suffer.”
“I think they’re already--”
“If you tell me that smug bitch and her jackass boyfriend are already suffering, Sam, I’m gonna think you’re the biggest idiot on the planet. They aren’t suffering, you are. They won! You can’t let that happen!”
Sam takes a step back from me as if my energy has pushed him away. “I am suffering a bit, yeah.” He sighs. “I’ve been thinking of getting hired at a new gym, actually, where I won’t risk seeing either of them. Or Hugh.”
That he’d run away makes me think less of him, but his words remind me of something else. “And how come I didn’t know Eric was your ex-friend? Didn’t you know I’d see him at work?”
Sam nods, and sighs again. “He’s always at that location and I’m always at the other because Billy thought we’d be better off separated. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to prejudice you against Eric.”
I have to grab the corner of the wall to keep from falling over in shock. “Why the hell not? If anyone deserves that it’s him. You should tell everyone who comes in. Hell, get a billboard.”
“A Billy board,” Sam says, trying to smile.
I won’t let him change the subject. I’m just so angry for him. “I still think they need to pay. You deserve that.”
Sam studies me for a long moment, his eyes solemn. As I start to feel uncomfortable, he says, “I think that if I go after revenge I’ll end up paying more than they will.”
Spoken like someone who’s never experienced the sharp fierce joy of getting someone back for hurting him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sam sets his squat bar on the rack and shakes his head. “Better, but not good enough.”
“It’s more than I can do now,” I offer. “You definitely are getting better.”
“Yeah, but my birthday’s in less than two weeks. It’s not going to happen by then.” He sighs. “Sorry, I’m being a downer. How are things with you?”
I roll my eyes. “If you think you’re a downer, I don’t know what I am.”
“Why, what’s up?”
I shrug. “Same sort of crap that’s always up. Can’t find Will, my grandmother’s mad at me... well, that’s not unusual but it’s still crap.”
“For sure. What’s she mad about?”
I shrug again. “Me quitting my job. She... disapproves, to put it mildly.”
To put it accurately, Grandmother’s been demonstrating her bitching skills over the phone ever since she found out I quit my job, and yesterday she did it in person when I went over there for Grandfather’s birthday. Since she got me that job I do understand but I still wish she’d leave me alone about it. I had no choice but to get out of there.
I’d have expected I’d be delighted to hear her say that my former employer received nearly three thousand applications for the fake job she clearly didn’t know I’d posted, but while I was a little amused at the idea of them sorting through all that I also felt bad for the people
who’d applied thinking it might be real. I hadn’t thought of them before, when I came up with the idea of the fake posting, and I probably wouldn’t have cared if I had, but I kept thinking about them after she told me and I had a dream last night that they were all shouting at me and wanting their own revenge on me. I kept telling them I hadn’t meant to hurt them, but they didn’t care. They just kept yelling at me and crowding closer until they eventually had me pinned in a corner. I woke up shaking and crying, and it took me a long time to get back to sleep.
“But your job here is okay, right? Does she approve of it?” Sam looks around the gym. We’re at his site, of course, since he and Eric shouldn’t be together, but I know what he means and say, “She didn’t much care to listen about it. But I like it. Yup. It’s fine.”
It won’t be, though, if I slip up and go after Eric or Hugh, because Billy is keeping both eyes on me at all times. He actually doesn’t need to: since I know Sam doesn’t want me to get revenge I haven’t made any effort in that direction. I want to because those two jerks deserve it, but I don’t want to because of Sam. I hate that no matter what I do it doesn’t feel good.
“Good,” Sam says, smiling at me. “It’s a nice place, so I’m glad it’s working for you.” His smile fades, and my desire to get back at Eric doubles because I know Sam’s thinking about how much better the place was for him before he lost his best friend and his girlfriend and the baby he thought was his. He might not have the strength to stand up for himself, but I do and I have enough to stand up for him too. If only he’d let me.
“Absolutely,” I say, more in answer to my own thoughts than to him. “Ready for another set?”
He is, so we each do another ten squats, and as we move on to the pull-up machine he says, “Have you got that money from Videvideoo yet?”
“Nope,” I say, trying to hide my worry. They said my first payment, nearly four hundred dollars, would be in my account two days ago and they didn’t respond to my message yesterday about it. “It’s probably not coming. Let’s face it, that’s how the world works.”
“Nice attitude,” he says, chuckling and fiddling with the machine’s settings.
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? They’re keeping the money. And it’s no surprise. Everyone’s out to get you. All you can do is be ready to get them back.”
Sam pulls back from the machine and turns to face me. “You’re serious? Geez, Ashley.”
My face goes hotter than it had been from the exertion of the workout. “What? Don’t you agree?”
He rubs his forehead and murmurs, “How do I answer that one?”
“Don’t bother,” I say, trying to smile. I know he doesn’t agree. That’s why he keeps getting walked on. He needs to learn how the world works. “It was rhetorical.”
“Ooh, rhetorical. Big word.”
My smile comes easier this time. “Did a lesson on ‘hard words to spell’ this morning for the admin assistant course. I guess some of them stuck.”
“Guess so,” he says, not looking reassured. “But honestly, do you really--”
“Sam, don’t worry about it.” I wave my hand for emphasis. “It’s fine. I’m fine. And once I find Will, I’ll be more than fine.”
Because I’ll make him pay, I think but don’t say.
I don’t have to. I can tell by Sam’s face he knows what I mean.
And I can also tell he doesn’t like it.
Too bad. I do. I know I’m right. I have to be right. I need to be rid of the blazing rage I feel whenever I think of the show and what happened to Brett, and the only way I can imagine to do that is finding Will. So I’ll do it, whatever it takes. And then my life will be right. Finally.
*****
After five days of doing everything I can to find Will, with thinking about the punishment Eric and Hugh deserve and aren’t getting plus a multiple-times-a-day chasing of the still-silent Videvideoo thrown into the mix, I wake up on Friday with a fierce headache. Probably not a surprise, given that I stayed up super late on Thursday.
I blame that on Dory’s annoying phone call, in which she somehow got the Eric thing out of me and then had the nerve to suggest that I constantly seek revenge as a way of getting back at some people in my past for something they did to me years ago. I hung up on her before she could say who these people were, so angry I was shaking, but she called me right back and kept calling until I answered, and though I made it clear that I’m wronged enough in the present that I don’t need to go looking in my past for reasons to seek revenge she kept insisting.
She never volunteered who had supposedly done this something to me, and I sure as hell didn’t ask, and when our hour of hell finally ended and she let me go I was so furious that I didn’t have a prayer of sleeping until I’d sent Videvideoo a bunch more angry emails and spent ages searching increasingly shifty-looking websites for information about Will and fired off an anonymous complaint about the guy who keeps parking in the visitor lot when I know he lives here because at least that issue I have a hope of solving. I can’t get any of the revenge I need so I’ll have to settle for useless petty revenge. It doesn’t feel good, but it feels better than doing nothing.
I pop a few painkillers then pull up my phone’s Twitter app so I can respond to any video-watchers who’ve commented there. I usually have only five or six mentions, so the thirty I see surprise me.
Then I feel that rage swirling in me again. Combined with the headache, it makes me feel like I’ve got the world’s worst stomach flu.
Hey, what’s happened? Videvideoo gone?
No more Videvideoo. :( Where u go now?
Figures, I just paid for a month of premium Videvideoo and they kill it. Can u get me a refund?
Not bothering with the rest of the mentions, I rush to my laptop. Sure enough, the site’s gone. In its place I see a single page saying how sorry the founders are that they’re no longer able to provide the service and...
I don’t read the rest. Instead, I log into my email.
My contact Jimmy has sent me one, with a subject line of “Payment”, and I breathe easier knowing I’m not getting shafted out of my earnings.
For a moment.
Ashley, I am truly very sorry about this but we’re not able to pay you. Thanks for your great work, and I hope the audience you got through us makes up for the money.
Jimmy
Raging, I fire back a quick “not at all, and where did the money YOU OWE ME go?” response, but as I pick up my phone to send Sam a text about this crap I get a ‘address does not exist’ auto-reply email.
I set down my phone and slump back in my chair. Of course. All my dreams of what I could do with the Videvideoo money were a waste of time. I’d been so right. I’m not a success. I’ll never be one.
At that thought, the spinning rage expands until every part of me is blazing with fury. I want to kill them, Jimmy and whoever else is involved with this scam. I want to take them apart. But I don’t know where they are.
Helplessness only makes my rage worse.
I want to get them back and I can’t. I don’t know where to look. It’s just like with Will.
My anger starts to overwhelm me, but I crush it down into a tiny super-heated ball, like a bullet. Will. I do know where to look for him. I am looking. I’m going to keep looking, and when I find him I’ll shoot my anger bullet at him and take him out. And then I’ll feel better. I will. I have to.
My stomach lurches, and I race to the bathroom and try to throw up, but there’s nothing in me to get rid of. All that’s in me, all I’ve got, is my anger, and I need that. Until I unleash it at Will, I need it to keep me moving forward.
I’d be nowhere without it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I still feel useless and pathetic and so angry I can hardly breathe the next day, but I go to Kent and MC’s pre-wedding party anyhow because I know Sam wants me to. He’s been having a rough time lately, what with his leg still not being strong enough for his squat goal and the Mi
randa/Eric fiasco, and I can’t disappoint him.
But from the moment I arrive at the restaurant, alone and by taxi since Sam’s coming directly from work and will drive me home after, I feel out of place. I trust that MC and Kent and the others do like me now, although I can’t understand why they do, but I still wish I hadn’t come.
That might be because of the wedding couple’s clear joy and delight in each other, it might be that I’m one of the few people who shows up without a partner, and it definitely might be because when Sam walks in Summer’s friend Kia says, “Hello again,” to him in a voice dripping with promise. He just gives her a smile and comes to sit by me, but I’m sure he’d rather be with her since she’s so bouncy and pretty. Bouncy and pretty and not filled with the rage I’ve been struggling with since yesterday’s Videvideoo disaster. I went to their office but they weren’t there, of course. No matter what I try, I can’t find those lying cheating jerks, or the lying cheating jerk Will, and I’m so angry at all the lying cheating jerks in my life I can hardly breathe sometimes.
So there are lots of reasons for not wanting to be at the party, but whatever the cause I wish myself anywhere but here.
Summer, surprisingly, appears to feel the same way, from the uncharacteristically awkward way she’s acting. Aaron’s on the other end of the table from her, and I saw him position himself there deliberately, and he’s flirting with everyone but her, even to the point of winking at passing women and then hugging them and their friends when they recognize him and request it. Summer is almost silent, barely responding when people talk to her, and she looks pale and tired. Summaar seems to be over.
I’ve never liked her so I’m surprised to feel furious at Aaron presumably on her behalf. He is humiliating her publicly, since everyone knows they were together, and though it’s got to be the first time it’s ever happened to her so I should be pleased she’s finally been dragged down to earth I just feel enraged and calm myself by trying to find a way to punish him. Itching powder in his underwear? Slip whatever the opposite of Viagra is into his drink?
Bad Will Hunting Page 17
