by Ally Blake
“Excellent,” Hazel said with a clap. “You won’t regret it. The truth will set you free.” A woman whose entire business was built on smoke and mirrors quoting her mother’s book title. Didn’t that nearly set April off again.
“Now, are you sure you don’t want to join us? The girls would love to hear about your experiences so far.”
Yeah, she’d bet they would. They’d probably all wanted to rub her head for luck.
“I need to get home.” The masses of de-stress cupcakes in her future wouldn’t bake themselves!
“Alright, darling. I want to know the moment you speak to your man.”
That time April was under no illusion that Hazel meant Stan. “The moment I get good news from my boss, you’ll be the first to hear.”
Hazel’s eyes narrowed. Something flickering deep within. Which was when April noticed Hazel wringing her hands. She went to ask Hazel if she was okay, but Hazel gave her one last squeeze of the arm and headed back to her acolytes.
April ducked beneath a bougainvillea branch, avoiding the spikes, then wound her way back through the naughty fairy garden, wondering if makeovers always made a person feel like they’d been stripped back to bare bones.
Either way, they weren’t nearly as much fun as they looked on TV.
Finn had camped out in the Hamilton Holdings basement having taken temporary ownership of a cheap office chair and a dented metal table surrounded by shelves that had once upon a time been filled with boxes of files before they’d been systematically digitised.
It was the least comfortable room in the building on purpose. He needed to stay alert. Frosty. On his game.
He’d been texting back and forth with Sally Jameson who’d called Frank that morning with “concerns” about the contract they were on the verge of signing. Jurisdictional concerns. Durational concerns. Last-minute butterfly concerns.
Frank had swung it straight to Finn. Knowing Sally as he did, Finn nudged, cajoled, flirted. Sweetening the deal with what had grown into a rare, easy friendship. He’d hit the sweet spot, when the back and forth became like a song when she texted,
“How’s April?”
Finn threw his hands in the air in defeat.
Not that Sally was to know, but it had been three days since he’d seen or heard from April. Since she’d banged on his door, dragged the truth from his head, the left him hollowed out and flapping in the breeze. And he’d managed to go a whole five minutes without thinking about the woman.
He ought to have been able to snap off an answer, something disarming, something charming. But his brain had all the functionality of a fifteen-year-old boy, mooning over his first girlfriend.
Finn rolled his phone over in his hand before typing back some self-deprecating rubbish. Not his best work by a long shot.
Sally – good woman – sent back a laughter emoji. Then told him he could go find someone else to schmooze. She was over her hiccups. His job was done. The contracts would be signed and sent within the hour.
And if he was ever looking for a sea change, she’d steal him away from Frank without an ounce of guilt.
Finn read the message again. Then again.
Did what he think happened just happen? Had Sally just offered him an out? The chance to work on the other side of the world with people he liked and respected, while the people he cared about had zero chance of getting caught up in the storm of his family’s making?
No. It was out of the question. It would screw up their relationship with Frank. They were just his kind of people. Irreverent, easygoing, rich as Croesus. It was a brilliant match on which to finish up his tenure.
Leaving to work for them would be akin to slamming the door in Frank’s face as he left.
Finn deliberately left Sally’s message alone and let Frank know the Jamesons were back in the pocket.
Then he sat forward, his thumb hovering over his email app and the dozen other jobs Frank had lined up for him –
How was April?
It wasn’t like her not to check in. Or turn up, for that matter. He’d been half expecting her to call asking after the contract. Or to see if he’d found her Wonder Woman t-shirt. He had, scrunched up beneath his pillow where it still remained.
But then her last words echoed inside of his head:
I may act like it sometimes, but I’m not a total masochist. You were right in the first place, I should go.
He’d thought she’d meant “go” as in go home. But what if she’d finally taken him at his word and meant “go” as in walk away once and for good.
Finn rolled his phone in his hand. Then scrolled through his contacts until he found April’s number. Went to call. Stopped himself. Scrunched his eyes tight and swore.
Finn tossed his phone onto the table and sat back. Rubbed both hands over his face.
Distance was what he’d wanted from the outset. It was the best possible outcome. And he couldn’t shift the sense that everything was all wrong. It was like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Deep under his skin. In his very veins. This ache. This thrumming desire to see her. To touch her. Watch her writhe like a cat when he scraped a nail over her tattoo. Hear her hum with pleasure as he slid his fingers through the tumble of her hair. As he tasted her sweet mouth.
One call. Quick one. If he heard her voice, the light, the candour, would settle him. Centre him. Then he could get on with his day.
But even as he thought the words he knew they were a lie.
The inclination to talk to her, to see her, to touch her had gone beyond distraction. Finn needed what April gave him with a fierceness that clutched at his belly like a fist.
How was she?
Only one way to find out.
April nibbled at a fingernail and tried to talk herself out of turning cartwheels across the big oatmeal-coloured rug separating her baby-poo-brown desk from Stan’s pure white office door.
But the rug was the perfect size. Fluffy too. Maybe that was what she needed to make her apartment feel just right – a fluffy rug. If her cart-wheeling skills weren’t as good as they once were and she fell it wouldn’t hurt all that much. She could tuck her skirt into her undies and twirl. Twirling would feel really good. It would tip her head upside down and shake it all about.
Shaking loose the zillion scenarios bouncing about inside her head as she faced the final step in her Cinderella Project journey. Because for the life of her she couldn’t see any of them ending well.
“You look like you’re on a mission.”
April flinched. So deep had she been in her cartwheel fantasy, she hadn’t even noticed Jase arrive.
“You’re late. As usual.”
“It’s nine o’clock somewhere.”
She glanced at her watch to find it was a quarter past. “It’s actually not.”
Jase leant against the desk beside her and took up staring at Stan’s door too. April gave him the side eye and wondered how she’d ever looked at him and thought “boyfriend material”. How ready was she to accept amity over emotion that she’d only offered her heart such beige options?
No more. Never again.
And as if her thought became action, the little rebel awoke.
“Jase.”
“Yup?”
“Do you even want the promotion?”
Jase started. It was the first time either of them had actually mentioned it out loud.
“Stan’s making his decision, possibly even as we speak. If it falls to you, are you ready?”
“Ready for better pay. For minions to do the hard labour. Sure.”
The edges of April’s mind became tinged a bright pulsing red that grew with each beat of her heart. “So you’d screw over someone who’d actually be better at the job than you are just so you could work less than you already do. You are so an only child. Mummy’s boy, for sure. Probably have a really tiny—”
“I do not have a tiny—”
She held up a little finger. Crooked it in the middle. The little rebel crowed as Jase’
s eyes bulged and pink steeped into his cheeks. “My mother is a renowned psychiatrist, Jase. The things I know about you from the way you act, dress, smile, talk, and move would make your balls shrivel into walnuts.”
Smith and Clara arrived right at that moment, bearing non-coffee coffees. They both gawped, clearly having heard the salient parts.
“April, honey,” Smith said, “you alright?”
“Just peachy.”
“What did you do to her?” Clara asked, furrowing a brow Jase’s way.
Jase held up both hands in self-defence. “Apparently I was born.”
“Seriously?” April said, her voice rising. “Do you seriously have no clue how deeply you offend me with your nonchalance and your ambivalence and the way you strut around the place, acting as if the world owes you something? While I’ve worked tirelessly at making everyone’s lives easier to the detriment of my own the entire decade I’ve worked here. And for what?”
At that very moment Stan’s door opened.
April was off the mark and across the rug—on her feet, not cartwheeling—before she even took a breath.
“Stan. Hi! I was hoping to grab that lunch now. If you have the time.”
“It’s nine in the morning, April.”
“Quarter past, actually. Breakfast then. Brunch? Or just a sit down. There are things I’d like to say.”
Stan looked over her shoulder at the tableau of Smith, Clara and Jase who promptly scattered. “Alright then, April. Let’s do this.”
Pulse leaping like a startled rabbit, head now a catastrophic mess, her entire body feeling sensitive and raw, April followed her boss into the inner sanctum.
Chapter Thirteen
April banged her head against her baby poo brown desk.
“April?” That was Smith.
She banged her head again.
The meeting, if it could be called such a thing, had been one of the most uncomfortable, terrible, wasted half hours of her life.
In an effort to lead in gently to the big ultimatum she’d talked to Stan about football—like she knew a darned thing about football—that year’s world maize crops, and a study she’d once read on the body language of chimpanzees. Kind man that he was, Stan had joined in. Asking polite questions when she ground to a halt. And waiting, patiently, for her to get to the point.
Only, once there, she ran out of small talk she discovered she had nothing else to say. She didn’t want to ask, or beg, or tell the guy why she was right for the job. Hazel was right. If Stan didn’t see that, if he didn’t see her, then she was in the wrong place.
So she’d wished Stan a “fruitful day”—her actual words—and walked out.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” Smith said, “because you’re obviously not.”
“And she’d bite your head off and spit it out if you did,” Jase muttered from behind his computer.
“Shush up, you,” Smith hissed. “We’re all one team here, mate. Which you’d know if you weren’t a sociopath.”
“Smith!” Clara intervened.
“Well, he is. We fell for it because we are weak and malleable. Only way he got us to vote for him over our girl.”
That snapped April out of her fugue.
She lifted her head and glared at Smith. “You what?”
“Now, now, Miss Crazy Eyes. Do you want to go for a walk? Get some fresh air?”
“You voted for him? Both of you?”
“Well, I don’t want the job. Responsibility? Actual life-changing decision making? Bugger that. And neither does Clara.”
At the thought of being boss, Clara turned the same pale green as her “coffee”.
“While you, our sweet, darling April, have been fading these past months. Like an autumn tree we’ve watched your leaves shrivel up and fall away. Making us wonder if you really want to be here at all.”
April sat up straighter. “Of course I want to be here! This is a great place. Full of good people. Trying to make the world a better place, one cup of gluten free flour at a time.”
Now why hadn’t she said that to Stan?
Because Smith was right, her heart just hadn’t been in it for some time now.
April dropped her head to the desk again. Her voice was a mumble as she said, “I want the job. I do. But I also want... more.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Smith said, near collapsing in his seat. “I thought she’d never get there.”
But now that she’d admitted her discontent out loud, April’s subconscious was off and away.
No wonder she’d been battling the urge to light spot fires all over her life. She’d been bored at work. Indifferent at home. Underwhelmed with her entire life.
There were only so many cupcakes a person could bake before it became ridiculous. Especially when she gave them all away. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d actually eaten one. And she loved cupcakes. Sugar, icing, licking the bowl. When had the de-stressing aspect of baking become more important to her than the decadent devouring?
No wonder she’d gone looking for Finn.
Her mobile phone rang. It buzzed on the desk beside her.
So attuned to him was she, she knew it would be Finn without even looking. She’d practically willed it with the longing she felt just thinking about him.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?”
April shook her head. She hadn’t spoken to him since the other night; though the urge to call, to just turn up, had been a constant pressure behind her ribs.
“Why not, honey? Did you and your Viking have a fight? Or we can disappear for a bit if you want some privacy to have a chat?”
She opened her mouth to say that they didn’t fight so much as constantly poke at one another’s boundaries. And that he wasn’t the kind of man guy one talked to about something as mundane as a bad meeting at work.
But she found herself stuck, trying to picture him in her day-to-day life; snuggled on the couch watching Downton, knocking back cupcakes with pink sparkle icing, chatting with Mrs. Parsons on his way out the door.
And she couldn’t. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t fit him into that world. It was like trying to merge two alternate universes.
Because he wasn’t her Viking. And he never would be.
Exhausted from all the secrets, half-truths, and out and out lies, and from pretending to be such a good girl all the damn time, April muttered, “It’s not real.”
“What’s not real, April sunshine?”
“Finn and I.”
“Now you’re just talking gibberish.”
She lifted her head again. It felt like a bowling ball attached to her neck. Then, quickly, quick enough she couldn’t swallow the words before they came out, she told Smith and Clara – and Jase too – about the Cinderella Project, the fake boyfriend ruse, the fact that he was leaving and yet they’d started something up anyway. The whole sordid truth.
“Stop,” Clara said, her dainty voice cutting through. “Breathe.”
April stopped. April breathed. Not well though. In fact, it felt a little like she was hyperventilating.
Jase snorted. “That is out and out the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Smith turned on him. “Come on, man. Have a heart. Can’t you see she’s hurting?”
Jase looked at her then. And behind his eyes she saw nothing. No humour, no pain, no empathy. The difference between this guy and Finn could not have been more immense.
She heard herself say, “You know why I had my eye on you, Jase?”
A smirk curled at the corner of his mouth. “Because I’m badass.”
“Because you’re safe. There’s no way you would have ever reciprocated, not in any real, emotional way, so liking you cost me nothing. You’re not a sociopath, Jase. You’re simply unformed.”
The smirk faded away.
Which was when she realised just how much it was costing her, liking Finn. Her head was as messed up as her life. And it would be even more so when
he was finally gone. Everything she’d spent her life avoiding – pain, heartache, loss – was about to come tumbling down upon her head.
But taking it out on poor Jase wasn’t the right move. In fact, it was about the least good thing she’d ever done.
“Not Finn, though,” Smith said. “That man is so well formed he’s—”
“Enough.” April shot back, her nerves jangling. “Enough about Finn, okay?”
Duly chastised, Smith plonked behind his desk.
Clara turned a circle, like a lost puppy, before taking to her desk too.
While Jase looked off into the middle distance, confusion and concern fighting for supremacy behind his eyes. Like he’d never before realised self-analysis was a thing and his whole entire world had turned inside out.
And April, April felt very much alone.
This was the time she was meant to be marshalling her troops, relying on them to help her through the dark days when Jase got the promotion and the thing with Finn unravelled. Instead she was rubbing everyone the wrong way.
Her phone rang again. She jabbed the “do not answer” button.
And dropped her head to her desk again.
It was after nine by the time April tiptoed past Mrs. Parsons’ door.
In penance for her bad behaviour, she’d stayed back late, catching up on every single email, finishing every single item on her to do list as well as Smith’s, Clara’s and even Jase’s. She’d even outlasted Stan. He’d noticed, giving her a cheerful wave on his way out. Whatever good that might do her after her disastrous football/maize/chimps conversation.
She flinched when the downstairs apartment door opened with a swoosh. Only it wasn’t Mrs. Parsons, it was her son.
“Jeez, Clive. Give me the fright of my life, why don’t you.”
“Not my intention, Ms. Swanson.”
“Glad to hear it.” She glanced up the stairs. She hoped her apartment would forgive her for feeling ambivalent towards it earlier. “How’s tricks?”
“Not great, I’m afraid.” He frowned. That said, frowning was his default position.
“Oh, no. Is your mother unwell?” April peered over his shoulder, ready to leap in and administer chest compressions, the Heimlich, soup.
