8. Fixing What I Broke
8
FIXING WHAT I brOKE
ANSEL
T he gym smelled like sweat and rubber. The rhythmic clank of weights and the steady thump of a treadmill filled the silence as my brother and I worked out together four days a week.
I pressed the barbell up, my muscles burning, but the ache in my chest was worse. Not from the workout. From her . It had hurt like a motherfucker to see Neha looking at me like I wasn’t even worth talking to anymore.
I gritted my teeth and finished my last rep, racking the bar with more force than necessary before sitting up. Across from me, Michael, who was annoyingly observant, watched me with the condescending patience, that said, ‘I’m waiting, little brother, get to it already so I can tell you how you’ve screwed up .’
I grabbed my water bottle, twisting the cap open with too much force. “Go ahead. Say whatever psych lecture you’ve been dying to give me.”
Michael, a professor of psychology at NYU grinned, wiping sweat from his forehead with a towel. “I don’t have to say anything. You’re already fighting the conversation in your head.”
I scowled. “Yeah, well, it’s a dumb conversation.”
He hummed like he wasn’t convinced, stretching out his legs before grabbing a set of dumbbells. “So, what did you do?”
I exhaled hard through my nose. “Why do you assume I did something?”
Michael raised a brow. “Because I know you and you look guilty as hell.”
I took a long sip of water, looking at the mirror in front of us. The reflection staring back was the same as always—broad shoulders, strong build, the same sharp features that had served me well in my personal and professional life.
Neha had seen through it, through me. She’d called me out, stripped away every carefully crafted version of myself I tried to present, and exposed the truth—that I was selfish . That I took and didn’t give.
“You know my assistant quit.”
“Neha.”
I set my bottle down. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth.”
Michael didn’t look surprised. “So, she didn’t quit because she was getting an MBA and didn’t want to be your assistant?”
“I may have embellished a little.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I figured.”
That irritated me. “What the hell does that mean?”
Michael switched dumbbells, rolling his shoulders. “It means, Ansel, that I know you.”
“And what does that mean?” I asked almost cautiously, not sure if I wanted to know.
“You’ve had the hots for your assistant for a while now and from what I saw at your Christmas party she’s all into you.”
Christ!
I glared at him. “How is it that everyone knew we were attracted to one another and we didn’t?”
This time he laughed. “You knew she was attracted to you—you knew you were attracted to her, you not doing anything about it is on you. So, you want to tell me what happened?”
No, I didn’t because my brother would know how much of an asshole I was to Neha. But he knew me and would love me no matter what. Like he often said, if I killed someone he’d help me move the body but requested I do so when he didn’t have class.
So, I told him. The whole sordid tale.
Michael worked out steadily as he listened.
When I was done, so was he. He set his dumbbells into the rack and looked at me with pity. That stung.
“I love you, you know that.”
I nodded.
“Good, because now I have to tell you something you won’t like to hear.”
I nodded again, waiting.
“You’ve always been the kind of guy who assumes people will be there for you, no matter what, no matter how you treat them because your world comes first.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a hand. “Not intentionally. You’re not cruel, Ansel. You’re just used to everything working out in your favor. You wanted Neha in your corner, but you never asked yourself if you needed to be in her corner, too.”
I bristled. “I took care of her. She got paid well. She loved her job.”
Michael reached for a bottle of water from one of the small refrigerators scattered throughout the gym. “She liked her job, but she loved you .”
My stomach clenched.
Michael drank nearly half the bottle. “You fucked her over, brother. And it wasn’t just business. It was—as she told you when she told you to fuck off—personal. Why did you even listen to this Vanessa woman?”
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. “Because I was scared that I wasn’t good enough for the job without Neha.”
“And so, what?”
“I wanted to do it on my own.” The moment the words left my mouth, I heard how fucking stupid they sounded.
“Do I even need to dignify that statement with a response?” Michael mused sarcastically.
I shook my head. “She made me look good, Michael, and that scared me. And the fact that every time she was in my office I thought about bending her over the table and fucking her until we were both raw didn’t help.”
Michael burst out laughing. “I can’t imagine how hard it must've been for you.”
“Don’t be a jerk.” I tried to be curt but I was smiling.
“The fact is that you intentionally let her go. Even if she hadn’t heard the crap you said to this Vanessa person, you’d have fired her. You convinced yourself that you needed to let her go so that you could move upward.” Michael put a hand on my shoulder. “She made you look good, brother, and that meant you were a team.”
I nodded. “Yeah. We were a damn good team.” Until I fucked it up by being an insecure ass and then compounded that by going to her café and behaving like an arrogant one.
She was right, I’d gone to see her to make myself feel better. I hadn’t thought about her at all. Not what she wanted. Not what she deserved.
And that made me feel like the biggest piece of shit on the planet.
“So, what are you gonna do about it?” Michael asked casually.
I stared at my hands, flexing them against my thighs.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, let me turn it around. What do you want?”
“Neha…but not as an assistant.”
“What else?”
“I want to see her smile,” I whispered. “I want to make her happy. I want to wipe away that horrible day, somehow . I want to give her what she deserves.”
Michael nodded approvingly. “That’s a good start. What are you going to do about this Vanessa woman?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “What about her?”
“She fucked with you, and she ended up hurting Neha. Also, I’m sure her campaign to get your job hasn’t ended.”
That was true. Now that I knew what she was doing, I was starting to see her attempts at making me look bad while she remained friendly with me. This wasn’t the first time someone did this to me—this was how the corporate world worked. It was dog-eat-dog and you wanted to be the dog who ate.
“Michael, this is how business is done.”
“Maybe it’s time then to find a new place to work, Ansel, because this is not how business should be done. It doesn’t have to be elbow jabs and covert fucking ops. This isn’t life or death! It’s just high finance!”
Michael was an academic, and I didn’t know how to explain to him that all of corporate America, in fact, the corporate world, functioned this way.
Vanessa fought dirty because she had to. As a woman, she had fewer opportunities than I did. I knew that, understood my privilege, which was why I tried to hire people of color and helped to promote women on my team—well, everyone except the one for whom I apparently had the hots for.
“For Vanessa, career is everything.” I ran a hand through my sweaty hair. “Hell, Michael, for me, too.”
“Ever done anything as underhanded as what she did?”
I shook my head. “I just outworked everybody. But Vanessa is a woman, and that’s not easy. I’m not saying I condone what she did because that’s immoral as fuck, but I get it.”
Michael groaned. “If you’ve been brainwashed into thinking this is normal—or even acceptable—then maybe it’s time to find a new profession.”
“I love what I do, Michael.”
He leveled me with a look. “Ask yourself this, Ansel—how do you want to live for the next thirty or forty years? Do you really want to spend every day fighting over bullshit like money and titles? At what point is it enough? When is it going to be enough?”