Chapter 23
AARON
“Yes, I understand. I’ll be there by the time it starts.” Aaron hung up and walked over to the bench where Mark and Rachel sat while waiting for him to get off the phone.
“Are you done being completely irreplaceable? Can we go look at some penguins now?” Mark whined. Rachel narrowed her eyes at Aaron, picking up on his shifted mood.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I have to go in. Fuck! I gave them the slides with everything they need, but they decided I have to be there after all.” Aaron dragged his hands down his face, resignation slowly replacing every other emotion.
It was irony at its finest—he had to go in for a presentation on employee morale while his own was at an all-time low.
“They can’t do that!” Rachel exclaimed. “You took the day off.”
“Not anymore.” Aaron jabbed his finger at his phone screen as he ordered a rideshare, trying to take out his frustrations on the unyielding plastic.
“Do you want us to go with you? We can come back another day.”
Aaron shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. You’re already here, we paid for the tickets, so you might as well go ahead and enjoy yourself. Send me some pictures of cute baby animals.”
They tried to argue, but Aaron wouldn’t hear it. His morning was already ruined, but that was no reason to bring Mark and Rachel down with him. He cast an envious glance at them strolling toward the brightly colored zoo map, then headed to the exit to meet his ride.
By the time he arrived at work, he’d managed to calm down enough to avoid scowling at everyone who crossed his path. With a few minutes to spare before the meeting, he ducked into his office to put on the emergency suit he kept hanging on the door, a charcoal black that matched his mood.
After changing, he stepped out into the hall and bumped into Zoe.
“Aaron! I thought you were off,” she said.
“I thought the same thing,” he grumbled. “But apparently, my presence was required.”
“I’m sorry. Let’s sit together. We can play meeting bingo.”
The suggestion lightened his mood. It was their favorite game to play at boring meetings—a combination of corporate buzzwords, haughty behaviors, and general cluelessness. The middle square was an open-ended “Technology fail,” and it was almost always the first one to get filled in.
As the head of HR, Zoe probably shouldn’t have encouraged this game, but then again, she was the one who invented it.
They’d only been friendly for a few weeks, and already she was making his work life so much more bearable. He was glad he’d made that impulse decision to pop into her office and offer to bring her lunch. He needed a work friend more than he realized.
They slipped into the large conference room, already full of people, and took the empty seats at the far end of the table.
“Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us today.” David smiled at the board members and tapped his keyboard to bring the projector to life. As the CEO, it was his job to lead the meeting, and Aaron didn’t envy him one bit.
Time crawled to a stop as each department head gave their report, and Aaron discreetly picked up his phone to escape the boredom. There were a few pictures from Mark waiting for him, bright sunny shots of his friends’ happy faces with various animals sleeping in the background.
He flipped over to his conversation with Jay.
Despite Aaron’s promise to himself to cool it, they’d texted a bit over the weekend.
He wanted to use their time apart to quash his growing crush, but it was difficult to stay away.
Whenever anything happened, good or bad, his first instinct was to message Jay.
It was getting ridiculous. When Mark had bought him a bright orange baseball cap with Chicago spelled out in pizza slices, Aaron put it on and snapped a selfie, sending it to Jay before he even realized what he was doing.
The draw was too powerful.
AARON: I should quit my job and become a traveling tie salesman. I could see the world and spread the good word of paisley at the same time.
JAY: Aren’t you at the zoo right now?
AARON: See previous text and take a wild guess.
JAY: Ah, shit, you got summoned? Was there a strategy emergency? Did someone forget whether you’re driving innovation or transformation?
AARON: You clearly don’t have our passion for excellence.
Zoe nudged him with her elbow, and he looked up from his phone. “You’re not paying attention,” she whispered. “I just got the back in the day square.”
Aaron flipped open his notebook to check his board. “I don’t have one of those, but I have a good feeling about bashing Gen Z employees during the IT report.”
He was proven correct. After Wei, their director of IT, finished explaining how the newly adopted platforms improved the employee experience, a crotchety board member went on a rant about useless apps. Wei wisely chose not to argue with him and sat down without another word.
The next slide appeared on the screen, and it was Aaron’s turn to stand up.
“Aaron Copeland, our new director of strategy, will go over the progress we’ve made in reestablishing our brand.
” David gestured in his direction, and Aaron stood from his seat as everyone turned to look at him.
There was a point in his life when their piercing, judgmental gazes would make his palms sweat, but that time was long gone.
He launched into the spiel, covering the information on the screen.
There was no real reason for him to be here.
He’d put the slides together under the assumption that someone else would be presenting, so he kept it simple and self-explanatory.
Anyone could have done this, leaving him to enjoy his time off in peace.
“Why should we care about this?” a board member interrupted him in the middle of his speech about the importance of employee engagement.
A severe woman in a gray pantsuit, her expression somewhere between bored and displeased, she glared at Aaron with barely-disguised frustration.
“Didn’t we decide to concentrate on our clients? ”
“You are absolutely correct. We’ve been positioning ourselves to be seen as a client-centric organization.
” Aaron fought a smile at the low, triumphant hiss from Zoe.
He must have handed her another square. “But our greatest asset, now and always, is our employees. We can’t promise the best possible service without staff to deliver on that promise. ”
“What the hell are you saying?” The man with the Gen Z vendetta jabbed in the direction of the screen. “Only fifty percent of our employees want to do their job?”
“That’s not what employee engagement means…
” Aaron trailed off, recognizing a lost cause.
“Fifty percent is actually great. The average in the US is around thirty percent, so we’re ahead of the curve.
Non-profits typically have higher engagement rates, but a major reorg like this was bound to affect employee morale.
We just have to make sure we’re keeping an eye on the numbers. ”
“I assume you’ve already created an Employee of the Month program?
” another board member piped up, using the most condescending tone possible.
Aaron really wanted to go off on his own rant about how programs like that didn’t do shit, and companies should just pay people better and recognize their accomplishments in a timely manner, but no one would listen anyway.
“We’ll take that under advisement.” He offered the room a tight smile and sat down, reaching for his phone the moment he lost everyone’s attention.
AARON: They just asked me if I’m going to start an Employee of the Month program. I’m speechless.
JAY: Spoken like someone not good enough to make employee of the month.
AARON: At least no one suggested pizza parties.
* * *
The next day’s tourist activity was kayaking on the lake.
It had been Rachel’s choice, and she giddily strapped on a life vest and dragged a bright red kayak into the water, wielding her oar like a pro, while Aaron and Mark stood on the shore and watched her.
In the course of the sixteen years they’d spent together, their only interaction with a body of water was splashing in the ocean on their honeymoon.
“Do these things tip over?” Mark asked.
Aaron nodded gravely. “Absolutely.”
“Do you think this is dangerous?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Are we going to drown?”
“Definitely.”
Mark sighed. “I guess it’s good for me to expand my horizons.”
“Are you coming?” Rachel yelled at them, knee-deep in water as she held on to her kayak.
“At least there are no waves.” Aaron infused as much cheer as possible into the words and forced himself to move.
Kayaking was better than expected—the warm sun on his skin, the rhythmic splash of oars in the calm water, the slight burn in his muscles.
He got the hang of rowing right away, slowly racing Mark back and forth along the shoreline, while Rachel made laps around them.
The glare on the water made it hard to look ahead, and he spent a lot of time looking at the bottom of the lake through the surprisingly clear water.
Eventually, he came to a stop, letting his kayak bob in place. The smell of algae hung in the air, occasionally replaced with the unmistakable aroma of french fries drifting from one of the restaurants on the shore.
This was nice. If Aaron looked away from the distant buildings and let his gaze blur in the blinding white of the sun’s reflection, he could almost relax.
As much as he’d dreaded taking the time off work, he was glad for the opportunity to be in nature.
He’d missed it. Between the long hours at work and joining Chain Reaction, the past few months had been intense.
Too intense. He’d forgotten to take better care of himself.
Aaron’s kayak jostled, and he glared at Mark, who didn’t seem the least bit guilty about ramming into him.
“This is not that bad,” Mark said. “Birds chirping and everything.”
Before Aaron could agree, Rachel slid up beside them, stopping with ease. “Are you planning on going further out?”
“Pass.” Aaron shook his head. “I like being able to see the bottom.”
Rachel laughed. “Pretty sure you can touch the bottom. This is four feet of water, at most.”
“And I like that. Besides, my arms are tired. I’m just gonna hang out here.”
“Me too,” Mark added. “I don’t live life dangerously.”
Rachel tutted before gracefully gliding away toward the center of the lake.
“Be careful!” Mark shouted after her, and she raised an arm in acknowledgment.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching Rachel’s journey and enjoying the peaceful atmosphere around them.
“She’s good for you,” Aaron told Mark. “She breaks you out of your shell a lot more than I ever could.”
“Yeah…I got lucky. Twice.” Mark turned to Aaron and smirked. “Now you need to find your Rachel.”
“What, someone young who’s going to drag me out to axe throwing and pottery lessons?” Aaron quipped, referring to Mark’s last few dates with Rachel.
“How about someone who’s gonna make your heart sing?”
“Well...” Aaron had told Mark about Jay briefly, but hadn’t let on the extent of his feelings. “I think I might have found him.”
“The guy you hooked up with?”
Aaron closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah.”
A sudden yelp startled him. When he looked over, Mark was gripping both sides of his rocking kayak, his eyes wide with surprise.
“What are you doing?” Aaron asked incredulously.
“I was trying to dramatically get your attention by reaching and almost flipped over.”
“Okay…you have my attention now.”
Mark glared at Aaron. “I could have died!”
Aaron rolled his eyes. “As Rachel pointed out, it’s four feet of water.”
“Fine. If you like this guy, what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. I like him too much? He’s young, gorgeous, experienced, fun…and what am I? Old and divorced, completely new to the whole lifestyle, and getting attached despite our arrangement being just sex.”
“Has he said any of that to you?”
“No. But he also hasn’t asked me out or hinted at anything.”
Mark let out an exasperated sigh. “And have you?”
Aaron thought back on the time they’d spent together, but analyzing their interactions through an objective lens was tough, his own emotions clouding every moment.
They flirted, yes, but playful flirting wasn’t evidence of anything.
When people had sex, some flirting was bound to happen along the way.
“I don’t think so. Should I?”
“If you’re already falling for him, you don’t have much choice.”
Aaron hummed in reluctant agreement. Mark was right—his feelings for Jay would only keep growing. If Jay didn’t want him romantically, it was better to find out now, even if the idea of Jay rejecting him filled him with trepidation. “Maybe I’ll call him tonight and ask him on a date.”
“Good.” Mark gave him a cheesy grin, then squinted at the lake. “I think Rach is coming back.”
“Oh, I wanted to take a picture of her being a badass so far out in the water.” Aaron set the oar across his lap and hiked up the life vest to reach into the pocket, wiggling in his seat. After a few moments of awkward struggling, his fingers finally closed around the phone.
The kayak wobbled.
“Shit.” He lunged forward, grabbing the oar with both hands before it rolled out of reach. His triumph was short-lived, a sharp plunk sparking him with cold panic.
Aaron peered over the side. There it was. On the sand at the bottom of the lake. His phone.
“Well, fuck.” Mark followed his gaze. “Please tell me you’ve started backing up your contacts to the cloud.”