11. Alba
ELEVEN
ALBA
Vaughn didn’t come into Carmine’s for the rest of the week. It disappointed me more than I cared to admit, but I wasn’t surprised. Why would he come in? Just to see me?
All I’d done was tell him his suit sucked, which anyone with eyes could have done. He didn’t owe me anything.
But the rejection stung—even though it was familiar.
A little over a year ago, I’d been rejected by the man I loved. Rejected by my family. Hell, I’d even been rejected by Cole, even though I was the one who broke it off in the end. From the moment we’d started planning the wedding, a part of me knew he didn’t want to marry me.
The only reason I’d wanted to see it through was because I thought we understood each other. I thought he was incapable of love, and I was willing to set my selfish desires aside to marry him.
But he wasn’t incapable of love. I watched him fall—and fall hard—right before my very eyes.
How could I not break off our engagement?
It was still a rejection, even if I was the one to end it. He’d wanted her more than he’d wanted me. When I’d finally told him I hadn’t wanted to marry him, he’d looked relieved .
Ouch.
Now, something as mundane as a semi-regular customer skipping a few lunches at my workplace hurt. I needed a thicker skin. It annoyed me that I cared.
Elena noticed, and she warned me to fix my attitude. Then I messed up an order or two, and she pinched her lips. And on Friday, I sniped at a rude customer when she was within earshot, and I found myself dragged into the back office at the end of my shift.
“We have a culture of respect here,” she lectured, and I knew what was coming. “I like you, Alba,” she said, her eyes resigned, “but I have to put the work first. I’m taking you off the schedule.”
My nod was a quick dip of my chin. “You’re firing me.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m sorry, Alba.”
I said nothing, afraid she’d hear the devastation in my voice. My movements were mechanical as I packed my things, changed into my cleaner’s uniform, and left the restaurant for the final time.
Ten firings in a little over a year. I was terrible at everything I tried. I walked into the cold January wind and let the chill seep down my bare neck and into my chest.
I was almost out of options. Terrified, broke, broken.
Maybe that’s why, when I started my shift at the office and found that one of the conference rooms was full of old, half-eaten takeout containers, rage detonated in my gut.
I was already on the precipice. I was tender and sensitive, with my emotions on a hair trigger.
No one wanted me or cared about me. And the messy conference room?
It simply proved that no one even considered that I existed at all.
Their mess would magically get cleaned up, the way my messes had before.
Did these people not think ? Did they not even consider that they might gather their trash into a pile, at least? Or that they could throw it away themselves?
Of course not. How many times had I left my bedroom littered with clothing on the rug, the bed linens thrown any which way, and come back to a pristine room?
How many times had I dropped dishes into a sink and walked away without giving them another thought, without thinking of the hands that would be washing them?
Lo mein noodles littered one of the place settings, and whoever had sat there had rolled over a few of them. Old, sauce-encrusted noodles were now caked into the chair’s casters and into the damn carpet.
I couldn’t do this. Staring at the mess, I reached my limit. I’d been berated, harassed, fired, and ignored. I’d fought and fought to keep going, to prove to myself that I was more than my parents’ money.
But what if I wasn’t? What if all I was good for was a marriage to a man I didn’t love in the name of family status?
Maybe it was time I accepted it. I couldn’t hack it in the real world. I wasn’t smart enough, or driven enough, or determined enough. That’s why I’d been rejected so many times, by so many people. They could see how little I was worth—wasn’t it time I admitted it to myself too?
My fingertips tingled as I pulled open the conference room door to walk out into the hallway.
Unsteady breaths sawed in and out of my lungs, and I turned for the supply closet.
I’d drop this annoying backpack vacuum, call the elevator, and leave.
I’d tell my manager that I quit over text. I didn’t owe them anything else.
This year had been a gauntlet. I’d learned that I was wholly unprepared for real life.
I had no idea how to take care of myself.
Without the insulation of my parents’ money, I was looked down on, sneered at, and derided.
I’d been rejected by jobs, by my peers, by every single person that I came across, and I was done .
I wouldn’t get on my hands and knees and scrub their carpets too.
But I would get on my hands and knees and beg my family to take me back.
My eyes stung with unshed tears. I had no choice. I had to go back to my family. I had to crawl back to them and debase myself to be welcomed back into the fold.
They’d said horrible things to me. They’d shown me that their love was conditional on my good behavior. They’d tugged on the leash and reminded me that I would never escape it, and now I knew for sure that they were right.
It made me feel dirty and small and ashamed to think of making that call, of begging my father to open his wallet and his home again.
But wasn’t it better than this ? I’d lasted fourteen months out in the cold on my own; that was something, wasn’t it?
The vacuum clattered when I dropped it on the supply closet floor. My little caddy full of cleaning supplies and microfiber cloths landed beside it, and I stretched my back from side to side with a sigh. My hip clicked; my feet pulsed.
I was getting sorer by the day, and I couldn’t take it anymore. My body was breaking. My spirit was already shattered.
I would sell my future for a few creature comforts, and it would be worth it. The humiliation of crawling back to my family after failing to make it on my own wasn’t as bad as the humiliation of being invisible and broken and alone.
The fact that I was disappointed that Vaughn hadn’t come in for lunch just proved how low I’d fallen.
Those were the scraps I was clinging to in my attempt to survive on my own.
A few moments of kindness from Deena, a woman I hardly knew, and the contrived attention of a good-looking customer at work.
Pathetic.
Prostrating myself on the floor in front of my parents would be no worse than this .
My jacket was still damp with melted snow, and I shoved my arms through it as I exited the supply closet. I turned for the elevator—and saw a light on at the end of the hall. It wasn’t the overhead lighting, but it still shone from the interior windows like a beacon.
Mr. Big Shot didn’t care about power bills. Of course he didn’t. Why would he?
The ball of humiliation and defeat in my gut suddenly felt like lead. It weighed me down—and made me angry. I’d never come back here again, so I had nothing to lose. I marched down the hall, mentally composing the note that I’d leave on Big Shot’s desk.
Asshole , I’d write. Tell your staff to clean up after themselves. Picking noodles out of carpet fibers isn’t part of my job description. Enjoy the stale smells of rotting food, you inconsiderate fuck.
Never mind that picking noodles out of carpet fibers probably was part of the job description. It was just rude, and I was done.
Stomping down the hallway, I huffed. I needed an outlet for my rage. I needed to scream into the void, to tell someone that they were wrong, damn it. That this wasn’t fair. That life sucked .
The light spilled out from his office’s glass wall, and I sped up. His door was closed, which wasn’t unusual, but it did slow me down slightly. The handle was cool as I slipped my fingers over it, the door a solid weight as I shoved my shoulder against it.
I was halfway across the room—my mental note having tripled in length and increased in vitriol—when I noticed the body behind the desk.
The only light in the room was the screen in front of his face.
I froze. He looked up from his computer. It took me a second to understand. My pulse sped up and slowed down. My emotions reeled, my vision going fuzzy at the edges.
“Alba?” Vaughn asked, brows drawing together.
Reality came into sharp focus. “What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.
Vaughn looked at me like I had three heads. “This is my office. What the hell are you doing here?”
“This isn’t your office. This is Big Shot Asshole’s office.”
“‘Big Shot Asshole?’”
I clamped my mouth shut as logic pierced through the haze of rage that had obscured my thoughts. Oh. Oh .
Vaughn stared, the blue glow from his screen giving his skin an eerie pallor. Without a word, he stood up and began circling his desk.
I sipped in breaths through my constricted throat and whirled for the door.
His fingers closed on my wrist, and he tugged me back and kept me from escaping.
I spun and crashed against him, my fingers curling into the luxurious fabric of his partially unbuttoned shirt.
This one was navy; he must have bought multiples.
His free arm clamped around my waist, and we stood there, staring at each other, saying nothing.
His body was a warm wall, and I fought the urge to melt into it. I stood there trembling like a trapped bird, saying nothing.
He was the first to break the silence. “I know who you are.”
My body locked up. I stared at the weave of his shirt on his shoulder as emotions slammed into me, incomprehensible in their intensity. Everything I’d felt thirty seconds ago was still there, but now I was also afraid. And mortified.