10. Haelyn
TEN
HAELYN
The first week as an employee at Graves Automobile was amazing. I was already adjusting and began to need less and less help from Sara. She still checked what I was doing and explained if I didn’t know something, but other than that I could say I was a proper employee now that I didn’t need to be monitored twenty-four-seven.
My job was going to get harder the moment I was going to be on my own, so I tried my best to learn as much as I could as fast as possible before that happened.
The good news was that I hadn’t bumped into my boss again—not at work or any other public spaces—and I successfully avoided any embarrassing situations that could put me in a bad light. Whenever I came for my shift, his glass walls had the transparency option off—every. single. morning.
My curious ass would’ve liked to know if that was how he always liked to keep it or if he did it only to avoid me. But then, what reasons would he have had to do that? I could’ve asked Sara about it. But I didn’t because she’d get me all wrong.
She always talked about how good Tristan was in bed, so I suppressed any wonders about him so I wouldn’t get her thinking I wanted to find out if it was true.
I didn’t.
The bad news was since that day when Chad convinced me to go get something to eat, he never texted back. Maybe he somehow knew I was in a swordfight with food and he didn’t want to babysit me. I didn’t blame him if that was the case, but did I give myself away that quickly?
As far as I remembered our conversation—I knew it by heart because I kept rereading it to see if I had said something wrong—I made it seem like the only reason I wasn’t eating was to prove myself worthy of the job.
“Maybe he got another match, Hae. I don’t know what to say.” Merielle looked at me over her shoulder. She was cleaning the dishes in the kitchen and her hands were covered in bubbles from the soap.
I shook my head from the bar stool, my chin in my palms. “No, that’s not how it works. He didn’t close the chat,” I explained.
She shook the water from her hands after she put the plates on the drying rack, then dabbed her palms with a towel and walked to me. Merielle released a long breath and her lips pursed in thought when she grabbed my wrists.
“Look, I don’t want us to fight again, so make me understand.” She gave me a soft smile, squeezing the spot she just gripped. “Why are you so torn up over a guy you’ve only been talking to for two weeks and never asked you to meet up?”
I dropped my head on our hands, groaning. “I don’t know.” My voice came out muffled. “Maybe because he’s the first guy I’ve talked to since Josh? Or maybe because he seemed too perfect to be real?”
When you had a two-year-old relationship where everything seemed like a dream only to find out it was all a lie, it was impossible not to get attached to the first person who gave you the tiniest bit of attention.
Josh promised me the world, and I believed him like a fool. That was until his wife walked in on us having sex, screaming from the top of her lungs about what a whore I was. When I walked out of the hotel room, their daughter was waiting in the hallway, covering her ears from her mother’s shouting.I felt like a home-wrecker.
Chad was nothing like that. He never promised something just to forget about it the next day. He didn’t ask for nudes to jerk himself off like Josh did, and I somehow knew that if I hadn’t initiated that particular conversation, he wouldn’t have been the one to do it.
My eyes shot up and Merielle’s face was covered in a frown. “Oh my god,” I whispered, then lifted a hand to touch my mouth. “I had sex with him!”
“Wait, what?” She tilted her head down, trying to get a better look of me. “What the fuck are you saying? I thought you two had never met?”
I stood up, walking from one corner of the room to the other with my hands in my hair. My chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “How could I be so stupid? What if that’s what he wanted?”
I knew it was my hysteria talking since I already determined that he wasn’t that kind of guy, but I still had to consider the option.
Merielle walked to me, placing her hands on my shoulders. I felt her eyes pointing at mine, but I was too busy seeing through her.
Sexting was a thing I wanted to cross off my list for so long and I didn’t regret that I did. He was a stranger after all, and it wasn’t like I had many people I’d be ashamed of if they ever found out.
Maybe the guy was looking for some fun and I thought…
“Hae, I’m asking you again. What do you mean you had sex?” she asked loud and clear, stressing each word to make sure she got all of my attention.
My eyebrows lowered on my eyes. “What the hell are you saying? We didn’t have sex,” I told her and I didn’t miss the relief washing over her.
“Then…”
I went back to the bar stool with a sigh. “We sexted.”
“Are you serious?” She got closer to me, and when I nodded my head, she burst into laughter, walking away from me with a shake of her head. “God…” Merielle continued to laugh while I stared at her in disbelief. “Forget about that fucking app and start dating some real men.”
Her suggestion caused me to roll my eyes in my head. “Are men on a dating app not real men?” I asked, but she just kept laughing like a maniac.
My phone vibrated on the table, the screen showing an unknown number. I took it and strode to the bathroom because I knew for a fact I wasn’t going to be able to have a proper conversation with whoever was calling me while Merielle was having the best laugh of her life.
Could it be the care home?
I immediately picked it up, my heart beating in my chest as I closed the bathroom door after me.
“Hello?” I answered, praying to God nothing had happened to her.
“Who told you to refuse the partnership with Gorig?” a harsh and thick voice rumbled through the speaker.
My body tensed at the familiarity of it even if the last time I heard it was a week ago. I gulped, trying to remember who Gorig was.
Think. Think. Think.
There was no memory of that name in my brain, but I was sure I didn’t do anything that wasn’t on my task list. I knew I had to be careful on a temporary job, so I wouldn’t do anything out of the boss’s word.
“No one did,” I said. “I simply followed the tasks for that day.”
“Do you know what you did?” His tone increased significantly. “You told them to never reach out again when we’ve been trying for years to get to Gorig. They finally agreed to a meeting.”
I let him ramble and opened the company app on my phone, where I usually found all of my to-do tasks for the day. I scrolled for a bit until I reached Wednesday which was three days ago and read through the tasks.
- Email attached list
- Set up a meeting with FTI
- !!!!Email Gorig that we aren’t interested and they should never email us again!!!!
Aha!
I stopped there and took a screenshot.
“Fucking hell, Haelyn. This is an important matter and you’re not even listening.” His voice sounded a lot more grave than it was at the beginning of the call, but now that I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, I had an idea about how to handle all of this.
“Mr. Graves,” I started, “I didn’t do anything that wasn’t on that list and I’m sorry, but it seems like it was an issue I didn’t cause.”
Merielle opened the door and I shooed her away when she questioned me with those big eyes of hers.
Go away, I mouthed.
I put my back on the door, making sure she won’t enter again until I was done.
“What do you mean?”
I exited the call for a bit and texted him the proof, then I put the phone back to my ear. “I sent you a photo with my task list for Wednesday.”
He was silent for a moment, a muffled sound coming from the speaker. I bit my bottom lip as my heart beat harshly in my chest.
If he was going to throw me out for something I didn’t do… he was a lot less professional than I thought.
“Fuck,” he murmured, and I heard something knocking down. “Was Sara not there with you? She was supposed to check you every step of the way.”
“She was.” I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. Now I remembered the exact moment I sent the email and how I found it a bit harsh. Yet I didn’t have any authority over that kind of stuff, so I kept my mouth shut instead of telling her what I thought. “And she said it was fine.”
Again, I was met with silence.
If this was an important opportunity for him, I understood where all of his frustration came from. I couldn’t imagine working to achieve something for ages and as soon as it happened, someone else fucked it up for me.
I should’ve been happy I wasn’t the one responsible for the downfall of a potential contract, but that didn’t change the fact I was the one who sent the email that ruined any chance for him and his company. I wasn’t happy about it because I liked the job. Every day I woke up excited to work. It was the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere despite working in a place that was high above me. I wanted to do well. I wanted to make my boss glad that he gave me—a nobody—a chance.
My chest tugged, maybe this was what I was meant to do.
“I’ll fix it,” I found myself saying and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to hit my head on the wall.
I’ll fix it?
What was wrong with me? How could I fix it if I had zero experience when others a lot more experienced than me could barely convince Gorig to work with Graves Automobiles?
But then, I could do this—god knows how—and get Mr. Graves to trust me and see me as a valuable employee.
“You can’t fix it,” he said so sure it made the blood in my veins boil. “They are very hard to reach and convince.”
Hard to reach and convince, huh?
That made me want to do it even more, only to show him I could do it even if he didn’t believe I could. Even if I didn’t believe it.
“Just give me a chance and I’ll at least get you a meeting,” I said, my hand lifting to roam through my curly hair.
Mr. Graves sighed into the speaker and I held my breath. “It can’t get any worse than this, so whatever. You have a week.”
The line cut off and I was left alone with the beeping sound of a hung-up call.
Good job, Haelyn. Now you had to fix something you didn’t do.