Chapter 8
S he ran to her office, changed into yesterday’s clothes, and got out of the hotel as quickly as she could. The touristy part of the main drag near the hotel was something Meredith had actually missed when she’d married Rafe. It was easy to get lost among the tourists. As she walked down the strip and glanced in the windows of the stores, meant to get as many tourist dollars as they could, memories flooded her.
It had been a long time since she’d walked the strip for any reason other than to get where she was going. But when she was a young girl with her friends, and then later, a young woman with Griffin, she’d always walked this strip. It was a place to be. It was where everyone was.
Her heart hurt as she walked, and she didn’t know how to stop it. The familiarity of the slow walk, knowing no one on the strip knew her or cared why she was there, comforted her. It allowed her to revisit memories without feeling alone, even though no one cared what she was going through.
She smiled at an elderly couple holding hands as they approached her. They were probably twenty-five or thirty years older than she was. Maybe more. Seeing their happiness as the woman laughed, pointing to a dress in the window, made Meredith envious. They were happy. Her mind wandered to a place that was probably inappropriate. They didn’t need sex to be happy, but she wondered if they still loved each other that way, even in their later years. They were happy, in love, and their hearts didn’t hurt like Meredith’s.
She wanted that. Meredith wanted old people’s sex. She wanted to hold hands while walking on the beach. Romance. She wanted to share her life with someone who made her catch her breath when he walked into a room.
She wanted Griffin. She’d always wanted that life with Griffin.
Meredith had spent years of being alone and being okay with it. She thought she was okay until Griffin walked into her life again. She hadn’t given him much of a fight to spend time together, even after how things had ended. Even after all these years.
The elderly couple passed her, and suddenly, she felt the heat of the sun bearing down on her, pulling her to the ground. Realization was a hard thing to face. She’d been comfortable with being alone. She’d made her life, but until that moment, she hadn’t realized that she hadn’t been happy. She’d let herself slide into a place where she could fit her life into a box and say she was okay.
But she wasn’t okay. She hadn’t been for a long time. And now Griffin invaded that little box she’d made for herself and upended her world. Griffin was the man she wanted to have old people sex with. She wanted to have laughter on the beach and romance. She had always envisioned a life with him and had buried the dreams of a young woman the moment she handed their son over to a social worker for someone else to claim as theirs.
The distraught expression on the faces of the younger couple approaching her caused her to stop.
“Ma’am are you okay?” the girl asked, stopping in front of her.
“Wha…excuse me?”
“You look like you’re crying,” she whispered, touching her arm in comfort. “Are you hurt? Can I help you?”
Meredith glanced at the young man with her as he kept his distance. He stared at her face with concern .
“I’m fine.” She looked away at the building beyond them and then back at the woman’s face. “It’s sweet of you to ask. I guess the sun is getting to me.”
“I can get you something to drink. Maybe you should sit in the shade for a while,” the young man said, gesturing to the ice cream shop they’d just passed.
“I’m fine. So sweet of you to be concerned.” She swiped her eyes and pretended it was sweat, pretended that the tears that were clearly covering her face, tears she hadn’t realized she was shedding, weren’t real. “I just need to get out of the sun.”
The worry that remained on their faces let her know she hadn’t convinced them. She’d been crying in public and wasn’t even aware of it.
Wiping her cheeks again, she turned and walked back toward the ice cream shop. As she opened the door, a blanket of cool air hit her. The young couple followed her. The ice cream shop was packed. Young families filled up all the tables and seats with kids or couples who were probably strolling the strip as she was.
“Let me get you something to drink,” the young man said.
“There’s no need. I’m just going to go to the bathroom and splash some water on my face.”
“Are you sure?” the girl asked.
“Yes, thank you so much.”
Meredith headed to the bathroom. She passed a young family and saw a little boy of about three who couldn’t sit still in his seat. He jumped off the bench and then climbed back on to look over to the counter where people were lined up waiting to be served ice cream by the counter help.
Her heart squeezed. She’d had a son, but she’d missed every single moment in his life. Had he been like this little boy? Active? Did he have a beautiful smile that looked just like Griffin’s?
She reached the bathroom, pushed through the door, and gulped back a sob, thinking back to the day she’d had those few short hours with her child after he was born. She’d memorized the tiny features of his face. The little cleft chin and wide eyes were definitely Griffin. The moment he’d been placed in her arms, it was all she could see. Now, she wondered how much their son looked like his father.
Meredith had let him go. She’d had her reasons. At the time, she thought it was all she could do, but she couldn’t think clearly about any of them now as she stared at her disastrous reflection in the bathroom mirror and cried. No wonder the young couple was so concerned. She was a mess.
Fifteen minutes later, Meredith emerged from the bathroom after giving her reflection a stern talk that had been witnessed by a mother and her young daughter she was potty training. There was no way around this. When it had mattered, Griffin wasn’t there. He was halfway across the world. But he was in Crystal Cove now. He’d come here to tell her about their son, not to see her. There were moments over the last few days where she’d foolishly allowed herself to believe she’d been the reason. But no, it had been Lucas. She’d never even told him about Lucas, and he’d known for seven whole years.
Earlier, she’d been angry with Griffin. She had no right to be. She’d taken something from him without him even knowing. It was easy to see it that way now. And now, all these years later, she wasn’t proud of the reason. She’d wanted to hurt him as much as she hurt. It was childish and reckless, and she had been the one who caused the pain. She could easily give the young girl she was some grace because she was no longer that girl and had matured. She knew more about what life could throw at a person. She’d buried both of her parents. She’d married and divorced without their guidance or support. She’d made a life for herself.
She couldn’t give the woman she was now that same grace for her behavior this morning, hangover or no hangover.
She’d been wrong .
She needed to make it right—or as right as she could. She wasn’t even sure it was possible to do that. But she had to confront Griffin. She had to let him be angry with her, and she needed to give him her reasons even if she wasn’t that young, scared girl anymore.
She decided to walk the path toward the beach and returned to the hotel to get her car. As she walked, Meredith began to smell the stench of garbage again. Knowing exactly the problem, she headed back to the hotel quickly to have it rectified.
“Darcy, can you page David? The garbage barrels on the edge of the beach are full again. He’s not answering his phone.”
The young girl had red-rimmed eyes. “Can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
“Edward fired him.” The drawn expression on her face told her it was true.
“What? What on earth for?”
Darcy shrugged. “I can call Rocko. He clocked in about an hour ago. ”
“What happened?”
She whispered. “It was awful. David was so upset.”
Renewed anger surged through her. “Okay, call Rocko. I’m going to get to the bottom of what happened to cause Edward to fire David.”
She wouldn’t have stomped off with as much force as she did if not for the fact that Edward once again canned one of the better workers in this hotel. For a man who claimed to have big ideas, the man was an imbecile. And maybe that was an insult to imbeciles. She’d spent two months with him causing her headaches.
She headed down the office corridor behind the front desk until she reached Edward’s office. The door was closed, as usual. Edward had never been an open-door kind of boss in the few months he had been here, and that was unlikely to change. It didn’t matter today because she was going in.
She knocked on the door but didn’t wait for him to answer before opening it enough to stick her body in the doorway. “A word?”
He glanced up from what looked like a finance report. On paper. There were sticky notes all over it. “Not now. I’m busy.”
“I can see that. So am I, which is why I’m wondering why you let go of the worker with the most potential to go far in this company.”
“What?”
“David Rivera.”
He shook his head in disgust and went back to the paperwork, which, upon closer inspection, showed red marks and sticky notes throughout. “Get out of my office, Meredith. I don’t have time for this. Just get someone else to help you with whatever emergency you have.”
“No, that’s your job.”
Lifting his gaze slowly, his stare bore into her. She didn’t care. “Excuse me?”
“For the past few months since you started working here, I’ve been helping you try to fit into your position, knowing full well that I could do it better than you. You know it, and I know it. You rely on me. You wanted me to stick around to make the Ocean Vista an overflow hotel for a class reunion? One guest from that class is registered here. No events. And I had to wonder why. It’s so you could hole up in this office and work on a financial report that is way past due.”
“I noticed you have been spending time with that one guest.”
“It figures you would hone in on that, not the real problem. But yeah, that’s right. On my time. The rest of the time I’m picking up your slack. Why did you let go of David Rivera? He works harder than anyone else on staff. He has unlimited potential to one day take your job when you ditch this hotel for wherever you think you can get a better position.”
“That’s enough.”
“That’s right. I’m sick of going above and beyond for you when you make my life harder. ”
“The so-called hard worker you are talking about wanted a few days off. I couldn’t give it to him, so he quit.”
“Excuse me?”
“I told him if he left, I would take it as him quitting. So, it’s on him.”
“That’s not the way Darcy saw it. Since you obviously had this conversation in front of other staff, I doubt the rest will also see it that way. Did he say why he needed the time?”
“His mother is in the hospital having surgery. I told him to wait until his shift was over.”
“Edward! He’s an only child of a single mother. Of course, he wants to be with her. If he had come to me.”
“He didn’t. You aren’t his boss, no matter how much you think you are. You don’t run this hotel. I do. I need people I can count on. Not people who go running out the door at the first emotional meltdown.”
“Did he say it was serious?”
“What?”
“David’s mother. ”
“Cancer or something.”
“And you said no.” Her mouth dropped open in shock. “How can you be so heartless?”
“You don’t get ahead by taking in strays and letting them walk all over you.”
“The people who work here are hardly strays. It’s his mother, Edward.”
He shuffled through some papers and came to a set with a yellow sticky note with her name on it in red marker.
“I need you to go through these and find out why they aren’t balancing. Here. Take them.”
Dutiful as always, Meredith grabbed the papers and gave them a quick glance. Her mind wasn’t on the papers, numbers, or the red marks on the columns. Poor David. He was just a young boy. If she had kept her Lucas, it could have easily been him. She wasn’t sick, thank God. But the beautiful woman who’d raised him had died. And now David could be facing the same loss.
A few of the words on the page grabbed her attention. “These aren’t my departments.”
Edward turned to the computer and started typing an email. “I know.”
She dropped the paperwork on his desk.
“I’m not doing your job for you, Edward. I meant it when I said I could do the job better than you because I’ve been doing it for you since you got here. No more.”
“Meredith! Are you refusing to obey a command?”
“Oh, my God. Did you actually just say ‘obey’ to me?”
“This is insubordination. I have a good mind to fire you right now.”
“But you won’t because then you won’t have someone to help you fix the mess you’ve made.”
“Then take the reports.”
“I quit.”
Turning on her heels, she drew in a deep breath and waltzed out of the office listening to Edward’s plea at her back and then a curse she was sure could be heard all the way into the lobby. As she passed Darcy at the front desk, Darcy giggled and said, “That was awesome.”
It didn’t feel awesome. “What’s going on with David’s mother?” she asked quietly.
“They called her in for surgery again.” Darcy’s eyes filled with tears. “They thought they got all the cancer before but…are you going to call him?”
“I don’t want to intrude, but I figure he could use a friendly face right now.”
“I think she’s at County.” Darcy nodded. “That’s where she was before.”
She nodded, then leaned forward toward the counter. “By the way, I quit. If you ever need a reference, make sure you call me. I’ll give you one of my cards when I leave. I wish you the best of luck.”
“You really quit?” Darcy’s eyes bugged open.
“You quit?”