Chapter 1 #2
I step back. His hands slip from my elbows and immediately I want him to put them back. Even better around my wrists, or if I’m lucky my throat. I’m so distracted by my face flushing hot with blood and poorly timed lust that I completely miss the words he’s just spoken to me.
His eyebrows quirk. He’s amused. He thinks I’m amusing. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
He repeats himself. “Are you okay? Didn’t jostle you too bad?”
“Oh. No, I’m fine. Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Why don’t you pop into my office. I’ll be right there.”
With that, he’s striding away like his hands cupping my elbows didn’t just make me shiver from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
It might be time for the nuclear option: Tinder. Better that than fantasizing about an unattainable man who is (1) my boss and (2) at least fifteen years my senior.
I sit in the chair across from his desk, which is a mess of crinkled papers, legal pads filled with scrawled writing, and an array of colored manila folders.
My hands are sweaty. I stick them under my thighs, then think twice and lay them neatly on my lap.
I used to be better at this. Slipping into the costume of a well-behaved and professionally hungry young woman used to be easy.
I learned everyone’s name, wore a bra with an underwire and concealer every day, took my lunch at the table, and made conversation. I made an effort.
The only true, consistent effort I’ve made in the last two months is the daily one of getting out of bed, trying not to think about the closed door at the other end of the house, and taking Ripley on a walk. I love those walks.
We start just as the sun is about to rise.
By the time we’re done meandering through the broken asphalt streets, the entire trailer park is painted burnished orange and Starburst pink.
My mom used to be able to go on those walks with me.
She stopped being able to go at the same time I stopped being able to make an effort in the office.
Confidence of a mediocre white man, I remind myself.
Ellis walks in with a mug in each hand. One he sets down in front of me.
It’s the most recent weird wellness tea Jena bought because she saw someone on Instagram say it “balances your hormones and clears toxins.” I asked which of the more than fifty hormones present in the human body it balances.
She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.
The second mug joins the water glass and K&C-themed thermos by his computer.
There’s a joke about him being a beverage hoarder in there somewhere. I do not make it because I am a Professional who Loves to Make an Effort. I take a sip from the drink because I am a Team Player Who is Easy to Get Along With.
“Not a tea person?” Ellis asks when I grimace.
“No, I love … leaves.”
And pseudoscience.
He leans back in his chair and fixes his gaze on me. The weight of his eyes makes me feel small. Like he could cup me in his hands and there’d be nothing I could do about it. He’s tall. Six feet and a few. I think he could hold me down without much effort at all. Alluring.
“I think you know why I wanted to have this talk.”
“I do. This job means the world to me. It’s important to me to do good work, and I haven’t lately.
I apologize. I know that sometimes people’s personal lives impact their work, but that’s no excuse.
I’m ready to be the employee I was when I started.
I promise if you give me another chance, I’ll be the most dedicated employee you have. ”
He hums. “I was so impressed with your tenacity when you first joined our family. When your circumstances aren’t preoccupying you so much, you do excellent work. Don’t you agree?”
My circumstances.
Is that what you call it when the mortality of the person who made you is laid bare?
He’s technically right. I’m preoccupied with the possibility of losing my mom.
I’m preoccupied with being the sole breadwinner responsible for our rent, for our utilities, for my student loans, my mom’s bills, all on a $35,000 salary.
I’ll stop being so preoccupied when she dies. Is that what he wants?
There is a chant in my head, don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him. It runs in time with the chant telling me I should. Both thump in time with my heartbeat. It would feel good. It would feel good to surprise him with pain.
I smile and think of piranhas gnawing through flesh with razor teeth.
“I know how difficult this has been for everyone. I apologize. I’m lucky to be here, and I want to do my best.”
I am lucky to be here. After graduation, it took a year of constant applications, interviews, third shifts at Taco Bell, and crying in my childhood bedroom each time I got a politely worded “go fuck yourself, we’re hiring someone else” email.
Every day my mom got older and that much closer to having a heart attack from the energy drinks she buys to work twelve-hour shifts before I ever got the chance to take care of her like she took care of me.
Ellis hiring me was like a ray of bright light into a dim world.
It didn’t matter that I hated every word of description of every office building and property dimension and zoning regulation that I wrote.
I’d succeeded in acquiring an Office Job—which was something my mom and her STNA (State-Tested Nursing Assistant) friends talked about like a stranded swimmer would dream of a life raft.
Surely I’d finally be able to repay my mom for the years of constant struggle that was providing for the both of us.
I itch to wipe my damp palms on my pants, to get up and pace, to grip Ellis’s dark, curly hair and shake him until he understands what I’m feeling.
He leans forward like he’s about to pass along a secret. In the warmth of his office, it feels intimate. The hook through my cheek pulls and I can’t help but mirror the motion just a little.
“I’m going to be real with you for a second.
You probably think this”—he gestures to the building around us—“is just another part of a capitalistic hellscape. I’m just some boss looking out for my bottom line.
In some ways I am. I want to keep this place running.
I want to pay my employees. That takes money.
Profit. Which means that when someone’s cutting into my bottom line—”
He makes a neck-slicing motion with his thumb.
“I don’t want to be that person because I’m not that person.
I like you, Lou. Do you know how long it’s been since there was someone in the office who could make me laugh?
Do you think I don’t know how you’re reacting is normal?
Someone you love is hurting. When my dad died …
I was a mess. I felt like he had so much more to teach me.
It’s been eighteen years and I still feel that way. ”
He pauses and looks at a picture on the wall of four pale, white men with serious expressions standing together in a wooded setting.
Surveyor equipment and a few walking canes rest against what looks to be a large box or crate in the middle of the four.
A handwritten label that’s been yellowed by time reads Witten Collieries Co. Mine #3—Scioto County, Ohio.
Ellis is very proud of the story. I know because he tells it at every company event I’ve ever attended.
His great-great-grandad was born in New York. When he was twenty-two, he decided to work his way out west. Through a series of anecdotes that Ellis tells with bright eyes and a smile, he ended up in southern Ohio working in a coal mine.
There was a mine collapse when the coal baron himself, his business associates, and for some reason his daughter were touring the operation.
Ellis’s great-great-grandad saved the baron and his daughter (none of the associates, though, unfortunately).
His great-great-grandad and the daughter subsequently married.
The stories never touched on whether it was for love or for a reward.
Ellis’s mother was attending The Ohio State University for an English degree when she met George Katsaros, a geology student, at an anti-war rally. He always makes sure to mention that one was for love.
The rest is history as told by the mouth of a millionaire commercial real estate appraiser who turned his back on the family business of devastating the earth to become a conservationist.
“They were so surprised when I stepped away,” he’ll say, grinning. “It’s not my fault they raised an activist.”
It’s not like I don’t believe him about his great-great-grandfather’s rags-to-riches story.
It’s just that my mom told me our family was given a plot in the Black Forest when our ancestor saved a Russian duke from a bear.
I did a DNA test, and we’re almost entirely Welsh. Grain of salt is all I’m saying.
“The point is that I understand,” he continues. “I want you here.”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me—I just know there is a problem, because him telling me I’m wanted inspires a burbling, bubbling, just-about-to-cry feeling in my chest and behind my eyes.
“I want to be here.”
If I can’t make this work, if I can’t keep moving up the corporate ladder until I get to an altitude that allows me to breathe, then what was the point?
What was the point of my mom overworking herself until she got an ulcer to help me with college tuition?
What was the point of coming in early and staying late or going to the ridiculous Ascent training that Arden badgered me about for months?
I need to be here. There has to be a point.
He leans forward. “Here’s what I’m thinking.
You know about the donated charity work I do, right?
We provide pre-inspections and appraisals for conservation groups free of charge.
I want to put you on these jobs. It’s a lot of driving, but it’s low effort.
The reports are simple. The inspection is nothing more than taking a few pictures of trees and fields.
It’s technically easy, but ultimately important work.
It needs to get done, and the mountains wait for no man. Or woman.”
He’s said this before. Gone on rants about undying heaps of rock and earth sitting prone at Ohio’s southernmost border. Something in my face—or maybe nothing concerning me at all—inspires him to go on another.
“Did you know Appalachia is one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world?”
Passion lights up his face. I could reach out to wrap the curls of his hair around my finger. I could pull down sharply and then he’d know exactly how I like it.
There is a goblin living in the back of my brain.
He sits in the dark with letters strewn around his knobby knees.
He plucks at them with grimy fingers and arranges them into suggestions spoken like orders.
He’s the one who was chanting for me to hurt Ellis.
Sometimes, I don’t stop myself from listening.
What would he do if you leaned into him? the goblin wondered a few days ago when we shared the elevator. What would he do if you leaned into him, then crushed his nose with the back of your skull? Would his blood be warm? You should find out.
I didn’t. But I wanted to.
“You take a walk in Ohio’s ‘hills,’ you’re walking on six hundred million years of shifting earth. Those mountains are older than bones, Lou.”
His voice is deep. I want to draw what he’s just described. Ink and pen. A figure huddled under trees—in the distance, hills made of blood and bone. He’s looking at me with his eyebrows creased, like he’s thinking hard about something. I want him to think about me.
As a trainee, I’ve been relegated to walking through dusty warehouses and rotting strip malls to write down measurements and take pictures of concrete destined to be torn down.
Driving to the middle of nowhere where I don’t have to talk to anyone or measure anything and just take pictures of trees sounds like one hell of an incentive. I tell him exactly that.
His eyes crinkle like I’ve just said something delightful. “I’m not trying to incentivize you.”
The way he says the word makes my chest feel tight and hot. Is this how you get a daddy kink? I think probably yes.
“The first one would be tomorrow. The McLaren property. Sounds like enough of a breather for you to get your legs back under you, right?”
The goblin whispers, He’s asking if it’s enough time for your mom to kick the bucket and you to get over it.
I ignore the way my heart is thumping and tell the goblin to shut the fuck up.
“Yes. Absolutely. I won’t let you down, I promise.”
“I know you won’t, kiddo.”
Any other man and that word would drip with condescension. Because it’s Ellis, it makes me flush. When he hands me a folder with an address, property plat, and aerial inside, I hold the folder in my hands and think, Maybe things will be okay after all.