Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
On the Thursday of my third week, I experienced the first tremor of uncertainty about my new job, and by tremor of uncertainty, I mean lightning strike of horror.
Quinn had been gone since Sunday night, but he was still sending me text message jokes. I read them, enjoyed them, but didn’t respond as I was also starting to feel silly about my behavior. When he dropped me off that night, I gave in to my seesaw of self-doubt, and it made me nauseous.
Why would he continue to text if he were trying to avoid me?
Additionally, on Wednesday night, he texted me a reminder about our phone call for Thursday. I promised myself that I would talk to Quinn on the horrid cell phone, and I wouldn’t participate in any playground equipment emotional drama-coasters.
However, the incident on Sunday and subsequent time apart on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday allowed me some time to reflect: I didn’t really know much about Quinn.
I didn’t even know what his job was, and I worked with him.
I didn’t understand Quinn’s role or title in the company, as no one really spoke about him, and when they did, they always called him Mr. Sullivan.
Therefore, I gathered the nerve to ask Steven about Quinn.
Steven and I were having lunch in the break room, which was more of a long hallway along the perimeter of the building with a window view of the city, and discussing my upcoming first official business trip and client meeting.
Steven and I would be flying to Las Vegas next Monday. He explained that the client owned Club Outrageous (which made me think of Quinn) and wanted to use Guard Security for another club in Las Vegas. The client also wanted to discuss arranging personal security through Infinite Systems.
“Does Cypher Systems have an office in Las Vegas?” I dipped the chicken in my taco salad in a small cup of sour cream before taking a bite.
Steven shook his head mid-chew-swallow.
“What about New York? Do we have any office locations other than Chicago?”
Steven just finished dipping his spicy tuna roll in soy sauce and answered before he ate. “Sweet Pea—can I call you Sweet Pea? No. It’s just us lunatics.”
“Don’t call me Sweet Pea. What about Quinn Sullivan? Where is his office?” I tried to sound ambivalent; I watched Steven over a forkful of taco salad as I tried to suppress the blush threatening to overwhelm my cheeks. I hoped he didn’t notice.
He shook his head. “Mr. Sullivan has an office here in the building, but as you’ve likely noticed, he doesn’t use it much during normal business hours. I think he prefers to be out in the field.”
“Why does everyone call him Mr. Sullivan?”
Steven placed a generous portion of shaved ginger on his sushi and lifted his eyebrows at me. “What do you want me to call him? Sully? Quinning the winning?”
“No, what I mean is, we call Mr. Davies ‘Carlos,’ and everyone else here goes by their first name. Why don’t we call Mr. Sullivan ‘Quinn’?”
Steven shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve worked here for three years; we’ve just always called him Mr. Sullivan.
” Steven seemed to think about the issue as he chewed his sushi; then, with a half full mouth, he added, “The only time I see him is for client meetings, and it just makes sense to call him Mr. Sullivan—in front of the client, I mean. Maybe it makes him seem more important in their eyes.” Steven shrugged again and swallowed.
“Well, I guess he is important—strange, but important.”
“What do you mean ‘strange’?”
“Well, you spent time with him last Friday, right? When you had to work late? So typical. He insisted on taking you out personally to train you.” Steven used air quotes to emphasize the last two words.
“I told Carlos I thought he just wanted someone to glare at. I can’t believe you’ve been so nice about it. ”
I wrinkled my nose at Steven. “What do you mean? He doesn’t glare at me.”
Steven gave me a sympathetic look. “Only you would be so gracious, Janie.”
I put my fork down and stared at Steven, my tone incredulous.
“What are you talking about? I’ve learned a lot from him.
I’ve found the time to be beneficial.” I felt the need to defend Quinn; I didn’t want Steven thinking Quinn had been rude or done a poor job training me and, therefore, get Quinn in trouble.
“Oh really?” Steven lifted his eyebrows.
“Yes, really.”
Steven pursed his lips and gave me a pointedly disbelieving stare.
“I once spent twenty minutes alone with him during a car ride from the airport to the site. During that time he said a total of three words and his face didn’t change expression once—no, wait, that’s wrong.
” He held his hands up as though to stop me from interrupting.
“He had two expressions: at first he was stoic, but then, toward the end of the twenty minutes, his expression changed to apathetic. This is all despite the fact that my conversation was obviously thrilling.”
“Stoic and apathetic are synonymous.” I tried not to laugh as I imagined Steven and Quinn alone in a car together for twenty minutes: Quinn glaring at Steven while Steven regaled the silent car with tales of his weekend clubbing exploits and latest furniture purchase.
“Sure, he’s very pretty, I’ll give you that, but you can’t tell me that you don’t think there is something off about him.
” Steven looked over both his shoulders in an exaggerated manner then offered in a faux whisper.
“Did you know he sometimes joins the security guards downstairs and acts like he is one of them?”
I twisted my lips to the side, debating whether to tell Steven that I originally met Quinn when he escorted me out after being laid off from my last position. Instead, I said, “Well, isn’t he? Isn’t he one of them?”
Steven studied me for a moment before replying in a very dry tone. “In a small way, yes, he is. In a much larger and more correct way, no, he is most definitely not.”
“Hmm.” I picked up my fork again and poked at my salad, feeling pensive. “Why do you only see him during the client meetings?”
“He doesn’t go to all the client meetings, really; only if there is a problem or if he is vetting a new client. Usually he sends Carlos.”
My fork stopped mid-air between my plastic container and my mouth. “Wait.” I could almost hear the clicking and squeaking of the gears in my head. “What do you mean ‘sends Carlos’? Wouldn’t the boss decide who goes to what meeting?”
Steven blinked at me three times, his eyebrows pulling up so they looked like little umbrellas over his gray eyes. “What nonsense are you speaking? Mr. Sullivan is the boss.”
Time stopped.
Everything seemed suspended as my brain struggled to accept reality.
It was one of those moments you reflect on, later in life, and wonder how your brain could have thought so many thoughts; how your heart could have felt so many feelings in the small span of a single second.
The only explanation was that time must have stopped.
Quinn is my boss.
I attempted to think back over the times I’d been with him and looked for clues. I found several. Actually, I found more than several. I wanted to hide my face in my hands and cry, but I resisted the urge by biting fiercely on my bottom lip.
How could I miss something so obvious?
Quinn’s words from the previous week came back to me: “You are completely blind to the obvious.”
Really, he was more than just my boss; he was The Boss.
He owned the company. He owned a really impressive, profitable company.
Any previous balloons of hope I had been floating in my alternate reality version of my carnival of dreams were immediately deflated if not brutally burst. This guy who I’d been fantasizing about for going on two months and with whom I thought I was kinda sorta maybe dating was not just out of my physical attractiveness league; he was out of all my leagues.
I was in awkwardly shaped head Neanderthal league, and he was in the hot ninja millionaire league.
As a coworker, Quinn and I were on somewhat equal footing.
Even if nothing romantic materialized in the long term, at a minimum I thought we were building a friendship.
I hoped we were building a friendship, because blast it all, I really liked him.
I thought about him with alarming frequency.
He was interesting and good to talk to, and I wanted to have a lasting connection with him.
At least, until this moment, that’s what I thought.
Now that I thought about all that had transpired recently—the events of the past weekend, the so-called training session, the text message jokes, our long conversations—I was becoming more and more comfortable.
I thought our time together was leading toward something abiding—something shared between two people whose relationship was more than that of being coworkers.
I was blind. I was so beyond blind. I was stupid. I was wrong. We weren’t becoming friends. Normal people don’t have enduring relationships with hot millionaires.
What did he say to me that night after the concert? He told me that he didn’t date.
Once he lost interest in me, and he was bound to sooner rather than later, I would see him periodically at best during client meetings where he was Mr. Sullivan and I was Janie Morris, his employee.
These labels of boss and employee defined our relationship like the minefields around Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, define it as a U.S. Naval Base.
You don’t go for a walk in a minefield.
You aren’t friends with your boss.
And you certainly never set yourself up to have bedroom fantasies about him or unrequited longitudinal crushes. Lusting after your boss was like having a thing for your English teacher in high school; it made you more than a little pathetic.
My surprise must have been visible, because Steven’s face changed suddenly from confusion to reluctant understanding. “Oh…oh my. You didn’t know. You didn’t know that Mr. Sullivan is the boss?”