Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“Quinn recruited you, didn’t he?”
I blinked at Olivia a few times. I was confused by her abrupt question, but then I recovered quickly. “Yeah, you could say that.”
It was Friday afternoon, the Friday before the big business trip to Las Vegas—the big business trip to Las Vegas that I was now dreading—the Friday of what was turning out to be the strangest week ever, and I was trying to function on two hours of restless sleep.
I wasn’t tired when I arrived back to the apartment earlier that morning even though it was past 2:00 a.m. Elizabeth was asleep; I could hear her soft snoring, so I stealthily removed my boots and closed her door so as not to disturb her slumber or incur additional wrath.
My mind was active; I felt unsettled but strangely numb. I checked my email, suddenly curious about Jem. I wanted to see if she’d replied to the message I sent last Saturday. Had she been in town this whole time? Why did she sleep with Jon?
I navigated to Gmail; there were no new messages.
I thought about emailing her again, but everything I wanted to ask, despite my mostly ambivalence toward Jon and the end of our relationship, would likely come across as crazy, jealous ex-girlfriend.
My life was coming dangerously close to resembling a Jerry Springer episode; all that was missing was a question of someone’s paternity.
I started typing: Hi Jem, I was just emailing to ask you if you are in town. Jon mentioned something about seeing you a few weeks back. In your last email, you said you wanted to see me. Do you still want to meet up? Janie
I hit send then stared unseeingly at the screen until it blurred.
Jon was right about so many things. I avoided emotional intimacy.
I hated relying on others. I wasn’t good at it, and I turtled any time I encountered a difficulty.
Because of this, I bent on things that mattered to me or, using Jon as a case study, I abruptly broke off relationships.
I also entered our relationship with extremely low expectations, and as long as I kept my expectations at a minimum, I was able to justify my somewhat marginal personal investment in him. It hadn’t been fair to Jon.
Regardless, he cheated on me with my sister, and when I broke up with him, he asked his father to pull some strings so that I would be fired. Neither his motivation nor his desperation justified his actions. I could not and would not forgive Jon.
And then there was Quinn…
“How did you meet him? It seems like you two know each other pretty well.” She raised her eyebrows at me expectantly.
Olivia and I were meeting to tie up loose ends before our departure on Monday for Las Vegas.
She had thus far been somewhat unhelpful, but not unhelpful in a specific enough way for me to have a valid complaint.
We were finished with our meeting but she hadn’t left yet; I wanted to scowl at her and tell her to get back to work; instead, I said, “Why do you say that?”
Olivia shrugged, her pale blue eyes watching me a little too closely. “Keira said he’s called for you, like, three times today, and you haven’t taken any of his calls. Anyone else would be fired.”
When I’d gotten home earlier this morning, I had turned off my cell phone without looking at it. I tried not to obsess about how oblivious I’d been or about how obvious my obliviousness must have been to him. I didn’t want to think about it, so I didn’t.
Likewise, when I arrived at work this morning, I set my phone to automatic voicemail.
When Keira appeared at my door, indicating that Mr. Sullivan was on the phone, calling from New York, and needed to speak with me, I told her I was just about to go into a meeting and promised to call him back. I’d done this three times.
It was true; I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t know how to talk to him. In my sleepless examining last night, I realized that he’d never exactly lied to me about being my boss. But now I knew that he was the boss, and everything was different.
I ignored the implication that I’d been dodging Quinn’s calls, and I thought about how to answer Olivia’s question truthfully without including real details. “I met Mr. Sullivan at my old job.”
“Did he recruit you away from there?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” Olivia seemed to contemplate me for a moment with a sideways glance before she said, “Carlos hired me. I’m the only person at the company who wasn’t recruited by Quinn.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that.” I was distracted by all the revelations of the past week, and thus was tempted to succumb to the pleasant void of apathetic numbness, but I just couldn’t seem to muster enough energy to feign interest in what she was saying.
“I think…” She leaned closer to me and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think I make him uncomfortable.”
My brow lifted of its own accord, and I regarded her with open confusion. “Who? Carlos?”
Olivia laughed lightly and flipped rolling sheets of chocolate brown hair over her shoulder. “Quinn, of course!”
I tried not to grimace when she used Quinn instead of Mr. Sullivan. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, other than Carlos, haven’t you noticed that everyone Quinn hires is so…so…” She looked upward as though trying to search for the right word. “Everyone is…you know, so plain; or they’re odd.” She paused, her eyes settled on the top of my head. “You’re very big for a girl.”
I didn’t miss her meaning; in fact, her words hit the bull’s-eye in my stomach. I was discovering that I was not as immune to the scorn of pretty people as I thought. I blinked at her and said nothing, but in my thoughts I retorted, You are a twatwaffle.
Twatwaffle being a new word I’d found on Urban Dictionary. I hadn’t yet said it out loud but I found myself liking the way it sounded in my head.
She continued. “Carlos has insinuated that Quinn is really a terrible flirt.” Her pretty mouth curved into a knowing smile. “I think Quinn purposefully hires women who are plain or odd looking, so he’s not distracted at work. At this point, he must be desperate. I bet he’s even flirted with you.”
I gave her my best imitation of a smile, but I was pretty sure it looked like a dog baring its teeth. “That’s an interesting theory.”
“Hmm,” she said again, leaning back. “Has he flirted with you?”
I shook my head and looked at the portfolio on my lap. “Not unless you call kissing flirting.”
Olivia’s eyes opened very wide for a split second; then she laughed.
“You’re funny!” She tapped my leg with manicured nails, then flipped her long, shiny, straight hair over a slim shoulder.
“Well,” Olivia said on an audible sigh, “it’s a good thing he’s not attracted to you; otherwise, he likely wouldn’t have hired you in the first place. ”
I kind of wanted to stab her in the neck.
“Janie, are you two finished yet?” Steven’s form appeared at my door, and I immediately jumped up from my seat, thankful for the murder-attempt-distraction and the chance to escape. I crossed to my expansive desk in order to improve the distance between Olivia and the pen in my hand.
“Yep, all done. I think Olivia has what she needs.”
“If I have any questions, I’ll just stop by later and ask.” She stood and gave Steven a wide, friendly smile.
Steven shook his head; his lips were pursed. “Olivia, Janie doesn’t have any more time to work on this with you. She needs to get ready for next week, and that report needs to be done by tonight. You better have all you need from her.”
Olivia’s eyes met mine, and her smile widened. “Yeah, I think I got everything I need.”
I worked in the office over the weekend, enjoying the solitude. It allowed me the space I needed to avoid thinking about anything confusing and/or unpleasant.
I didn’t really need to go into the office over the weekend.
I could have accomplished just as much on my laptop in the comfort of my slippers at home.
However, in all honesty, avoiding Elizabeth was the intentional byproduct of my industrious two days away from the apartment.
I hadn’t yet told her about Kat’s knit-night revelations, or finding out that Quinn was the boss, or that Jem and Jon had engaged in coitus extremeous.
I didn’t know how to tell her, and it just felt like too much to deal with right now.
I wasn’t ready to talk about it, and I knew she would make me talk about it.
I justified my absence by insisting to myself that I needed to finish the billing presentation that I hoped the boss would adopt as the new business practice for Guard Security.
However, now that I knew I would be making my pitch to Quinn instead of some unknown entity, I was beginning to have second thoughts about the initiative.
I’d discussed it with Quinn previously, on the day he’d met me at Smith’s Take-away and Grocery, not knowing he would be making the decision regarding whether it moved forward.
Now I felt like I needed to prove myself.
My job didn’t seem like it was really mine, or like I deserved it.
The combined pressure of performing at the client meeting and proving I deserved to work at Cypher Systems, along with the thought of seeing Quinn for the first time in a week, now knowing him as the boss, caused my stomach to become like hair trapped in bubblegum—a massive tangle of heinous, untenable knots.
I spent my time working tirelessly on the billing presentation.
I finally went home and lost myself in comic books until 1:00 a.m., and then I woke up early and buried myself in work once more.
I didn’t know how I was going to face him. What would I say? What would he say? I had no roadmap for this situation. We’d held hands, we’d kissed, and I liked it—a lot.
On the Monday morning of the trip, I was so exhausted that Elizabeth had to shake me awake; she informed me that my alarm had been going off for seven minutes without me so much as reaching for the snooze button.
I showered, braided my hair then twisted it into a bun on the crown of my head, and dressed in my black pantsuit in a haze.
At the last minute, I decided to wear my glasses instead of contacts; I told myself this was because my hands were shaking too much to put them in.
I went through my head-box-closet coping exercises several times in the taxi on the way to the airport, thankful to find myself almost detached by the time I arrived.
Steven met me at a prearranged spot with coffee, a blueberry scone, and a reassuring smile.
He guided me to the private airstrip, all while telling me about a disastrous date from the weekend with a lawyer named Deloogle—at least, that’s how the name sounded.
It seemed all his dates’ names rhymed with Google or Bing.
It was not unusual for him to regale me with stories on Mondays regarding his weekend exploits.
Typically, the evenings ended with some hysterical calamity.
I was so wrapped up in his story that I didn’t really notice where we were going. When we boarded the plane, he handed my bag to an attendant and we took seats next to each other.
He reached the end of his story. “It was so disgusting that I had to arrange for the carpet cleaners to come fix the spot on Sunday.” He shook his head. “That’s the last time I go out with someone who wears a live ferret as an accessory.”
I smiled and laughed then abruptly realized where I was.
The calm numb from before was pierced by a pang of awareness.
We were seated near the front of the corporate jet, and I fought the urge to crane my head around to see the rest of the aircraft.
Instead of attempting to discern the occupants, I concentrated on the interior of the jet.
I had no comparison, as I’d never traveled via private plane, but my surroundings were impressive; everything looked new and shiny.
The seats were beige leather, the trim and carpet were navy blue, and the bulkhead was lined with elaborate wood paneling.
Seats were clustered in groups of four facing each other: two facing forward, two facing backward.
I assumed this was to facilitate conversation during the flight.
An attendant walked over to us; she was very pretty and, I guessed, in her mid-forties.
“Can I get you two something to drink before we depart?”
I cleared my throat. “No thanks, I’m good. But…uh…do I have time to use the restroom before we leave?”
She nodded. “Sure do, hun. The head is at the back of the plane.” I smiled my thanks and stood to walk toward the back when I came face to face, or rather, chest to chest, with a solid man wall.
“Oh, sorry.” I backed up a step and grabbed the seat to maintain my balance, my eyes automatically lifting to the face of the barrier.
I immediately regretted the movement when my gaze met that of Quinn McHotpants Sullivan.
By the power of Thor!