23. Everett
23
Everett
“ T om doesn’t have the Crosslife ads,” was how James Warren greeted me when I picked up the phone.
I paused, considering. Halfway through December.
It took Warren until halfway through December to even think about the Crosslife account enough to look for the files and realize he didn’t have them.
“Why would you have expected him to have them?” I asked. “He didn’t make them. Didn’t help with them. Didn’t have anything to do with them. Just like you.”
He huffed out a frustrated sigh, and I could hear his fingers tapping on the other end of the line. “Now is not the time for cute games, Bailey. Where is the Crosslife file?”
I waited a moment. How should I handle this? It wasn’t like I could sell the files to anyone else. Technically, I’d done the work while in Warren’s employ. On the other hand, he’d broken trust with me, so I also didn’t have a reason to give him files I wasn’t going to get the promised bonus for. “Well, I haven’t looked, since I’m on vacation, but I assume it’s right where I left it when I was working on it. You know, on my computer.”
“And where’s that?” he demanded, tone suggesting he was speaking to a recalcitrant child. “We checked your desk, but it seems like you took company property out of the office.”
“No, I didn’t. You didn’t give me a computer. Artists are too picky and you couldn’t be bothered, remember? I’ve never removed so much as a stray paperclip that belonged to you from the office. Only my own property. Like my personal laptop.”
There was a loaded silence where he digested the information, realizing how much of a barrel I actually had him over. I’d never heard anyone speak to him this way in my years with the company, but I had watched one person after another leave suddenly, and then be mocked around the office as “weak” and “unable to handle the pressure.”
I wondered if he’d go sickly sweet and once again promise me the imaginary bonus he had no intention of giving.
How long, and with how many brand-new college grads had he and Tom run this con? Here kid, pay for your own tech and take this barely living wage, and give us the hard work that pays for our jaguars and yachts, then we wait till you get jaded and leave, rinse, repeat.
Instead of trying to lure me back with honey, though, Warren went ice cold. “Now you listen here, you little shit. I own you. I own every bit of work you’ve done on that account. And your contract says you can’t go work for another ad company for five years after leaving me.”
I knew that. It was why I’d been looking for freelance work instead of trying to find another nine-to-five job, because that was the one loophole I’d found in the contract—Warren was old school enough that he hadn’t accounted for freelance work at all.
“I thought you made the ads for Crosslife yourself,” I reminded him. I was digging my own grave, but seriously, calling me a little shit, when he’d lied and used and manipulated me? Fuck that guy. “That is what you told their CEO, if you recall. You had to get down in the trenches because I was too much of a wimp to do the job. If that’s true, there’s no reason you wouldn’t have your very own copy of them. I mean, why would I even have them at all if you made them?”
When he answered, he was panting, like he was on a fucking treadmill or something. “You want to get fired? Is that it? You make me fire you, you’ll never work in this industry again. I’ll blacklist you, and you won’t be able to get a position sweeping floors at an advertising agency, in five years or fifty, it won’t matter.”
And that was it.
I didn’t even stop and think about it. Didn’t consider my future prospects, didn’t give a fuck about my fucking future in advertising, even though I had no idea how the hell I was going to pay for the repairs on Grandma’s house or the property taxes, even as low as they were.
The man was threatening me with complete ruin for the crime of pointing out that he was a liar.
But he was a liar. And a thief. And a swindler.
“If the rest of the advertising industry is anything like working for you, I’d rather be blacklisted. Fire me. I’ll have you in court for wrongful dismissal and be collecting unemployment for the next year. I’m the one who has the files, remember? Good luck recreating the entire Crosslife campaign without my help before January.”
And then I hung up.
And turned my phone back off.
When I went back in to discover Peter looking up men kissing on my computer, it was like...like stepping into a different world. He always talked about the magic in the woods, and part of me, a part that had been grounded in an adult job and responsibilities, had doubted. Even with his pointed elfish ears and the fact that I was convinced he was a hundred and sixty-seven years old, I had doubted magic.
But I’d been wrong.
So wrong.
Peter was magic, whether he was forever a child or not. Whether he had magical powers that let him turn a paper from faded and worn to perfect and pristine with just a wave of his hand. He could make me go from terrified, with a pit of dread forming in my belly like a ball of writhing snakes, to completely charmed, in ten seconds flat.
Maybe as much as Doctor Hawking and I were helping Peter grow up, he was helping me...grow up a little less. Or maybe just a little different than I had the first time. Because why did growing up mean that all joy had to take a hike? Why did it mean there was no more magic?
Screw that. I turned, smiling at him, and leaned in for another kiss.
They were almost all cute and chaste, the kisses, but it didn’t matter. It was me, and it was Peter, and we were together. Just like when we were fourteen together, and frankly, I felt a little like I was fourteen again, too.
That was where it had all started going wrong, after all.
When I’d had to go to high school with no friends, no Peter, and no Grandma to be there supporting me. My parents had never really been the supportive types. Or...emotionally there at all. I’d always felt like I’d grown up wrong, because it had never felt like everyone said it should. Kisses under bleachers and first loves and broken romances and success and failure and...I’d done none of that. It was like I’d just drifted through high school, college, and into adulthood, without really changing.
I’d just assumed everyone had lied about how a person changed when they became an adult. All I’d gained when I’d “become an adult” had been even more anxiety.
And standing there in my grandmother’s kitchen, arms around Peter’s waist, pressing my lips against his, all that melted away. We weren’t fourteen or thirty. Weren’t thinking about jobs or house repairs or stress upon stress upon stress. I wasn’t worrying about how soon I needed to look into unemployment or see a lawyer. I didn’t even know if Warren was going to follow through on firing me yet, and frankly, it didn’t fucking matter.
I could mow lawns for money if I had to, like back when I was fourteen. There was a functional lawn mower in the shed, last I’d checked. Peter and I could do it together.
He giggled and pressed his forehead to mine, grinning that perfect, mischievous grin of his. “I always knew it,” he whispered to me, meeting my eye with his own sparkling hazel ones.
I couldn’t help it. I followed where Peter led. I always had. “Knew what?”
“That you’re magical, Everett Bailey.” He glanced aside, down toward the floor, and I half expected to look down and see Bandit sitting there, waiting for us to finish with our silly human things and get back to playing.
Instead, all I saw was the linoleum kitchen floor. About three feet further away than it should have been. Because Peter and I were floating in midair.
We were flying.