Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is…so delightful,” Gabriel sang with a flourish as I got into the car. “And since we’ve no place to go…”
I rolled my eyes as I shut the passenger seat door against the wind. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, Gabriel. You know I do all my holiday shopping online specifically so I don’t have to hear the speakers at Nordstrom’s spewing out sentimental crap months ahead of schedule.”
Gabriel smiled and shook his head as he pulled the Jaguar out of my driveway. “First of all, Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is my favorite holiday, so you’re going to let me have this, and more importantly, when it’s going to snow this much, this early, I’m allowed to break out the carols.”
“I should have told everyone to work from home today,” I groaned. “I just checked my weather app and the predictions are only getting more and more dire.”
“Eh.” Gabriel shrugged. “It’s not supposed to start until seven, and everyone should be home by then. If it starts looking worse, we can let people off early.”
I turned down the car stereo until it was barely audible and leaned my head up against the window. “Only we would get stuck with a historically bad blizzard during the most critical stage of the Wordsworth acquisition.”
“Oh yeah…” Gabriel said. “I almost forgot, you told the investors that you and Samantha would have the report about the acquisition tomorrow, correct?”
I frowned. “Correct.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “So…it’s almost done, right?”
I stayed quiet and shrugged.
“Johnathan!” Gabriel scolded. “That’s way too much work to be done in the course of one day, especially when a blizzard could hit at any moment. What, was Samantha slacking off or something?”
I looked down. “Not…exactly.”
“Johnathan, you know that if that report is a day late, or is lacking in our usual quality at all, we could lose a lot of business.”
“I know, I know, I just—”
“What has been up with you lately, man?”
A more truthful answer, one even I was still uncomfortable admitting, nearly flew out of my mouth, but I paused just in time. “Stuff has been busy.”
Gabriel looked at me skeptically. “If you say so.” He turned the radio back up as a weather announcer came on.
“Shit, now they’re saying ten inches,” he said, pretending to seem concerned, but hiding a hint of a smile.
Gabriel hailed from Buffalo, and any amount of snow filled him with hometown nostalgia.
I’m glad Gabriel was happy, but I sure wasn’t.
Seattle doesn’t usually get this much snow, and never this early.
You would think a city so close to Canada would know how to handle its snow, but the unfortunate truth was that even a couple of inches could drive the city to a standstill.
Seattle was filled with steep hills which made driving within the city limits on slippery surfaces incredibly dangerous.
This blizzard would turn the city into a ghost town.
I might have to force my employees to work from home for the rest of the week.
I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair as Gabriel parked his car. Today was beginning in the worst kind of way. I already had severe anxiety because of Samantha and the report deadline approaching, but now this blizzard was making everything far worse.
I trudged into the office, gripping my coffee cup with unusual force. I walked right up to Sabryna’s desk and stared at her blankly.
“Johnathan?” she asked, looking extremely concerned. “You alright there?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, suddenly coming back to my senses. “It’s just um, that report that Samantha and I were supposed to give to the investors is due tomorrow, and we’ve barely made any headway on it, and there’s this blizzard, and I already have a headache, and—”
“And you’re wondering if there’s anything I can do?” Sabryna said with a hint of mockery.
“Uh…” I broke into a bashful smile. “Maybe?”
Sabryna shook her head. “I can make you some tea or get you an aspirin, but I can’t control the weather, Torver. Or write that report, unless you give me a raise.”
I sighed. “I know, I’m just grasping for miracles here,” I joked.
“This is on you and Ms. Doyle.” Sabryna stopped to think for a minute. “Actually, given Samantha’s penchant for punctuality, I’d say it’s more on you.”
I felt myself blush a bit. “No comment.”
Sabryna rolled her eyes and smiled. “Earl Grey? Chamomile? Matcha?”
I smiled. “Chamomile sounds great right now, thanks.”
“You got it boss,” Sabryna said, shaking her head at me with a look of somewhat amused concern.
“I’m definitely gonna need it once Samantha gets here,” I joked.
Sabryna broke out into a guilty smile. “Uh, Johnathan…”
I looked at her questioningly. “What?”
“You know Samantha Doyle has been in the conference room working on that report since six o’clock this morning, right?”
I stared at Sabryna blankly. “Shit…” I said. “Shit.”
I abandoned the chamomile tea Sabryna had started steeping to a cold and undeserved demise as I rushed into the conference room.
“Hi!” I said awkwardly as I pushed open the conference room door to find Samantha typing notes peacefully into her laptop with a cup of coffee balanced between her fingertips.
“Good morning Johnathan,” she said, taking a delicate sip of her coffee and keeping eyes locked on me. She bowed her head a bit as she put the cup down, as if acknowledging an opponent. “I thought you would get here earlier, considering the deadline is tomorrow, and of course, the weather reports.”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. That was irresponsible of me.”
Samantha stared back at her laptop, unsure of how to respond to my sudden acquiescence.
“Look Johnathan, about the other day…I’m sorry.
” She squirmed a bit in her seat as I gazed up at her.
“Implying that you were being more generous with these negotiations than you were intending was…not professional. At all.”
I shrugged, unsure of how to respond as well. “Thanks,” I said. “But what’s done is done.” I pulled my laptop and some files out of my briefcase and sighed. “Now we just have to focus on getting this report done before the storm hits.”
Samantha smiled over her coffee. “It’s not too bad.
Most of it is writing the data analysis sheets up and making our circumstances look as pretty as possible.
If we budget our time correctly, we can probably finish this by the late afternoon and get home safely.
” Samantha shuffled the batch of papers in front of her to even them out.
“Now can you hand me the graphs and pie charts and stuff? You printed them out, right?”
I froze in my seat. “Um.”
“It’s okay, just email them to the printer and—”
“I didn’t…” I bit my cheek as Samantha stared at me with terror in her eyes. “…I didn’t actually get around to making the graphs yet.”
I watched as Samantha’s eye’s widened. “You what?”
I got the same feeling I used to get when I would neglect my science homework as a kid to go and play baseball with my friends, day after day, until my grades plummeted.
She was giving me that same disappointed and annoyed look that the teachers would give me as they cycled around my desk to see that once again, I could not produce a worksheet from my backpack.
Samantha shook her head and looked down. “You know, it amazes me sometimes that I’m the one who went bankrupt and not you.” She laughed incredulously. “I mean, do you get away with this stuff all the time? Because I certainly don’t. What, do you just charm your way out of these things?”
I stayed silent.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Samantha said as I fumbled with my pen. There was no way to fight back on this one. She was clearly right and I was wrong. Her accusation was not too far from the truth, either.
“Well don’t just sit there,” Samantha said. “We’ve got five days’ worth of work to do in one. Get started on the charts!”
I smiled at her in defeat. “Yes, boss.” She rolled her eyes and continued working.
The tension in the room was palpable as I compiled the data from the Torver Group and Wordsworth in a series of graphs, a series of neat pie charts and tables that showed the details of our earnings for the year.
I could feel it when Samantha looked over at me, and every time I glanced up towards her I felt like she would feel it and accuse me of something.
The air in the room was thicker than usual.
It was full of unspoken arguments and the leftover bitterness of the shouted ones, of the spoils and wounds of our wars and all the greed and pain that lingered with them.
We had worked out a system where I would compile our data into graphs and email them to Samantha, and she would write the accompanying report, being the better writer out of the two of us.
It wasn’t the hardest work, but there was a hell of a lot of it, and by the time lunch break came around, the monotony of the work combined with the unflinching tension in the atmosphere made me feel as exhausted as I usually did at five o’clock.
“…It’s noon,” I said, nervously looking up towards Samantha, who had the posture of a duchess and the focus of a general as she typed away.
“Mmhm.”
“It’s noon, Samantha. We should eat.”
“There’s no time to get anything,” she said. “We’ll deal.”
I rolled my eyes at her stubbornness. “Nonsense. I’ll have Sabryna call in a pizza. No time wasted, okay?”
Samantha nodded. “Very well.”
“What toppings do you like?”
“Anything.”
“You sure?”
“Yup,” Samantha said. “As long as it’s not anything weird like anchovies or something, I should be good.”
I stumbled out of the conference room and made my way over to Sabryna’s desk.
“Hey,” I said. “Can you order me an extra-large Hawaiian pizza?”
Sabryna stared at me. “Sure. You alright?”
I scoffed. “Why would I not be alright?”
“You look like you’ve been under police interrogation for five hours.”
“No, I don’t.”