Chapter 2
SCARLETT
“I bet he has a microscopic dick,” Dakota declared with the kind of venom usually reserved for people who kicked puppies.
“Bold of you to assume there’s anything there at all,” I muttered. “Maybe he’s just a Ken doll down there. All plastic and disappointment.”
I waved down the bartender, silently begging for another drink. The first hadn’t done nearly enough to dull the edge of this nightmare.
“I’m going to destroy him,” I decided.
“I’ll help.”
“I don’t know how, but I will. I just need to … process this, and I’ll come up with something iron-clad.”
“There’s no way he hasn’t done this before. He gives off subtle creep vibes.”
“I thought this company had a strong ethical code.” I rubbed my temple. Hard. “What if he’s just a symptom of what’s really going on behind the scenes with the executives? What if I’ve spent years building my career somewhere that I’d never want to work once I got a peek behind the curtain?”
Losing the promotion was terrible. My job?
Even worse. But the thought that executives at this company might have been demanding sexual favors all along?
That would mean I’d hitched my wagon to the wrong company from the get-go, and that—that was the kind of realization that made me want to time-travel back several years and slap some sense into my younger self.
“First of all”—Dakota leaned in, her voice dropping to that conspiratorial tone she used when dispensing prime gossip—“I’ve never once heard of sexual harassment from anyone.
” That was something at least. She was nothing if not the gossip collector.
“And secondly, this guy isn’t homegrown; he just joined this company three months ago.
Probably has some seedy-ass past where they fired him, and he snuck under our radar like a perverted ninja. ”
The bar erupted into cheers over some sporting event, the sudden noise making me jump. Just like sudden noises often did. I took another sip of my drink, trying to ignore how my shoulders seemed determined to merge with my ears.
“What company did he come from?” I wondered.
“Sexual Harassers Incorporated, evidently.” Dakota’s deadpan delivery actually pulled a reluctant snort from me. “Their benefits package probably includes a legal defense fund.”
“I can’t believe I just lost my job.” My throat clenched, a familiar pressure I hadn’t felt since those years with him. When my father had wielded power like a weapon, making Mom and me shudder with a single footstep.
“You don’t know that for sure,” Dakota insisted, but her optimism bounced right off my wall of doom.
“I threatened to snap his fingers.” I shot her a look. “Pretty sure my belongings will be in a box when I get back to work on Monday. Probably with a security escort waiting to make sure I don’t go on a finger-breaking spree.”
“He groped you,” she countered, and, dammit, I appreciated the steel in her voice.
“He’d be a special kind of shortsighted to tell people you threatened to snap his fingers because then they’re obviously going to ask why you, their star operations director who’s never had a single complaint or bad employee review, suddenly threatened to go all WWE on him. ”
Her logic should have penetrated my fog of depression, but my brain was too busy playing a greatest hits compilation of all the things I wished I’d said to that pervert. If I was going down, I wished I’d told him off. Big time. A spectacular, verbal fireworks show.
“Do you know how much I’ve sacrificed for this job?
” The words tumbled out, fueled by premium vodka and premium rage.
“Happily, mind you. My choice, every step of the way. I’ve worked seven days a week almost every week for years.
Hell, I’ve worked so many hours, my social life has virtually gone extinct.
The last time I had any balance to my life, people still thought Pluto was a planet and Netflix mailed DVDs. ”
“That’s an exaggeration,” she chided.
“Maybe. But I haven’t gone on a date in so long, the rules of dating have probably completely changed.
” In fairness, I didn’t want to date, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was, I wouldn’t have given myself the time to date even if I wanted to.
“And I haven’t had sex in so long, I’m probably categorized as some kind of secondary virgin.
At this point, I’m pretty sure my lady parts have filed for abandonment.
To have it all go up in smoke because some handsy executive couldn’t keep his paws to himself?
That’s some royal-grade bullshit right there. ”
Hello, anger, my old friend. Pull up a chair, grab a drink.
“Can I ask you something?” Dakota shifted in her seat.
“Since when do you preface a question with that?” I wondered.
“Why does your career mean so much to you?”
“Careers mean a lot to a lot of people.”
“Right, but …” She shrugged. “Even among workaholics, you’ve been extra about it. It just seems to be like … everything to you. Why?”
“I enjoy it.”
She probably saw right past my BS answer. Surely, deep down, she suspected part of the real reason, but to her credit, she must’ve sensed that now was sooooo not the time to ask me about my deep, dark needs because she nodded and got back to the conversation at hand.
“Maybe you should march back over there, give him a piece of your mind,” Dakota suggested, that dangerous glint in her eye that usually preceded spectacularly bad decisions.
“It’s eight o’clock on a Friday. Even if he’s still there, the office will be dead, and getting sexually assaulted isn’t on my bucket list.”
“See, this is bull. The fact that you’re even worried about how dangerous of a predator he might be? HR needs to know about this yesterday.”
She was right. They did. But that would be Monday Scarlett’s problem.
Tonight Scarlett just needed to process this tsunami of emotions without drowning in them.
I needed to formulate the most professional speech I could give HR, preferably one that didn’t include the phrases dickwad or perverted octopus hands.
Tonight was about finding a way for my brain to stop feeling like a pressure cooker of rage.
Rage that had gone from burning-eyes frustrated to Game of Thrones season finale in record time.
Was this how all women felt in these situations?
Or was this reserved for me: a woman who’d fought to build herself from the ashes of pain?
A woman who’d sworn she’d never let a man control her again.
The fact that it was taking everything I had not to cry?
That just pissed me off more. I refused to let that piece of trash break me.
“We could go over there together,” Dakota suggested. “Confront him, united front and all that.”
“Pass.” I took another fortifying sip. “If I saw him right now, I would kick him in the dick, and aggravated assault against your boss’s penis doesn’t look great on a résumé.”
“We could call him. Really let him have it.”
“Knowing my luck, he’d record it. And then I wouldn’t just be out of a job; I’d be unemployable.”
“We have to do something,” Dakota insisted, drumming her fingers on the bar with increasing intensity.
“I will.” I shifted on the barstool, trying to find a position where my spine didn’t feel like it was made of glass. “Monday. But right now, I just need to vent until this rage stops feeling like it’s going to choke me. I can’t face HR if I’m still seeing red.”
“We can do better than that,” she declared. “It’s not fair for you to sit here and feel like crap while that walking HR violation is probably somewhere high-fiving his reflection in the bathroom mirror.”
She was right. He didn’t deserve this anger.
“You should let a guy take you home tonight and bone his brains out.” She waggled her eyebrows.
I gave her my best are you serious right now glare. “Yeah, nothing heals the wounds of sexual harassment like having random sex with strangers. Brilliant plan. Got any other gems of wisdom?”
“Sex always makes people feel better.”
“Hard pass.”
Dakota tapped her chin, and I could practically see the light bulb appear over her head. Never a good sign.
“Okay, if going off on Douchenozzle and picking up men are out, then let’s do something about that rage.”
“I’m not picking a bar fight, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Writing helps with anger, but we’re going to make this one fun.” She waved at the bartender, who was too busy flirting with some college kids to notice.
“Fun anger? What the heck does that even mean?”
“Okay, you know all those things that float through your mind for a hot second when you’re upset with someone, but you would never actually do? Like when someone cuts you off in traffic, and you think, God, I’d love to shove an ice pick through their skull?”
“Remind me to never ever cut you off in traffic,” I muttered into my glass.
“We’ll make a list of imaginary ways we’d get revenge if we could. Pure fantasy, totally therapeutic.”
“Get him fired,” I offered.
She cocked her head. “That’s boring. Think more fun like …” Her eyes lit up with unholy glee. “Undoing the seams of his pants so they split open in the middle of a board meeting. While he’s presenting to the CEO.”
I couldn’t help the smirk that crept onto my face. That would be pretty satisfying, watching Mr. Grabby Hands try to maintain his dignity with his tighty-whities on display.
“Excuse me!” Dakota called to the bartender, finally catching his attention. “Can we get a few napkins?”
She produced a pen from her purse. By the way, Dakota’s purse was like a doomsday prepper’s bunker: prepared for everything from nuclear winter to impromptu revenge plotting, though, ironically, not a single scrap of paper today. With a small sigh, she unfolded one of the napkins.
“What are you doing?”
At the top she wrote in bold capitals: REVENGE LIST.
“Writing this down. It’ll be fun.”
“So you say.”
She pinned me with a glare. “Come on. We can’t just sit here and sulk. It’s not good for you, and more importantly, it’s boring.”
Fair point. I was sulking harder than a teenager who just got their phone confiscated. Even worse, I had zero desire to pull myself out of it. I wanted to skydive into the sky of suckiness and let it plummet me and my bad mood all the way to earth until … splat.
“I bet he’s not even giving this a second thought,” I grumbled.
“He’s probably smirking in his evil lair right now, twirling his metaphorical mustache and practicing his villainous laugh in front of a mirror.”
“The complete and utter asshat,” I agreed, mentally adding him to my collection of People Who Deserve Painful Paper Cuts Between Their Fingers for All Eternity.
“He’s not going to let this ruin his weekend,” she pointed out, hitting me right in the pride.
I gripped my glass tighter, the condensation cool against my palm. The woman had an annoying habit of making sense tonight, making me realize I did not, in fact, want to wallow. I refused to let him ruin my entire weekend. He didn’t deserve that kind of power.
“Fine,” I said, draining my glass with the determination of someone about to make questionable life choices. “But if we’re doing this, I’m going to need another drink. Something that makes terrible ideas sound intoxicating and comes with a side dish of poor judgment.”
“That’s the spirit!” Dakota coaxed. “It’ll make you feel better. Trust me.”
Dakota was the best work friend anyone could hope for, giving up her Friday night to listen to me grumble about some guy being the world’s biggest dick. The least I could do was try to pull myself out of this mood. For her sake.
So, fine. A game.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Laxatives in his coffee,” I offered. “Extra strength.”
She wrote it down, adding, “Right before the board meeting with our mystery buyer.”
Mystery buyer. Because, apparently, work wasn’t stressful enough with handsy executives.
Management decided to spice things up by a) selling the business (cue collective panic attacks and stress-eating the entire vending machine inventory), and b) keeping the new owner’s identity locked down tighter than the Pentagon’s new weapons technology.
Even Dakota, with her black belt in corporate gossip, couldn’t crack this one.
When Dakota couldn’t get intel, it meant someone had basically buried it in the Mariana Trench.
And now, I wondered if the sale would add an extra level of complication to this whole thing.
“Ooh, shove an ice pick into his balls,” she proclaimed with disturbing enthusiasm.
My smile dropped. “That’s … surprisingly violent. Remind me to check your basement for missing persons before I accept any more dinner invitations.”
“We’ll never actually do it.” She waved her hand dismissively before jotting it down. “And don’t criticize my fantasy revenge ideas. This is a judgment-free zone of petty vengeance.”
Okay … fair enough. Mental note: file Dakota’s fantasies under Yikes and maybe suggest therapy.
“Glue his desk drawers shut,” I suggested. “With industrial-strength adhesive.”
She smiled, adding it to the list.
“Replace his hand sanitizer with superglue,” she suggested.
“What about signing him up for every embarrassing email newsletter in existence?”
“Erectile dysfunction support groups.” Dakota nodded solemnly.
“Adult bed-wetting solutions.”
“DIY hemorrhoid treatments.”
“Farm animal breeding techniques,” I countered.
Dakota almost spat out her drink. “That got weird fast.”
“So did his hand on my leg, but here we are.” I shrugged, surprising myself with a genuine laugh.
Then she wrote another one of hers, each suggestion getting progressively more creative and, at times, concerning.
Still, I added another, letting myself get caught up in the ridiculousness of it all.
“See?” she said, surveying our masterpiece. “This is so much better than sulking. And don’t worry; nobody will ever see this.”
Famous last words. Because “nobody” was about to walk through those doors and see our revenge list in all its glory. And that nobody? Was the worst person, out of eight billion people on planet Earth, to see this list …