Thirty-One Arya
thirty-one
Arya
Arya capped his fountain pen and leaned back in his chair, shaking out his wrist. He’d bought the pen—a Montblanc special edition from a couple years back, with a Persian boteh pattern on it—to congratulate himself for becoming Mitchell’s partner.
It seemed like the kind of thing a partner in a business should have.
And he still used it to send handwritten thank-you cards, a habit he’d gotten in back when he was in college and never quite grew out of, though as he’d gotten older his handwriting had gotten worse, even as his pens had gotten fancier.
A knock on the doorframe startled Arya, and he left a huge scratch of ink across the bottom of his card. Thankfully he bought them by the hundred.
“Sorry, Ebenezer Scrooge, did I mess up your ledgers?”
Arya snorted, crumpled the card into a ball, and tossed it at Carley.
“Did you need something, or are you just here to criticize me?”
“Bitch, both can be true. I contain multitudes.”
Arya fixed Carley with his gaze.
“Ugh, okay, stop staring at me, jeez.” She entered and flopped dramatically into one of the chairs across from Arya’s desk.
“What’s up?”
“I still need someone to sign off on the Halverson wedding.” Carley slid her iPad across the desk.
MME didn’t do too many weddings these days. They’d more or less priced themselves out of the wedding business after they recovered from the last recession, but when rich people got married, well, they got married.
Ramin and Noah weren’t rich. Yeah, they both had decent income, but they weren’t multimillionaires. They’d been mum about their wedding planning, though Ramin had hinted that Arya would have a plus-one. And Noah had outright said, “You should bring Ben.”
He imagined slow dancing with Ben. Ben would wear one of his sexy suits, with his slutty little glasses on, and after the reception Arya would take Ben home and peel him out of it and—
“Arya?”
He shook himself. “Sorry. ADHD brain.”
“I feel that. Yesterday I fell down a rabbit hole for this Omegaverse C-drama everyone in my book club is obsessed with, and when I looked up, three hours had gone by.”
“Okay, I have a ton of questions, but let me get through this first.” He looked over the quote.
MME had everything priced such that they could give a “discount” of 20 percent to all their clients.
The only people they didn’t give the discount to were assholes, since it was easier to take away a discount than it was to implement a pain-in-the-ass surcharge.
But Mitchell had given the 20 percent discount twice, one on top of the other, which meant 36 percent off everything, which absolutely demolished their profit margin.
“What the fuck?”
“It’s not just me, then.”
Arya sighed. Where was Mitchell, anyway?
“Tell Val to avoid rentals at all costs. We can’t renegotiate the contract, but we can try to stop the hemorrhaging.
And stagger our call with the Local so we can use our stagehands as efficiently as possible.
You think we can reuse any scenic from last year? ”
He handed the iPad back, let Carley make some notes while he rubbed his face. He wished Ben were here to massage his shoulders.
Mitchell had been… well, not good, but at least stable for a while. Yet now he was sliding back into his old ways.
Arya groaned, massaging his temples. “Where is Mitchell anyway? Does Steve know?”
Steve was Mitchell’s new useless twink assistant. Arya wasn’t against the concept of eye candy, but not keeping it on the fucking payroll.
“Steve had an appointment at the Apple Store he couldn’t miss,” Carley said, voice dripping with so much disdain Arya was surprised it didn’t stain the carpet. “You know how important it is for Mitchell’s assistants to have the newest iPhone.”
“Ugh. He can’t—”
Arya’s desk phone rang, interrupting him.
It rang so infrequently, he forgot it was there most times. He used his cell for everything, and the desk phone was actually supposed to route calls to his cell anyway. It only rang when someone did an intraoffice call.
“Hello?”
“Arya?” Jim’s voice was low, and the telltale beeping of a truck backing up to the warehouse dock made it hard to hear him.
“Everything okay, Jim?”
“We just got a call from Mitchell.”
Arya blinked at Carley, who cocked her head with a what the fuck? look. Why didn’t Mitchell just call him directly?
“What did he want?”
“He was in a car accident.”
Two visits to the hospital in as many months was not what Arya imagined his life would be like when he started off as Mitchell’s partner.
Well, technically it was urgent care, not the hospital.
Still, here he was, idling in the passenger pickup zone as a nurse in maroon scrubs wheeled Mitchell out.
Arya didn’t see any casts on him, not even an arm sling or anything, though his face looked…
rough. Arya couldn’t tell how rough until he got out and ran around to open the passenger door.
Mitchell had bruises on both cheeks, dark spots below his eyes, and a cut above his left eye that would’ve looked roguish if it wasn’t so pathetic.
“Let me help you in,” Arya said, but Mitchell stood up on his own.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said. “I would’ve walked out if they let me.”
Arya looked at the nurse, who nodded. “Just some bumps and bruises. Mostly from the airbag.”
“Where’s your driver?” Arya looked around. Mitchell always had drivers; that way he could work in the back seat.
“I was the driver.”
Arya’s mouth fell open. He couldn’t remember the last time Mitchell drove anywhere.
Arya tried to meet the nurse’s eyes, but the nurse just said, “Get well soon, Mr. Murphy!” and wheeled the chair back inside.
Arya knew, intellectually, that HIPAA was a good idea, but damn it, would someone give him an honest answer about Mitchell?
Arya made sure Mitchell was buckled before running around to the driver’s side. He hopped in and slammed the door closed.
“What the hell, Mitchell?”
Mitchell winced. “Can you not? I have a headache.”
Arya wanted to ask if it was from whiplash or a hangover, but he held his tongue as he pulled out of the parking lot.
“Where’s the car? Do we need to go pick it up?”
“It’s already been towed.”
“What happened?”
“It was stupid,” Mitchell muttered. “It happened in a parking lot.”
There was that, at least.
“What was so important that you had to go driving yourself?”
Mitchell sighed, and Arya caught a whiff of vodka breath. Anger coiled in his stomach.
“Tell me you weren’t driving drunk.”
“I wasn’t,” Mitchell insisted.
Arya scoffed. “Your breath says otherwise.”
“I wasn’t driving. I was in the parking lot. It was a mistake.”
“And you hit something hard enough your airbag deployed? And your car had to get towed?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
Arya wanted to slam on the brakes in the middle of the road, scream and shout at Mitchell until he was raw in the throat, but one car accident was enough for today.
“I don’t care what you want. Mitchell, I’m your friend, and I’m your partner, and you can’t keep fucking doing this.”
“What, exactly, am I doing?” Mitchell asked, voice turning venomous.
“Acting like you don’t have a fucking problem.
” Arya gripped the steering wheel so hard he thought he might yank it off the dashboard.
“Everyone can see it. You’re late to things, you’re forgetful, I’ve lost count of how many contracts you fucked up in the last three months.
You know you gave a double discount to the Halverson wedding?
MME is hanging on by a thread. Plus you had fucking alcohol poisoning last month, and don’t you dare bullshit me again about a medication reaction.
And now you, what? Drove yourself to the liquor store because you were out of booze and ran into another car in the parking lot? ”
“It was a fucking lamppost! I didn’t notice it.”
“A lamppost.” All the breath left Arya’s lungs. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Mitchell. And you can’t keep doing this to us.”
“I don’t have a problem,” Mitchell said again. “And I’m done talking about this.”
Mitchell didn’t used to be this way. He used to talk to Arya about everything. He used to value Arya. But things had been going downhill for a long time. Longer than Arya wanted to admit.
He’d seen the signs, but he hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t known what to do. Mitchell was his mentor. His idol. He’d built MME into one of the biggest production companies in Kansas City. He’d nurtured talent, mentored folks (not just Arya), built a name for himself.
But somewhere along the way, all those three-martini lunches had turned into three-martini breakfasts. And eventually into a liquid diet. And it had all happened so slowly, Arya couldn’t even point to the moment when it turned into a problem.
But it was a problem. And Arya was running out of ways to fix it.
“What if I bought you out?” Arya asked.
Mitchell stiffened. “What was that?”
“I could buy you out. You could retire. Not have to deal with all this pressure all the time. You could travel, have fun, you could—”
“You’re not ready,” Mitchell said firmly. “You could never handle the shit I deal with on a daily basis.”
“Mitchell. I’ve been here for almost twenty years.”
“You’re good at dealing with clients and the team, I’ll give you that, but you’ve never had to make the hard decisions.
You’ve never had to fire someone, you’ve never had to lay off half your company because of a fucking recession, you’ve never dealt with a fatal accident, you’ve never dealt with half the shit that comes with being the boss. You’re not cut out for it.”
Arya clamped his mouth shut, clenched his jaw, because if he said something it was going to be really fucking unkind. He gripped the steering wheel and threw on his turn signal to pull into the parking garage of Mitchell’s building. He pulled into one of the handicap spaces and put on his hazards.
“You need me to help you inside?” he asked, voice neutral. Like he was talking to an angry client.
Mitchell sighed. “Come on, I didn’t mean it like that.”
What did he mean it like, then?
Arya wasn’t some child. He was Mitchell’s partner.
“You’ve got to understand, MME is my baby. I’ve got things under control. You’ll see.”
Arya nodded and unlocked the door to let Mitchell out. “I’ll have Steve call you whenever he gets back from the Apple Store. Let him know if you need anything.”
Arya didn’t want to look at Mitchell anymore today. For the rest of the week, even.
He felt Mitchell’s gaze on him. For a moment, he thought Mitchell might actually say something. Apologize. Tell Arya he was right. Tell Arya he needed help. That Arya was a good friend for trying.
But then he shook his head and got out.
Arya waited for him to disappear in the elevator before resting his head on the steering wheel.
“Fuuuuuck,” he groaned.
He didn’t know what to do.
He didn’t know what to do.