27. Tidepools
Tidepools
What’s a girl to do when she’s just committed career suicide?
I go to the beach.
With all my spare time, you’d think I’d head down to the beach at least once.
That’s the cruel irony of it all. In my six-month stint at Rylan, I haven’t gone down to the beach once.
It was always tacked onto the list of ‘I’ll get to it’ or ‘It’s right there.
I can go any time I want.’ There was always something more productive I could be doing.
Truth be told, I exerted significant effort trying to look like I knew what I was doing.
That’s the problem with a bullshit job. None of my efforts will ever set the world on fire, yet I still sell my time. Lying has become my full-time job.
Now that I’m out of a job and have burned all my bridges, I’m free.
I feel like shit and I’ll probably feel even shitter when reality fully sets in, but right now, in this moment, I’m finally at liberty.
This bloody beach has beckoned me through tempered glass every day, five days a week, and I’ve never heeded its siren call until now.
My phone is a bomb, exploding with texts, calls, and voicemails with every step I take.
Rhys. My direct reports. Angie, who no doubt heard it through the grapevine from Rhys. I can’t bring myself to look at their messages, but I have a pretty good idea that these messages have a unifying theme: What are you doing?
I don’t know how to answer that. I saw Sam’s second dick pic and experienced a rage I never knew I was capable of.
Short of crawling across the table to murder him in cold blood, I opted for the next best alternative: to share his dick pic with twenty of his top investors.
He has no qualms about exposing himself to me, right?
So he won’t have an issue if I expose him to the world.
Maybe Sam’s calling me with threats of legal action. Let him. I don’t give a shit anymore.
I shut off my phone and slip it into my back pocket. I’d like to chuck it in the water, but I’ve done enough stupid dramatic gestures for today. Plus, I need my phone for my future job hunt.
Cutting a clear path through the bike path, I strip off my heels and wiggle my toes in the sand. It’s an overcast day, the marine layer smothering the pier in a blanket of fog.
I trudge to the waterline until my feet sink into the muck and let the waves lap around my ankles, soaking my dry-clean only trousers.
There are no tide pools in this part of the Pacific shoreline, but there’s an interesting species of red kelp that has its most vigorous growth around summer and should wash up to shore in early fall.
I bend to pick up a small cluster of this kelp now, cracking the pods between my thumb and forefinger like packing bubbles.
“Just so you know,” a familiar voice says from behind me, “I worked as a lifeguard at the Vacaville community pool when I was sixteen. I’m a little out of practice, but if you decide to swim past the deep end, I’m obligated to come in after you.”
I glance over my shoulder. Rhys is an arm’s length behind me, his blazer slung over one shoulder, a frown worrying his face. He hadn’t thought to take off his shoes.
“How did you find me?” I ask absently.
“I just,” he shrugs, embarrassed, “looked out the window. Your direct reports spotted you, and the consensus was that you were not in your right mind. The girl with the tight ponytail, ah, Pollyanna…”
“Paulina?”
“Yes. That’s the one. She started panicking, screaming, ‘She’s gone into the sea! She’s gone into the sea!’ That lit a fire under the rest of your direct reports, and they all began freaking out, ineffectually trying to organize a rescue party. And that’s where I come in.”
Rhys takes a cautious step forward like he’s inching toward a jumper on a bridge.
“You’ve always loved the ocean, and I hope, given what’s happened today,” he chooses his words carefully, “you don’t plan to live at the bottom of it.
So please, Carina…” He reaches for me, “Take my hand. There’s so much to live for. ”
I stare at his earnest expression. Oh dear. He thinks I’m going to line my pockets with stones and end myself because I’ve ended my career. How far-fetched. How utterly morbid.
My lips twitch despite my somber mood. A giggle escapes, trailed by another and another, and the next thing I know, I’m tossing my head back in a fit of hysteria.
My sides hurt so badly that I hunch over and collapse onto the sand.
Rhys waits until I lapse into a heavy hiccupping fit before ruching up his pants and taking a seat next to me.
“God, I hated that job.” I let out a breath, feeling, for the first time in months, like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
“I can’t tell you how much work went into filling the shoes I invented for myself, how many storylines I had to keep straight.
And in the midst of juggling multiple plates, as if I didn’t have enough going on, Sam tosses in his dick. ”
“That’s...” Rhys shakes his head, a touch of humor lifting his shoulders. “That’s a pickle I can’t say I wish on my worst enemy.”
I snort. “It was pretty crazy after I left, huh?”
He takes in a huge lungful of sea air. “Between Sam’s mom chewing him out, the board demanding answers, and your direct reports zooming around the room like chickens with their heads cut off, I’d say you’ve stirred up quite the circus.”
I grimace. “That bad, huh?”
He shoots me a lopsided smile, his eyes lighting up in admiration. “I can say, with absolute certainty, that I’ve never been to a more exciting board meeting than the one you just held. It’ll probably go down in history as the most epic rage quit ever.”
As reality sets in, I rub my brow. “I guess I really outdid myself… not in a good way.”
“So what are your plans now?” he asks, studying my somber profile.
I’m silent for a while, keeping my eyes on the crashing waves. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” I yank off another kelp pod and pop it between my fingers. “I guess I’m taking a break whether I want to or not.”
Rhys finally yanks off his shoes one by one. “You don’t have to.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“After you left, the board held an emergency meeting.”
“About me?” I can imagine them talking about my unorthodox behavior the moment I set foot out the door.
Rhys nods. “You were definitely the catalyst.” He dumps a stream of sand from his shoe. “Someone called a ‘vote of no confidence’ and, well, long story short,” he dumps sand from his other shoe, “CEO Grab Ass is hereby demoted to just ‘Grab Ass.’”
I’m glad I’m already sitting down. “Sam’s out?”
He nods. “Sam’s out. It turns out you’re not the only one at the company on the receiving end of Sam’s lewd photos.”
“What?” I whirl on Rhys, gobsmacked. “Who else?”
“Sasha from R now, I can’t stand to listen to such undeserved praise without violently cringing.
My imposter syndrome, always present, is like a pimple coming to a head.
It’s time to burst the illusion. I can’t pretend anymore; the root of my unhappiness was trying to playact ASSET competence.
If I found this hard to listen to, it must be unbearable for Rhys, who, like the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes, saw me for who I was: a fraud. To add insult to injury, he did 90% of my work for me.
“Did you set them straight?” I ask offhandedly. As much as Rhys teased me in private, he would never humiliate me in public. That’s not the kind of guy he was.
I expected a facetious response, but Rhys takes my question seriously.
“I concurred,” he says matter-of-factly.
“I told them you had a natural ability to distill complex technical concepts into simple ideas the average person could understand and you were the perfect advocate for the ASSET in a company like Rylan, composed of normies who desperately needed ideas simplified into digestible sound bites.”
I suck in breath through my teeth. “You didn’t open with that, did you?”
“Why?” he frowns, oblivious to the fact that he was essentially calling the board stupid to their faces. “That was me trying to be nice.”