Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
E lijah. Wednesday
“Um…Elijah? Are you even listening to me?” Barbara’s voice came to me as if it were filtered through cotton balls stuffing my ears.
Shaking my head as if to shake out the cotton, I reacted, “Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, right.”
Barbara stared at me, standing there in front of my desk as I sat bewildered behind it, pretending that I’d heard her. Being respectful of our positions, my secretary didn’t come right out and shake her own head at me, but it was obvious she was thinking it.
“Okay, no,” I surrendered. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“I asked you,” she said with her usual patience, “if everything was okay.”
It’s such a relative term, “okay.” It can mean different things to different degrees in different situations, and I really wasn’t in a frame of mind just then to sort it all out. It was better to come clean with her instead of lying and having her know I was lying. Of course, she wouldn’t call me out about it, but she would still be aware that I wasn’t leveling with her, and if nothing else I knew that I could always trust Barbara.
So, I tilted my head at the door, which was her cue to close it for privacy.
She returned to standing at my desk and calmly said, “I’m listening.”
With her rapt attention, I told her the whole story of what happened with Corinne. Mind you, I didn’t tell her about all the steaming-hot details of what I did to Corinne on her couch and in my bed. I just gave her enough of the facts that she could fill in the details herself, if she wanted. Not that I expected Barbara to paint pictures of my sex life in her head; she would just know how it was without my being blatant about it.
Barbara, like Ben, didn’t judge. But, she did ask a question that was more the kind of thing you’d ask a friend than a boss. “Was that really what you wanted to do?”
I couldn’t decide which one stung worse, the question or the honesty of my answer. “It’s not what I wanted. None of it is what should have happened to begin with, since she is my employee. But sometimes, the thing that isn’t necessarily appropriate is the thing that feels right. And with Corinne, it felt right.
“It’s just that she doesn’t deserve to have any of the crap from my past come down on her the way it did, and I could tell that she didn’t trust that it wouldn’t happen again. If I were in Corinne’s place, I wouldn’t trust that a thing like that wouldn’t happen again. So, I let her go, for her own good.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Barbara. And I waited for her to drop the other shoe. She was quick about it. “You ended things about five minutes after you’d started them, and you didn’t give either one of you a chance. You didn’t give yourself a chance to prove to her that you were better than your old life and the people you knew before, and you didn’t give Corinne a chance to really see how much better you really are. One little blow-up with your scummy ex-friend, and you let it sink the whole thing.”
It was depressing to hear her put it that way, but it was a somewhat different spin on the situation. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” I said.
“Elijah, Corinne didn’t know you then. She only knows the way you are now. Or, she was starting to, until you got scared of her being scared and called the whole thing off as fast as it started.
“If you’d shown that little persistence and been willing to give up so easily in business, you wouldn’t have been able to do any of the things you’ve done with your life. Persistence. Not giving up. That’s the ticket. You made a billion dollars that way. You can make a happy relationship that way. Just persist.”
“Persist? After that? ”
“Yes!” she said, more sternly than she’d ever spoken to me before, not at all like a subordinate. “Talk to her again! Admit your mistake! Give both of you another chance!”
“All right,” I gave in, feeling my secretary become something more like my mother. In fact my mother seldom spoke to me the way my secretary was doing. When I got a tongue-lashing, it was always from Dad. “I’ll talk to her. Eventually. Damned if I know what I’m going to say…”
“Try telling her how you really feel. Girls like it when guys are honest about their feelings. If you’re honest with her, she’ll respond.”
I thanked Barbara for giving me that loving little kick in the ass, and we both got back to work.
Later, Leo came in, hardly paying any attention to my state of mind; he was too focused on a spreadsheet that he had on his tablet. I was grateful for that. After Barbara, I didn’t feel up to playing whatever scene would have unfolded with my partner if he’d been more aware of how emotionally beaten-down I was. He just held up the tablet and what he had on his screen, gestured to the door, and called, “Meeting in five.”
At once, I flipped into business mode. I’d better be on my game now, or Leo would catch on that something was bugging me, and I’d have to play that scene that I didn’t want with him after all.
There were other scenes that I was looking forward to playing even less.