Chapter 8 - LEO
The mail room is loud in the way a bar is loud, busy, people shouting over each other. Carts rattle over tile. Packages thump into bins. Someone’s radio murmurs through a layer of static. Danny is arguing with the printer like it owes him money.
It should feel grounding. It doesn’t.
Ever since the corridor incident, I’ve been walking around with the uneasy sense that I’m standing on a mark that only I can’t see.
Like a spotlight has been bolted to the ceiling somewhere above my head, waiting to flick on.
To place me back into an awkward position and to have the full focus of the one man you want to avoid if you want to keep your job.
I’ve been selected as the prime idiot of the hotel.
And here I am, back in the very same corridor, grabbing the correct stack from my pile to hand to one of the office staff when that awful feeling of ‘something bad is about to happen’ overflows me. That incident with Ethan has given me anxiety when delivering mail.
As I move closer to the girls to hand over the mail, this feeling intensifies.
It’s that sensation you get when you sense someone is watching you from behind.
I slowly turn to see where Ethan stands ten feet away, just outside of his office, as if he’s always been there and I’m the one who wandered into his orbit.
The hallway is consumed by him, I’ve seriously never met a more commanding person in my life.
I want to fidget with how he is staring at me in a way I can’t decipher between irritance, or that he wants to erase me from this planet. My stomach drops into my shoes as he just stands there. What am I supposed to do? Does he want me to speak? Oh, fuck it. This is awkward enough as it is.
“Mr. Taylor,” I say in greeting.
He doesn’t answer. Weird. He just studies me, but not rudely, just with eerie focus as if he can read my thoughts. This guy is so fucking odd. The longer he watches me, the more freaked out I get, and before I know it, I take a step back.
To my horror, he takes one step forward, and before I know it the distance between us collapses into something uncomfortably intimate and wrong.
What the hell is going on with this guy?
Every time I see him he becomes more…engrossed.
Maybe even infatuated? I don’t know what the right word is but it’s not normal.
“You’re carrying the wrong tray,” he says, his eyes unblinking, waiting for a response. This is like being in an alternate universe.
I glance down, confused by his comment. “I…this is for the executive offices.”
“Yes.”
“That’s where I was heading.”
“Not today.”
My pulse jumps. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re assigned to hotel services deliveries today,” he continues. “Danny made the change.”
Danny did not make the change. Or did he and I wasn’t listening? But I nod anyway, because his voice doesn’t leave room for arguments. It doesn’t rise or fall. It simply exists, solid and unyielding.
“I’ll take it,” he says.
Before I can respond, he lifts the tray from my hands where his fingers brush mine. It’s brief and clinical, but I don’t miss the line of heat that runs up my arm. What is he doing, taking the tray?
“Follow me,” he says.
My heart stumbles. Why does he want me to follow him? Oh shit, is he gonna fire me?
“Sir —” I start, but he raises his hand.
“Don’t call me that. It’s Ethan.”
He turns toward his office and I follow because my body doesn’t remember how to refuse an order. What the hell is going on? And why would the owner of this hotel chain want to talk to the mailroom boy?
Inside his office the space is massive, sterile and expensive. Glass walls. Black furniture. A desk that looks more like a command center than a place to write emails.
He sets the tray down neatly on his desk, and then he turns back to me.
His eyes drop to my hands again, where the scars feel louder under his gaze. I resist rubbing my fingers over the faint lines and try not to draw attention to them, which turns out to be a waste of time.
“Where do those scars come from?” he asks with a slight tilt of his head.
I glance down at my clasped hands and I want to lie but I don’t.
“I work with metal,” I say. “Sculptures.”
“How long?”
“Most of my life.”
“What kind?”
“Industrial. Scrap. Steel. Sometimes copper.”
“Dangerous work,” he says, sounding almost robotic in his replies.
“If you’re careless,” I say with a joking tone, trying to break whatever this heavy atmosphere is.
He studies the scars again, closely now. “You weren’t careless.”
Those words don’t hit like a compliment, more like a diagnosis from a doctor, but I go with the flow and shrug, feeling very out of place and unsure as to why I’m here.
“It happens.”
I shift my weight on my feet, suddenly too aware of the space he’s occupying as he steps forward. The way the air seems to solidify into a physical form around him. The way my thoughts are starting to feel like birds trapped inside glass, pecking violently to get out.
“You should be careful,” he says.
“With the equipment? I’m more experienced now.”
“With people who pretend to be equipment.”
Huh. I don’t know what that means and I’m not sure I want to with how familiar it hits, like he is hinting at something else. I’m way beyond my comfort zone now as this is the oddest interaction yet.
“I should get back to work,” I say.
“Yes.”
He doesn’t move and neither do I, like I’ve been glued to the ground. For a few seconds, the room vibrates with something that isn’t sound, more like an invisible cloak that’s trying to wrap itself around me.
Finally able to move my feet, I walk out with sweaty palms, and get a sudden whiff of his scent. He smells clean. Cold. Expensive, of course, like someone that doesn’t sweat. Lucky him.
When I make it back to the mail room, Danny looks at me like I’ve returned from a war zone.
“Dude,” he whispers. “What did you do? One of the girls said the boss called you into his office?”
“Nothing. He was just asking about our mail system,” I say. Why am I lying?
“You were in there for at least ten minutes. He never talks to the mail guys. Ever.”
“It felt longer. He’s fucking scary.”
He snorts. “That man gives me stress hives.”
I don’t laugh because he doesn’t know how honest my assessment of Ethan is. But I try to push it to the back of my mind, unwilling to look too far into it. The guy clearly has some social skill issues and that’s okay.
The rest of the day unfolds in fragments. Sorting. Logging. Delivering.
At four-thirty, the phone for the mail room rings and I answer.
“Mail room, Leo speaking.”
“Leo, Mr. Taylor would like to see you immediately in his office,” a harsh toned female voice says down the phone.
“I’ll be right up,” I say, before putting the phone down, allowing panic to take over. My throat tightens as my mouth goes dry. This can’t be good.
“Danny, I just gotta go upstairs, I’ve left one of the mail trays up there and they want it removed,” I say to him as I walk out the door, avoiding any comeback questions.
I ride the elevator to the top floor like someone heading directly into the sky. I go up to his office and knock on the door before entering.
Ethan stands by the window, hands clasped behind his back, city stretching out beneath him like a diagram.
“Come in,” he says.
I walk inside, my mouth dry, trying to think what I may have done or said earlier that would have annoyed him in some way.
“Why are you frowning? You look…concerned,” he observes.
“I wasn’t expecting to be called up again. Did I do something?”
“No.”
Silence.
“I’ve been thinking about your metal work.”
“Really? You haven’t seen it.”
“I’ve seen your hands.”
I flinch.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s enough.”
He moves over to his seat and relaxes back into the high back leather chair. Even seated he has a dominating aura.
“I host private dinners,” he says. “Collectors and investors. People who like to believe money is its own personality.”
I manage a small, uncertain smile.
“I’d like you to attend.”
I freeze. He wants me to what?
“What? Sorry, I don’t understand. Why?”
“You should stop questioning so much. I think you should attend.”
“With… my sculptures?”
“With your presence.”
The words land heavier than they should.
“Your wife should attend too,” he adds smoothly.
Sarah. Wait, how does he know about Sarah?
“You know I’m married?”
“I know everything about my employees and their partners.”
An ice cold chill touches my body. His intensity and lack of emotion is chilling. His attention to detail does not make you feel special, it’s terrifying.
“She’d like that,” I say. Thinking of Sarah and her endless quest for greed. Her hunger for a life that doesn’t feel like a hallway with no doors.
“I imagine she would,” he hisses under his breath, talking like he knows her. I want to bite back at the remark, but he continues to speak.
“I want to discuss funding,” he continues. “Studio space. Materials. Exposure.”
My heart gallops at the speed of a train. I can feel heat rise from my neck and spread up to my face. Warmth blooms and I know my face is blushing. This is unknown territory to me. This attention and belief, and he hasn’t even seen my work. But I still don’t get why…why is he doing this?
“That’s —” I struggle to finish the sentence. “That’s incredible.”
He watches my reaction carefully. There is no warmth, just one hundred percent focus on my reaction. If I didn’t know any better I would think Ethan is an alien who has never met a human before, as he seems so perplexed by my responses.
“Dinner tomorrow evening,” he says. “I’ll send the address to your phone.”
“You already have my number?”
“Yes.”
Of course he does.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Because your talent is being wasted.”
“That’s not —”
“You sort paper,” he interrupts. “You burn your hands at night for free.”
His voice sharpens just enough to cut.
“You deserve more than survival.”
The words shouldn’t affect me the way they do. They shouldn’t slide under my ribs and twist. It makes me think of Sarah’s frustration of what I do and my dreams of my own workshop. Then I think of my father’s voice telling me I could make anything.
“I don’t understand why you care,” I admit.
He stands and moves over toward me. It feels predatory the way he is looking at me, like he is about to kidnap me or hurt me.
“I don’t care,” he says quietly. “I invest.”
“In people?”
“In outcomes.”
I nod slowly, and look down at the ground as the eye contact is too much. My head feels full of cotton, unable to comprehend what’s happening. I need to get out of here.
“I need to get back to work,” I say.
“Yes, you may go.”
I shudder at the dominance in his words, the order that I’m being given permission to leave. It’s a foreign feeling as butterflies swarm my stomach. This is crazy.
As I turn to leave, he speaks again.
“Leo.”
I stop and turn back.
“You should tell your wife,” he says, “that this could change everything.”
I don’t answer, because I already know that. I can already hear her trying to control this situation and guide me with her never ending advice, and the “moving on up” speeches.
The rest of the day drags. I mislabel two packages and I forget to log a delivery. Danny notices, gives me a look but doesn’t comment. He talks about some argument he had with his girlfriend, about the new restaurant down the street, a rumor involving a celebrity guest.
I nod in the right places, but my thoughts keep circling back to Ethan.
To Ethan’s voice. To the way he spoke, and how he said my name like it was something he owned.
The way he has just decided to walk in and change my life.
I’m scared of how this man bothers me so much, but that’s something I will bury for now as it’s not something I want to read too much into.
Finally, when the end of the day arrives, I leave the building, noticing how the air outside feels thin. The city rushes around me, loud, careless, and alive, and I walk through it like someone who has just been handed a beautiful object wrapped in warning labels.
Excitement trembles all over my body, but so does dread, and I don’t know which one is louder.
I only know that something has begun. And I’m standing too close to see the dangers.