17. LARRY
17
LARRY
The office is weird today. Whatever meeting Kyle had with Taylor this morning has absolutely put him on edge because I can barely get through to him. His emails have been short and he won’t even respond to my texts. Something has happened and he’s just not telling me what it is. It’s making me tense.
That and the message from Wes has me one hundred percent on edge at all times, like every time a door opens at the office it’s going to be Wes coming in to suddenly make everything worse for me.
I haven’t told Kyle yet. I’m hoping it will all just go away.
The Kyle who said goodbye to me at his apartment this morning seems a whole world away, and suddenly we’re back to the slightly more surly version of Kyle that had been there when I’d first started working here. He’s distant, he’s cold, and I can’t seem to get to him. He’s all business.
“You okay?” Peter asks. “You seem off today.”
“Just that Mr Carter seems a little bit off,” I reply. “There’s a meeting in his calendar this morning with Taylor. What do you think that was about? Could that be what’s causing this?”
Peter eyes me carefully over the desk bank, his face twisting like he’s trying to find a way to say something that makes him feel uncomfortable. There’s a tension bubbling away in my stomach, the kind that makes me want to get up and run away, but I can’t do that because I’m at work and I have to face up to this like a grown-up.
“What?” I ask. “Peter, tell me what’s up?”
Peter makes his way around the desk, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one is listening in. He lowers his voice. “Someone in the office—not me—please, god, don’t think it’s me,” he says. “But someone else in the office told Taylor about Kyle’s and your… situation.”
I look at Peter carefully, trying to figure out exactly what it is that he knows, but I know what he knows, he knows everything. And it’s enough to make my stomach drop, because I’ve gotten Kyle into a huge amount of trouble simply by being here and I know it.
“Fuck,” I breathe. “Right.”
“Yes,” Peter says. “And Taylor had a word with him about it this morning, and now he’s having to talk to the exec about what to do about it because…” He lowers his voice even more, to barely a whisper, certainly not loud enough that anyone around us could hear. “Because someone sleeping with their assistant is not a good look for the company. It looks bad. It looks like people are either sleeping their way into positions, or sleeping their way to better ones, and…” He shakes his head. “The company can’t take having a scandal like that blow up.”
“So he’s acting off with me because…” I trail off. He’s going to have to break things off with me, and Kyle being Kyle, he doesn’t know how to talk to me about that. “Because it’s over.”
“I’m sorry, Larry,” Peter says. “If it helps, and maybe it doesn’t I don’t know, I had no idea. You hid it really well while you were here.”
“We were always professional,” I say. “We wanted to leave everything at the door if we could, just do the work and then go and live our lives. We thought it would be okay. But I guess it isn’t.”
“Sorry,” Peter replies. “If you need to talk about it, just let me know.”
“Thanks,” I reply, watching as Kyle comes back from yet another meeting and doesn’t make eye contact with me as he goes back into the office. He’ll want to talk eventually, want to have a chat about our future… or lack thereof. How can I have gone from being so happy, so excited to be with him, to everything just falling apart. It doesn’t seem fair. But then, life isn’t fair.
I carry on with the rest of my day, Kyle excusing himself early to go to a meeting with Taylor, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re talking more about what’s to be done about our relationship. My first instinct is to call Rosemary, but I know she’s got an event at the bookshop tonight and I don’t want to cause her any more bother.
So I just make my way home, grabbing a bit of food on the way to make later. It’ll be the first evening I’ve spent alone since Kyle’s and my first date. Which is… a strange thought. I feel oddly empty to be walking home with the knowledge I’m not going to see him, and even worse knowing that I got him into trouble. I shouldn’t have pursued it. I should have just let it go. I’m an idiot.
I make my way to my apartment building and I see someone waiting outside. For a moment my heart skips and I wonder if Kyle has come to talk to me, to make sure I’m okay, to tell me that everything’s going to be fine and we can figure this out together.
But it’s not Kyle.
It’s a face I recognise that feels like it’s from a whole other life.
Wesley is waiting outside my apartment. And my heart sinks.