Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
ABBEY
A few days after our sidewalk breakup—not that I should call it a breakup if we were only together for such a short time—Wil doesn’t show up for his opening shift.
The roads were slick on the drive in and the snow’s picking up.
My traitorous heart seizes with worry, hoping that something hasn’t happened to him.
Finally, the gate gives, and he slams it open. He unlocks the interior set of doors and sprints to the beeping security panel on the wall. Once he’s punched in his code and the beeping stops, he walks back over to a group of confused employees.
“What?” He’s out of breath. “I’ve opened before.”
“Yeah, what, in like, the eighties?” Jimmy snorts.
“Very funny.”
“Where’s Wil? Everything okay?” Jimmy asks. Good. If he asks, I don’t have to.
“Everything’s fine. He has a family thing. In Arizona.” For some reason, Jeremy looks at me when he says this. I didn’t even know he had family in Arizona. I know very little about Wil Wilshire, when it’s all said and done.
“Good time to go to Arizona,” Jimmy says. “We’re supposed to get a foot of snow today.”
By mid-morning, we’ve gotten at least four inches of wet, heavy snow and maybe four fans. Kevin volunteers to go home early, and I call off one of the closers. Even I’m bored. I’m so bored, I get a wild hair and follow it up to the Dugout.
Jeremy’s sitting in the office, henpecking out an email. “Hey,” he says, not looking up. “Please tell me the cashiers are ringing people out and not standing around gossiping.”
“No, they’re seeing who can catch the most M&Ms in their mouth.”
Jeremy looks over and rolls his eyes. “Need something?”
“Is there an employee handbook around here somewhere?”
He waves at a shelf behind him. “Up there, maybe? Whatcha looking for?”
Not surprisingly, I don’t find a handbook. “Does Hometown have some sort of policy against… uh, spending time with your teammates outside of work?
“You mean dating your teammates?”
“Sure,” I say. “Yes. Dating.”
He’s quiet for a long time. So long, in fact, that I have to prod him. “Jeremy? Hello?”
“That policy is more of a technicality. We kind of turn a blind eye unless the alleged relationship causes problems.”
“If you’re going to go to the trouble of writing the policy, shouldn’t you make sure it’s enforced?”
He snorts. “This company wouldn’t exist if that policy was enforced. I can name at least a dozen Hometown Electronics marriages off the top of my head, including my own.”
“You met Annie at Hometown?”
He nods. “Look, I know why you’re asking, and I’m really sorry.”
My cheeks heat so fast and so hot, I could probably melt all the snow in the parking lot. “Sorry for what?”
“You know.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, you do.”
Wait, how does he know? This is humiliating. I never should have come up here. Damn this snowstorm, and damn Wil, and damn New Year’s Eve.
No. I’ll never regret New Year’s Eve. As long as I live, if that’s all I can have of him, I’ll never regret it.
“How are your interviews going?” Jeremy asks.
How in the world does he know about my interviews? “Wh-what are you talking about?”
He rolls his eyes again. “You know the application system isn’t private, right? I know who’s applying for what and where.”
“That’s—that’s kind of unprofessional.”
“For sure. There’s a glitch in the system.
But is that what you really want to do? I’m not asking because I don’t want you to leave the store, although obviously I don’t.
I’m asking because this retail gig is not for the faint of heart, especially if you’re moving away from family.
I took a sales manager position in Iowa right after college and it was terrible. Hawkeyes fans everywhere.” He shudders.
I don’t know anymore. I don’t know if I want to move to Baxter or Cedar Rapids, so far away from my friends and family. I don’t even know that I want to move to another store here in the Twin Cities. I don’t know anything.
“I guess?”
“Oh, yeah, that sounded convincing.”
He’s right. I need to own this. I need to fake it till I make it, like Glamma would say. Everything’s always working out… never mind.
I take a deep breath and raise my chin. “I’m good at what I do. My team respects me and looks to me for guidance. I’d be an excellent manager. And, yeah, maybe I cry once in a while, but I am not faint of heart.”
“That’s better. That’s the Abbey I know.” He turns back to the computer. “Now will you get out of here and go try to sell something?”
There’s no one to sell anything to, and a couple of hours—and a few more inches of snow—later, Jeremy makes the call to close the store.
It takes me over an hour to get home, the snow coming at me horizontally, the roads slippery.
I’m thankful that Dad not only bought me a new battery last month when my car died in the parking lot but also sprang for four new tires.
The parking lot at our apartment building hasn’t been plowed, and I find myself wishing that I lived in a nicer place, something like Wil’s, with underground parking.
As much as I try to not think about Wil, I’m always thinking about Wil.
Brianna’s home already, too, because even the mall closed. She’s watching a recorded episode of Days of Our Lives. “You’ve got a couple of messages,” she says as she fast-forwards through the commercials.
I grab a Diet RC from the fridge and press play on the answering machine. There’s a message from Glamma and one from Tamsa.
“Hey, Abbey, call me back. There’s some stuff going on and I need to ask you a question.” She sounds down, tired, not her usual enthusiastic self. “Call me as soon as you get this.” Her voice cracks.
I take my off-brand soda into the bedroom and call her office number. There’s no answer, so I try her home phone, and then her cell.
“Oh my god, finally,” she says after she picks up.
“You only left the message like an hour ago.” I sink back against the shams and throw pillows on my bed. “What’s up?”
“Can you meet me for a drink?”
“Seriously? Have you looked outside lately? There’s at least a foot of snow. Didn’t you go to the office today?”
“Well. No.”
“Tam, what’s going on?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.” She sighs. “I’ve got something to ask you, and, like, this would totally be easier at a bar, with one of those cocktails in a big goldfish bowl.”
“Tamsa!” I practically shout. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I need to know why you really left TC Weekly.”
Bam. It’s like someone’s dropped a rock from an overpass and shattered my windshield as I drive past—unexpected, shocking, unbelievable.
I haven’t let myself think of that day in weeks.
The chaos of the holiday season, and now, what happened with Wil, has taken up all the space surrounding that dark corner of my memory.
I swallow hard. “You know what happened. My position was eliminated.”
“I think you’re lying,” she snaps.
“Wh-why do you think that?”
“Because they hired someone for the music and entertainment job—Laura, and she was really good—”
“Was?” I interrupt.
“Yeah, I’ll get to that,” she says. “They filled your lifestyles position, too. Not right away, but a few weeks later, this guy named Clark. He’s on your side of the cube, and he stinks, Abbey. Like, literally and figuratively. Body odor and bad grammar.”
She’s rambling now, but I don’t stop her with all the questions swirling in my mind.
“Then Kim retired out of nowhere, and Slick Dick announced a reorg. Ryan would take over lifestyles, too, and now all of a sudden, half the staff reports to him. But there’s something going on, I know it.
Kim wasn’t planning to retire so soon. The real kicker is that a couple of days after Christmas, Laura doesn’t show up.
Ryan tells us she’s done, just like that.
Like Carina. Like you. So, tell me, Abbey, why would she do that? ”
The pit monster wakes in a fury and bangs its shoulder into my rib cage.
Oh, god. I don’t want to talk about this.
I don’t want to tell her. I’m over it. It’s behind me.
I love my job at Hometown, and I’m going to make something of it.
I’m sending Hal two or three articles for every issue of the zine, and maybe someday, I’ll publish my own.
“How would I know?” I ask. “I don’t even know her.”
She huffs out a breath. “I think… I think that there’s something you’re not telling me. Maybe about Carina? Like, did you find out something or did he say something about her… I don’t know. I just know that things have been off since you left.”
She doesn’t ask the question I’m dreading. Somehow, she hasn’t connected the dots between what was rumored to have happened with Carina and what happened to me that day in Ryan’s office.
“I don’t know anything about Carina.” But… wait. Why is she asking this? “Tam, are you okay? Did—did Ryan do… or say… something to you? Is that why you’re asking about Carina?”
“No,” she says quickly—almost too quickly. “No. Just—if you think of something, remember anything at all, let me know, okay?”
I stare out the window at the wild, whirling snow for a long time and wait for the ache in my heart to lessen.
Coach, the GM at the Baxter store, sets up a phone interview.
On the call, he sounds more nervous than I do for some reason.
He asks a few questions and says that he’ll be in touch if they want to arrange an in-person interview.
The following day, he sends me an email: It was great chatting with me, he’s heard great things, I’m a great employee with great ideas, and it would be great to someday have me on his team, but I don’t quite have the experience he’s looking for.
Great. Fucking great. And this after my phone interview with Cedar Rapids came to a very quick dead end. That GM there told me he’d be in touch in a few days with next steps, and then, nothing.
I read the email from Coach again and then open the HEAS job board.
I apply for every merch manager and media team captain position available, even outside of the Midwest. Dinkytown.
Mankato, Minnesota. Joliet, Illinois. Golden, Colorado, close to Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
I’ve never been, but I could see myself living in Colorado.
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hometown Electronics recently announced an expansion into the Boston market.
Sure, Boston will still be in the Hometown spotlight, but I’d get away from the flagship and the corporate eyes and…
Wil. Wil who wanted me and then didn’t. And it turns out that the Boston team is in town this week and using the Performance Center for interviews.
I apply in three clicks. I think I’ll like New England.