Chapter 16
The breakfast was good, that was the only good thing that happened in the whole day. I walked my daily to the station and got the subway, nice. I had a very important meeting related to Arclight project so I had left earlier than usual.
The subway broke down before the third stop, between stations, in the tunnel, where the lights flickered twice and then the announcement came through the speaker in a flat tone.
"Technical fault. Please remain seated. We apologize for the inconvenience. Engineers are on the way. Expected wait time unknown."
I checked my phone. 7:40.
The Arclight meeting was at nine. I had left thirty minutes earlier than usual. It would be fine.
I stood in the stationary carriage with my laptop bag on my shoulder and my phone already open to the cab app and told myself it was fine.
The traffic was the kind that came from a thousand people simultaneously deciding to take alternate routes after a subway failure, the kind where you watched the minutes on your phone and did the math and kept adjusting the math, hoping the answer would change. It didn't change.
It would be manageable. I would be five minutes late at most, ten at the absolute worst, and I would apologize and take my seat and it would be fine.
Oliver's name was on my screen when I opened my phone. Four missed calls, several texts. I scrolled past them without reading and opened the cab app.
Then Anne's name. A text sent this morning, bright and casual, like a message from a friend.
'Hey!! Haven't talked in forever lol. We should go shopping this weekend, that new place opened near the mall ??'
I stared at it for a moment
.
Then closed the message and booked the cab and stood on the nearest pickup point.
She had sent that. She had sat somewhere this morning Oliver's apartment, probably, in a kitchen that used to feel like mine too and typed that message with her fingers and pressed send and gone back to whatever she was doing.
Like nothing had happened. Like I was someone she had simply fallen out of touch with through the natural drift of busy lives.
Like the only reason we hadn't spoken recently was scheduling.
The cab took ten minutes to arrive. The traffic was everything the delay had promised it would be.
I walked into the meeting twenty minutes late.
The room was already full, the Arclight clients on one side of the table, our team on the other, Sienna at the head with her hands folded and her expression doing nothing at all, which was somehow worse than if it had been doing something. Every head turned when I opened the door.
"Sorry," I said. "The subway-"
"Sit down," Sienna said.
I sat down and opened my laptop bag to pull out the presentation drive.
My hands went still inside the bag.
I checked the front pocket. The main compartment. The small zip pocket on the side where I kept things I needed quickly.
Shit. Shit shit shit!
The drive was on my desk at home.
I could see it exactly sitting next to the lamp where I had left it last night after reviewing the files, meaning to put it in my bag first thing in the morning, forgetting completely.
I closed the bag.
The meeting continued around me and I sat there and smiled and answered questions from memory when they were directed at me and made notes I didn't need and all the while something in my chest was doing something very loud and very unpleasant that I was concentrating very hard on not showing.
Sienna called me into her office after the clients left.
She closed the door.
I knew before she opened her mouth that this was going to be bad.
I had worked for her long enough to understand the difference between her regular sharp and what was coming, this was something personal, something that had been sitting behind her eyes since I walked into that meeting late and empty handed,
something that had nothing to do with protocol and everything to do with how much this specific account meant to her for reasons I didn't fully understand.
"Do you know," she said, "what it took to get this client to give us a second meeting?"
"I know. I'm sorry-"
"I don't want your sorry." Her voice was even. Controlled. Which was worse than if she had raised it.
"I want to understand how someone who has been on this account for three months, who personally requested lead responsibility, who I defended to the board when two senior members said she wasn't ready?
I want to understand how that person walks into the most important meeting of this quarter without the presentation materials."
I didn't say anything.
There wasn't anything to say.
"If you cannot handle this," she said, "then tell me now. Not after. Not when the client has already sat in a room and watched us scramble. Now. Because I would rather reassign it than watch you drown in it."
She wasn't wrong.
That was the worst part. Every word was accurate and I knew it and she knew I knew it and the professional thing, the correct thing, was to stand there and take it and be better.
So I did. I stood there and I took it and I told her it wouldn't happen again and she looked at me for a long moment with those unreadable eyes and then she said "see that it doesn't repeat" and turned back to her laptop and that was the end of it.
I walked back to my desk and sat down and stared at my screen. I felt really bad, I was too lost in myself to notice Anne approaching my desk.
"Here's your favourite" she said, with a smile that had apparently decided the past several weeks hadn't happened.
I looked at the latte. Then at her. Then I picked up my things and moved to the empty desk near the window without saying anything because there was nothing to say to someone who had looked at what she had done and decided the appropriate response was a coffee offering and a shopping invitation and
a smile like nothing had changed.
____________________________________
Lunch I spent on the terrace because the office felt too small and the inside of my own head felt too loud and sometimes the only thing that helped was open sky and cold air and the specific anonymity of a city that didn't care about your problems.
Oliver found me anyway.
I heard the door behind me.
"Hey." Oliver's voice. Even though I didn't see it I knew that there was a smile playing on his lips, a little smug. I had known him long enough to know that.
"I saw the gift by the way. The watch." A pause. "The thought you put into it. How much you must have-"
"Oliver."
"I just want you to know that I know how much you care. I think we should talk. Really talk. Because what happened doesn't have to be-"
"Oliver." My voice came out flat. "Stop."
His smile held for a moment longer than it should have.
"You're still angry," he said. "That's okay. That's-"
"I'm not angry," I said. Which was true. The anger had burned itself out weeks ago.
"It wasn't something I planned, it just happened, and if you would just-"
"Stop." I stood up. "There's nothing left to-"
"You're overreacting."
His voice changed. The warmth went somewhere and what replaced it was something edged, the voice of someone who had been patient by their own measure and had run out. "You're acting like I murdered someone. It was a mistake. People make mistakes."
I ignored his words and made my way to the door, he held my wrist before I could.
"You always do this," he continued. "You make everything so serious. I couldn't feel the spark for a long time, El, I need you to understand that. It wasn't working."
He let go of my wrist, ran a hand through his hair, the gesture of someone who had been patient long enough.
"Look at Anne. She's warm, she's fun, she makes you feel she puts effort in. Into how she looks, how she acts. You barely put effort into yourself. How do you expect me to look at only you?"
The slap came before I decided to do it.
The sound of it was very loud on the empty terrace.
Oliver stared at me. His hand went to his cheek. I stood there breathing, my palm stinging, my heart somewhere completely outside my chest. I felt like someone squeezed my heart inside my chest.
"Yes, I was never enough for you. Then stop looking for me."
I said and walked back inside.
There was still a lot of time. I opened my PC and started working.
Checking mails, researching, sorting documents, anything cause working was the only thing that stopped me from thinking about what had happened, his words.
Because I knew if I did, I won't be able to control my tears.
Not now, I can't, there are people around, I'm outside...
I didn't want unwanted attention. I just wished to be invisible for the rest of the day.
You barely put effort into yourself.
The cursor blinked on the screen.
How do you expect me to see only you.
I shook my head and refocused, I couldn't afford these thoughts now.
It was seven when I finally closed my laptop. The last bus had gone. I opened my phone to book a cab and found the screen black, completely dead, the battery already gone. Could this day get any worse?
I just want to go home. The next bus was in 2 hours... I'll just walk, it's a couple of kilometres... I looked at my heels and with a deep breath started walking. Surely it was a long day.
My legs hurt so bad... I didn't know who invented heels but I know for sure it must be some man. They're so uncomfortable and impractical, only the ones who use it will know the pain. On the second thought I wasn't sure why would a woman design such an uncomfortable thing for her own use...
Those were the thoughts I had to keep thinking to avoid the pressing words on my mind. I didn't want to recall it, I'll cry. I am not a kid anymore, I don't cry, I won't.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally reached the building, finally. The heel broke while I climbing the stairs, at this point I wasn't even expecting the misfortune to stop. I felt too tired, too numb, I just wanted to go home.
The smell hit me before I opened the door fully. Something real, something warm. The kind of smell that meant someone had been in a kitchen with actual ingredients and actual time and actual intention.
He was standing near the door.
Jacket on.
Like he had been about to leave. Like he had been waiting and then decided that waiting was no longer sufficient and had been about to do something about it.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
And something in me- something that had been holding on since the subway at eight this morning, since Oliver's hand on my wrist, since the cold pavement under my bare feet, since three years ago maybe, since longer
Just
Let go.
Because I had forgotten. In the middle of everything I had forgotten what it felt like- to open a door and have someone on the other side of it.
To come home to something other than a quiet apartment and the particular loneliness of a space that held only yourself.
To matter enough to someone that they put on their jacket without anyone asking.
The tears I held all day almost became impossible to hold any longer, my chin started trembling.
He looked awkward, I knew that look. When someone didn't know how to react or how to stop the other person but doesn't know how to. Still, he came forward... Not just standing there. He stopped infront of me, his hands awkwardly raised not knowing what to do with them.
My head found his shoulder before I told it to.
The first sob came quietly, then they grew louder.
My hands found the front of his jacket, and the whole day came out of me at once the subway and the drive and the meeting and Sienna's voice and Oliver's words and the broken heel and the cold pavement and the three years and all of it, all of it, finally finding somewhere to go.
I don't remember how long it has been since I cried like this, like there was no need to hold on, like I was a baby.
He didn't say anything nor did he move away.