Chapter 21
There was blood on Emmett’s hands as he reached to silence his morning alarm: a dark, crusted smear across his palm, trailing grimy tracks down his wrist.
He pulled off his CPAP mask and sat up, gazing at his upturned palms. Bella came sniffing and he pushed her away with his forearm, afraid she might lick; he’d heard dogs carried germs in their mouths that could infect a cut.
But he wasn’t injured. There was no pain even when he squeezed his fists closed.
Cold realization washed over him: the blood wasn’t his.
He reached back into his memory of the previous night, found it hazy. The last thing he remembered was leading SAT prep at Future Makers. Attendance was light; this time of year, the kids just wanted to hang out with their friends. Like Lizette always used to say, summer was for getting stupid.
Lizette. He needed to know she was okay, that this wasn’t—
He pulled the covers back and stuck his head into the hall. He could hear Tubbs clawing Lizette’s door, wanting out. What was he trying to get away from? Emmett’s heart pattered like the beat he rapped on her door. “Lizette? I’m coming in.” He burst into the dark room.
Two bodies rolled over in the bed and stared blearily toward him. “What is it?” Lizette said.
Emmett stammered. “S-sorry, I just— Tubbs was crying. I’m gonna run him out.”
Armando groaned and Lizette’s head flopped onto the pillow.
“Come on,” Emmett whispered to the dogs, shutting the door behind them.
He stopped in the bathroom to wash his hands before taking them to pee.
The water flowed hot and dirty pink over his skin, staining the porcelain but tempering his panic.
It wasn’t Lizette’s blood. Of course it wasn’t. Why would it have been?
More important, if it didn’t belong to either of them, whose was it? Why couldn’t he remember?
A fresh wave of panic made his skin crawl. Implausible as it was, there was no other explanation: he had made someone (or something?) bleed, then blocked the whole thing out.
He’d never done anything like that before, had he? Emmett was a lot of things, but he wasn’t violent. He couldn’t even watch blood on-screen.
So then where had it come from?
Once he’d come back up with the dogs, he searched the apartment for some reasonable explanation—something he might have bloodied his hands on, a cut in Bella’s fur he might have touched in the night.
Nothing.
His mind whispered reminders of clinical side effects—short-term memory loss, impulsive outbursts—and he quickly shut them down. It couldn’t be that. Not now that the treatment was working so well.
He checked the time: he had to get to work. Maybe he should call in sick.
Then again, the distraction might be good for him.
He set about getting ready and finding something to eat.
Because now that the panic was abating, he realized he was ravenous.
Two hours into Emmett’s morning shift, Rick summoned him to his office for “a little chat.”
The request ripped an ulcer in the pit of Emmett’s stomach, compounding his lingering dread from earlier that morning.
What fresh hell awaited him now? He’d managed to avoid the manager’s office since the ass-crack incident heard around the store.
Apparently one of the supervisors had “somehow” found the security footage and sent it around to a bunch of staff. Jazz had begged him not to quit.
He didn’t want to. Things had been getting better on the whole. His coworkers had been so complimentary about his weight loss, saying he looked incredible, wanting to know his secret.
Now Emmett feared he might be fired. Had Rick somehow found out about whatever happened the previous night? How could he? Emmett was just being paranoid.
He knocked on Rick’s door, which opened to reveal the manager reading baseball stats on his computer. He startled, minimized the window, and swiveled around. “Emmett. Come in.”
“You wanted to see me?” Emmett took his usual seat. “You’re not firing me, are you?”
“Ha!” Rick barked. “You’ve got a great sense of humor. I’ve always liked that about you.”
Emmett braced himself, suspecting—incorrectly, this time—that a joke was about to be made at his expense.
“So, Emmett. Emmett Bobemmett. As you know, we’ve had our ups and downs over the years. The occasional miscommunication, you might say.”
Jesus, Emmett thought. He is going to fire me.
“But I have to hand it to you. You’ve been doing one hell of a job these last couple of months.”
Emmett sat back in his seat. “I have?”
“We’ve all been saying it. You’re responsible, dependable. I never have to worry about you coming in late or calling in with a hangover. You do what needs to be done without having to be asked, and your customer service is ten out of ten. You could teach a class on it.”
Emmett didn’t know what to say. These things had always been true. Why was Rick just now noticing?
Don’t be stupid. You know why.
“Thank you, that—means a lot.”
“Glad to hear it. Because I want you to know how much we value you, and that we see a bright future for you at the store. You always lead by example and, well, we think it’s time we make it official.
I’d like to offer you a promotion to team leader for service and engagement.
I said you could teach a class on customer service—actually, I’d like you to do just that.
With your skills and your teaching background, I think you could really help us shape up in that area. ”
“Wow,” was all he could muster.
“Starting pay is $24.50 an hour, a good bit more than we’ve got you at now with room to grow. How does all that sound?”
“It sounds— I’m at a loss for words. Thank you.”
“You should be thanking yourself. You’ve earned it.” Still, Rick looked self-satisfied. “I’ll have HR write up the paperwork. Change will be effective next week. Now back to work.”
Rick turned toward his screen, then paused to add, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to tell you: Whatever you’re doing, good on you. That takes discipline. There’s obviously a lot more to you than I realized. I mean, a lot less, am I right? Ha!”
Emmett cringed at his own placatory laughter. “Right.”
He thanked Rick again and backed out of the room.
He was still half in shock as he returned to the sales floor, his emotions a jumble. It couldn’t have been better news, but the timing was all wrong. His first couple of years on the job, Emmett had run himself ragged trying to prove himself and earn a promotion. All this should have happened then.
But Rick was right. Emmett had earned it, even if the reward was a few years delayed. If people were only beginning to notice his good work now because of how he looked—well, that was the whole point of losing weight, wasn’t it?
He had every right to feel happy. Finally, people were starting to see the real him.