Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Rachel
“Hey, sorry you and Kell were both too sick to come celebrate last night,” John said as Rachel poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Kell was sick, too?” Nervous as all get out, Rachel looked around the office, on edge about seeing Kell after what happened.
“Yeah. Wonder if there was something on the food table here that made you both sick.” He looked suspiciously at a mostly empty box of donuts. “And you said one of the interns had food poisoning the other day. Better be more careful.”
“Right.” Rachel needed to guide the topic of conversation far, far away from Kell. “So, congrats to Jonas! How exciting.”
John’s eyes flashed briefly with envy.
“I know.” He held up both hands with fingers crossed. “Here’s hoping my number one choice comes through.”
“All the lucky job vibes are going to you, John. I’m sure you’re next.”
“You’re smart, Rachel. I should have applied to MBA programs. Save me all this stress.”
“Didn’t you say the idea of spending one more minute in a classroom made you want to gouge your eyes out?”
“That was before I started applying for jobs. Who knew something could be worse than grad school?”
“You’ll do fine.”
“I don’t want fine. I want the best.”
“Then be your best self.”
“Not my best. The best.”
“You sound like–” she almost said my dad, but didn’t want to go there, “–like someone on a mission.”
“That’s right.”
The main door swung open, in walked Kell Luview, and whatever Rachel was about to reply evaporated.
It was a warm, late spring day, and Kell was dressed more or less like every other guy in the office, in khakis and a cotton shirt.
But while the other guys all looked like undergrads who had been to the same Gap Outlet, Kell somehow stood out.
Their khakis were wrinkled and slightly baggy in the seat; his were pressed and followed the curve of his muscular ass.
They were mostly wearing navy-blue polos that had faded in the wash; his Oxford shirt cuffs were rolled back to expose his wrists in a casual way that Rachel found incredibly sexy. He had great taste.
In clothing, at least. Not so much in women.
Still mulling over what had happened last night, Rachel tried to figure out what she’d handled wrong. Kell was upset, which was understandable, but she felt like his anger was directed at her and not at all toward Alissa.
Maybe it was that she’d blindsided him. But if he didn’t believe her, Alissa could hurt him even more.
That’s what made Rachel decide to print out the email Karen had sent her and show it to him. It pained her to rub his nose in it–that wasn’t her intention–but it was proof, and Kell wasn’t a guy who ignored objective facts.
“Hey, Kell. Feeling better? You and Rachel eat from the same bad batch of donuts?” John called out. Kell came to a dead halt a few cubicles away, his gaze falling on Rachel with an intensity that made her flush.
“We definitely both experienced something yesterday that made us sick,” Kell answered slowly. John gave the food table another worried glance.
“I’m going out for lunch today,” he said firmly, before tossing the piece of Danish in his hand into the trash and heading for his desk.
Kell never took his eyes off Rachel. She met his look, so many questions swirling through her.
“Can we talk? Privately?” he asked. He seemed strangely closed off, but his words held a vulnerable undertone.
“Sure. Want to grab a conference room?” she asked. It was the only way to gain a modicum of privacy.
Without even nodding, he turned on one heel and headed straight for the furthest room, the one at the far corner of the offices. Clearly, he really wanted privacy.
Why? To yell at her?
Oh, don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. First of all, Kell was a grown man, a reasonable, intelligent guy who was emotionally attuned and not prone to flying off the handle, if a year of working together was any indication of his nature.
Second of all, they were at work.
Third of all, this spike of fear in her was bizarre. It wasn’t fear in the traditional sense. It was more of a deep worry that she had lost him as a friend.
Telling a painful truth to someone you care about was supposed to be a mark of true friendship.
Back home, Rachel’s parents were all about the surface; the minute you tried to go one layer deeper, the emotional tenor of the relationship changed.
For years, she’d tried to navigate that, confused when her inner divining rod said something was wrong.
She hadn’t been able to sort it all out until she’d gone off to college and had some distance from her family.
Each step toward the conference room felt like pushing a concrete block, but she forced herself to go. Kell held the glass door for her and as he closed it, her stomach dropped.
When he walked to the table and faced her, though, his eyes weren’t angry.
They were sad.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, intensely, so emotional that she almost cried on the spot. “You were right.”
A wave of tingling shot through her body, and her voice shook.
“You’re–what?”
“I’m sorry. After you left last night, I got a call from my Uncle Ted.” His eyes darted around the room, as if he were looking to see if anyone could hear him, which was ridiculous. “He told me Alissa had sent him an email and cc’d a MonDex account, and he wanted to know what was going on.”
“She’s already working for them?”
“I guess.” He sounded so despondent. “I don’t know. She’s been gone a lot. Busy all the time. I assumed it was for job interviews, but maybe she’s overlapping everything and hiding it from Karen?”
“We’re not allowed to do that! The fellowship has one more month.”
“I know. But that’s the least of my worries. She–I–damn it, Rachel, you were right! She used me to get access to my uncle. Which makes me a fool.”
“You are not a fool!”
“I’m a naive idiot who got used by a woman for my connections to someone in Maine government. I’m a sucker.”
“No, Kell! You’re a really nice, smart guy who got…”
“Taken advantage of.”
“Have you talked to Alissa? Did she try to explain all of this?”
“She’s avoiding my calls and texts. The meeting with Uncle Ted was supposed to be next week. He’s canceling it. I assume I’ll finally hear from her when that happens.”
“Oh, boy. I am so sorry. Who knew we had to worry about this?”
His head tilted at her question.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard enough, you know? Graduating from college, fighting for the right fellowship, figuring out how to align your personal beliefs with professional goals. And then there’s all the adulting.”
Kell snorted.
“But then we also have to worry about someone wanting to sleep with us to get what they want in their career? Who knew nonprofit could be so cutthroat? If I wanted that, I’d just go into corporate and make four times the money!”
“Which is exactly what Alissa is doing,” Kell said, his voice hollow. An angry red flush took over his features, making his dark hair look darker, gray eyes like storm clouds.
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with working in corporate. It’s just not what I wanted.”
“Me, either,” he said. “NGO or government work for me.”
“I’m so sorry Alissa’s doing this to you.”
“Well,” he said slowly, deliberately, the word drawn out as if he were making a decision, “I’m not going to let her do it anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m breaking up with her. She’s been avoiding me ever since I got her that meeting with my uncle.
She’s lied to me–either overtly or by not telling me stuff, like the tiny fact that she’s working for an oil company that’s trying to run a pipeline through my home state, a pipeline that would cut through the land in my town and jeopardize the hot springs. ”
“It would affect Love You directly?”
“Yep. And she’s blowing me off.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, holding the screen up to her. “See? Seventeen messages sent in the last four days. Ten of them yesterday. Plus six calls and four voicemails.”
“Maybe her phone died?”
He smiled at her, the expression on his face so sad that she moved closer to him, wanting to give him what looked like a much-needed hug.
“You really do give people the benefit of the doubt, don’t you, Rachel? I really appreciate it. You’ve been a good friend to me. Not many people would have had the guts to tell me what Alissa’s been doing. That took courage.”
“I thought you hated me. Didn’t believe me. That our friendship was ruined.”
He reached forward and touched her hand.
“I was mad. I didn’t want to believe you. I didn’t want to think that I could be so easily fooled.”
“It’s not a character flaw to be open and believe in people, Kell.”
Seconds passed in silence, the two of them locked in a gaze that deepened.
And then Kell’s phone rang with a FaceTime call.
“Oh, boy. That’s gotta be my mom–I have to take this.”
Kell swiped, and the look of astonishment on his face made Rachel impulsively lean in and look, too.
A giant pair of red, sequined lips crowded the screen.
“Hi, Mom,” Kell said, grinning. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know. Everyday life,” the lips said.
Kell’s mom was wearing a pair of stuffed lips, about three feet wide, made of velvet with thousands of red sequins sewn on.
Her face was in the center of where the lips met, and was painted bright red to match.
Two orbs peeped out from the middle, the whites of her eyes a distinct contrast with her costume.
Rachel stared.
“Who’s your friend?” the lips asked.
“This is Rachel. Rachel, meet my mother, the Rocky Horror Picture Show lips.”
She knew he was joking, but Rachel bristled slightly. Her own mother had once been a lemon in a commercial. No need to mock a person doing their job in a costume.
“I have a name, Kellan! Hi, Rachel. I’m Deanna Luview. Nice to meet you.”
A short silence made his mother’s question obvious: Who is this?
“Rachel and I work together at EEC. We’re here in a conference room talking about a problem.”