Chapter Fifteen Paul
Chapter Fifteen
Paul
It's strange how fast everything can completely unravel.
When you start to face the consequences of your choices—consequences you never really gave a second thought about.
Then comes that uneasy itch that crawls slowly across your skin as your chest grows tight, your breathing grows shallow.
That's how I felt the day of the biopsy.
So I dove headfirst into a distraction. And I did it again and again, for those small moments of escape. It felt good to think about anything else besides death, surgery, and scars. I could just forget about Sophie's scared, teary eyes.
I escaped into fantasy.
Now, I shift in my chair, searching for a comfortable position that I know I won't find. The air in this conference room, usually cold, feels too suffocating, and I tug at my collar for relief, that I know won’t come.
This is a room I have been in many times, laughing with coworkers over catered food while we pored over projects and held meetings. Interestingly, this room is where it all truly began with Elise.
I was aware of the no-fraternization policy when I signed my employee contract, ‘to maintain impartiality and professionalism, ensuring personal interests do not compromise the working environment.’
At the time, I couldn't see a future without Sophie, so why would I even care about that clause? I had signed it without a second thought, and now that signature could seal my fate at the job I love.
Next to me, Elise is composed and calm. Not a blonde hair out of place on her head, her makeup done expertly, her posture perfectly straight in her chair.
She wears an expensive-looking white silk blouse, fitted black trousers, and sky-high heels like it’s any other day.
She crosses her legs and leans back in the chair, looking almost too at ease.
Meanwhile, I feel as though I'm about to come out of my skin.
When I had shown Elise the email notification this morning, she had shrugged, unbothered.
"They probably just want us to sign the paperwork for our relationship," she said as she kissed my bare shoulder. The contact of her lips made me flinch, and I watched helplessly as she crossed the room and pulled her silk robe on.
Our potential executioners sit across from us.
"Alright, let's get started,” Rue Peterson says sharply.
Rue is our head of HR. She’s no-nonsense, in her late forties, with red hair pulled back into a slick bun. She's dressed in a gray pantsuit and white shirt, and her narrowed green eyes pin me to my seat.
City Manager Joe Collins, sits next to Rue. Joe is in his sixties, a happy-go-lucky man known to many as the City's Dad. With thinning salt and pepper hair on his head and a rather jolly build, there's a reason he plays Santa Claus every year at the Christmas Parade.
I've known him since I was a child, as Joe played football with my dad at Starling Cove High. Today, there's no joyful smile on his face, no cheery “good morning, Starling Cove family,” greetings, just a clenched jaw and hands that won't stop shuffling the papers on the table in front of him.
On the speakerphone in the center of the table is my Union Rep, Darren, who is required to be on the line for the meeting to support me.
I reached out to him in my office earlier this morning to consult before the meeting and explain the entire situation.
Bluntly, he told me that I had fucked up badly, but assured me that they most likely couldn’t and wouldn’t fire me.
Elise, though, since she wasn’t in the Union, could potentially be let go, and most likely would be.
I didn’t even get a chance to warn her before the meeting.
Knowing what to expect didn’t ease the fear churning in my gut.
I feel like I'm twelve years old again, sitting in the principal's office while they call my parents.
Not that my parents would even answer the phone with anything regarding me at the moment.
Or my friends, for that matter. And from the looks I received this morning, no one in town seemed particularly happy to see me either.
We stopped at Rise N’ Grind this morning before work, and my coffee was practically shoved into my hand by the redheaded barista with a hissed, "Have the day you deserve."
I also noticed my name written on the cup, which looked suspiciously like 'Fail' rather than 'Paul'.
When Elise and I walked into City Hall, the friendly security guards at the front didn't spare me their usual “good morning, Mr. O'Connor,” and they ignored my own polite greeting.
On the way to my office, my normally friendly colleagues turned their backs on us or whispered with sharp, disapproving eyes.
Elise seemed to not notice, just headed to her own desk as I went to my office to anxiously wait.
The subject of the meeting wasn't in the email, but I already know what they want to talk about. The dread in my stomach grows by the minute. I know what my family would call this: karma, the chickens coming home to roost, and... well, they would be right. As much as I don't want to admit it.
My fiancee, my apartment, my family, my friends, the future I'd been planning—I threw it all away.
“Darren, can you hear us?”
“Yes, Rue,” Darren’s voice crackles through the speaker.
Rue nods before continuing, her eyes boring into mine. "Let me be direct, your relationship was brought to our attention through multiple complaints—"
"Rue, with all due respect," Elise starts, her voice even and composed, almost bored. "Paul and I are consenting adults. What we do on our own time—"
Rue cut her off with a raised hand and a humorless smile.
"—would be your business, if it didn't violate a policy designed to protect this office and its workers.
Ms. Cabot, you're in Public Relations. Mr. O'Connor is a City Planner.
Your departments overlap constantly. You take frequent work lunches together.
You work closely on projects. You can see the optics are bad. "
"There are emails. Damning emails, backed up by multiple witnesses and evidence," Joe leans forward, his face deadly serious.
"Emails?" Elise and I meet each other's eyes in shock before I ask. "Who are they from?"
"We can't tell you that."
"If someone's been stalking us, this is serious—" Elise starts, her tone defensive, but Rue cuts her off.
"There are multiple eyewitness accounts of you two looking very close.
Many corroborate the same claims, timelines adding up in a way we didn't like.
Eyewitnesses who have seen you in public places during work hours, engaging in very intimate behavior.
Hotel visits while on the clock. Restaurant dates while on the clock.
Also, we have employee testimony to your. .. closeness."
I'm an animal caught in a trap, desperate to chew my own leg to get out, and I turn to Joe, "This is bullshit. Joe—"
"No, Paul, what’s bullshit is what’s in these letters sent to me," Joe snaps, taking me by surprise. He looks at me with blatant disappointment, and I can't help but flinch. I've never heard him raise his voice like this at anyone, let alone me.
Joe had been one of the first to congratulate me after meeting Sophie for the first time at his family’s 4th of July barbecue.
He told me to hold on to her, that she's quite the catch, and he hoped that we would be as happy as he and his wife of forty years.
I had puffed up like a peacock at the time, soaking in the heavy praise from this man I respected deeply.
"I almost thought they had the wrong person, that it couldn't possibly be true. 'Nah, not Paul. He would never,’" Joe says, looking disgusted. His work facade drops, and his lip curls, "Cheating on Sophie. Your fiancée, who was just diagnosed with cancer?"
"Ex-fiancée," Elise mutters through gritted teeth.
Joe's eyes flash angrily as they flicker over to her. I shrink further in my seat, feeling like the smallest man in the world. The same justification I had given to my mother spits like acid from Elise's lips.
That's when I feel a crack right down the center of my chest, a violent fracture in my very soul. I’m disoriented, as though I've surfaced after spending too much time underwater.
How did I arrive at this moment?
Why have I arrived at this moment?
What have I done with my life?
What have I done to Sophie?
Oh God, Sophie...
Her name rips me wide open. A cold sweat breaks out across my body as panic floods me from head to toe. My stomach rolls violently, and for a very brief, horrifying second, I wonder if I'll projectile vomit on this table.
How could one moment everything be fine, wonderful even, and then you learn the words lump, cancer, and mastectomy, and then everything you thought you knew about yourself changes.
You're not the strong man you thought you were, you're not the reliable fiancé you had built yourself up as, you're not even close, you're... you're selfish. You're pathetic. You're cruel.
And you made all of these choices and justified them to yourself as being for your own good.
Telling yourself that you only have this life to live, so you should live it the way you want and cut out what's not beneficial to you anymore. Did I manifest the selfish voice in my head into a physical entity, or did I just project that onto Elise as an excuse?
Because I'm the one who moved first, I'm the one who kissed her first, I'm the one who allowed the clear boundaries set by Sophie to blur. Elise only responded to the signals that I was putting out. Elise was there and convenient, and she told me what I wanted to hear.
She was beautiful. She was charming. She was fun to talk to, and everything remained surface-level.
And now I feel so fucking empty.
Sophie...
"Fiancée, when this relationship started, it seems," Rue says seriously, writing something down with a rather angry flick of her pen.