15

CARLY

 

 

Until eleven o’clock, I deal with my emails. The IT guy, Bill, tells me they don’t know why, but the only two people whitelisted on my email were Alice and Stacy, the intern.  Everyone else was set to go to junk by me.

By me.

I insist I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t have.

He shrugs, eyes on the coffee stain that’s on my freaking boob, and then flushes red when I catch him looking. Not like he could avoid it. It’s there glaring at everyone. He checks a few other things on my laptop and then tells me I’m good to go.

I’ve eaten my breakfast, taken two Advils, not from wine, because of a tension headache, and had my second cup of coffee and I’m feeling like things are getting closer to under control.

At 10:59, I grab my notebook, spin my chair, and head to Aiden’s office.

He’s on the phone when I get into the doorway. He gestures to his chair and mouths “Shut the door.”

I close the door behind me and sit down.
He eyes my blouse.

I cross my arms and blow a stray lock of hair away from my face.

He hangs up. “What’s going on with Twitter?”

“Pardon?” I ask.

“Twitter. Blue bird. 140 characters? Popular. You know, POTUS uses it a lot?”

“I know what Twitter is, Aiden,” I grumble.

“Well, what’s happened to it?” He’s glaring at me.

I frown.

“Our account. It’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. Can’t find our account. Twitter feeds on our other pages are coming up with error messages.

He’s clicking keys on his laptop and gesturing to his screen.

“What?” I jump up and round his desk to look at his laptop.

What the fuck?

“What did you do?” he accuses.

My mouth drops open. “I didn’t---"

“This is a disaster,” he declares and grabs his office phone and starts punching buttons.

 

***

 

No one is saying it, but they’re all thinking it. They think I’m the Fail Whale. They think I did something to fuck up our Twitter account.

I haven’t even logged into it yet. We have a social media management platform that we use for pushing updates out. An aggregator that we use to view all our feeds instead of logging in individually. And I’ve barely logged into that but certainly haven’t changed any settings.

Mr. C has been in about the issue. Stacy and Blake (the marketing interns), and a guy called Kieran in New York has been on hands-free on Aiden’s phone. We get it back, but we’re not following anyone. Thankfully, we haven’t lost our followers, though.  We were following hundreds, if not thousands. I get tasked with finding who we were following and ensuring we’re following them all again.

Ugh.

It’s a long day. We don’t get a chance to talk about the Eastmark Conference.  I see Ally twice. Once, when she brings me a sandwich and soup for lunch and then again when I let her know to get the cab home alone. I work until 8:30.

I’m getting ready to go, figuring I’ll try to catch a bus, when I see Austin Carmichael in his father’s office. I walk by, waving. They look like they’re in a heated argument.  They both stop and wave at me.

At least Mr. C saw that I stayed late after the day’s mishap.

 

***

 

It took two buses to get home, but I did it. I navigated my way around San Diego and I’m proud of myself.  I’ve gotten looks at my coffee-stained boob everywhere I’ve gone, and I can’t wait to get back to the apartment and take a long, hot soak.

But, when I open the door, I’m greeted with an auburn-haired beauty in the kitchen, wearing a men’s white dress shirt, unbuttoned, showing off a black lacy bra and matching lacy panties. She’s also got on a pair of high stilettos. She’s mixing a drink when she coyly turns to look at me. Her expression instantly changes. I’m obviously not who she expected. She’s here for him. Nearly naked.

I freeze at the door.

She tilts her head at me.

“Who are you?” she asks. No. She demands, actually. She’s beautiful with her long curtain of bone-straight auburn hair and bright green eyes, but she also has that look about her, that evil wicked witch look.

“Uh, I’m Carly.” I give her a lame little wave and shut the door.

Me, with my coffee-stained blouse, no make-up, eyeglasses on, and feeling absolutely inferior and dumpy-looking after the dragged-through-the-dirt day I had.

Her mouth goes tight. “Aiden’s living with someone?”

“I work for Carmichael. I’m in the spare room,” I point toward the hall. “Excuse me.”  I close the door and go right to my room, red-faced.

I shut the door and drop my bag and then throw myself onto my bed.

What a day. What a fucking day.

I take off my high heels and massage my feet. They are killing me. One of Aiden’s foot massages would be in order about now.

Hah. I’m so ridiculous it isn’t even funny. In fact, it’s the opposite of funny. I’ve felt like I’m on the verge of tears all day.

I turn the TV on and change into pink satin pajamas. Forget the bath. Forget dinner. I’m going to veg in front of the TV and probably last ten minutes until I fall asleep. I’d already told the girls we’d do dinner tomorrow night at the steakhouse instead. I had my fill of fruit and granolas and the lunch Ally bought me, so I’m not even hungry at this point.

My phone rings. Do I even wanna look?

Mom.

Oh.  Oh.

Just seeing her name makes my chin wobbly.

I answer. “Hi Mom.”

“Carly. So good to hear your voice!”

I start to cry. “M-mom?”

“Oh no. What’s wrong?”

“It’s all screwed-up.”

Twenty-five minutes later, I’m off the phone after getting a Mom-style pep talk, which actually helped. I spewed all of it through the phone like word vomit. She now knows all of what I’ve been through that brought me here. She knew about Jon, but didn’t know all the Cait details. And now she knows about Steph. She, too, is fed up with the Caitlin stuff, but has no news on that front. She admits that she gave Jon my San Diego number because he sounded so sincere in his desire to talk to me to “work things out”. I told her he had a date with the office skank the day he broke up with me and now is hinting that he wants me back.

She talked me into a calmer state, which she’s great at doing.

“You’ll prove yourself at work. They promoted you for a reason. They know you’re new.”

She’s right.

“Let Jon plead his case and then tell him you’re not giving him a second chance. He’ll get the message. Right now, he probably thinks you’re just making him prove he’ll work for it. He probably thinks groveling will help. It’s up to you to set him straight.”

She’s right there, too. He might stop calling if I tell him to stop calling.

As for Stephanie, Mom is angry with her, too and I know this because she goes quiet on that subject. She’s been a mother figure to Steph for years. Steph didn’t have a Mom.

I let her go when I heard shouting from the other room.

“Gotta go, Mom. Love you.”

“Love you, sweetie. Call me on the weekend. You’re gonna be fine.”

“Thanks, Mom. Give my love to Dad. Bye.”

Now that I’m off the phone, I walk to my door and strain to listen, but the shouting has stopped.

I need to pee. I listen at my door for a minute and hearing nothing, decide to creep out of my room quietly. But I see, from the corner of my eye into the living area. He’s sitting there at the bar, still in his suit, with his forearms resting on his knees and his head down. She’s standing next to him, now dressed in regular clothes. Designer dress, actually. And her hand goes to his cheek.  He shrugs her off and she looks wounded. She spots me. I rush across the hall into the bathroom.

I stay in there way longer than I need to, hoping to avoid another sighting of them. And then, thinking they may be waiting for me to come out so that I don’t interrupt them again, I try to zip back into the bedroom. Thankfully, the pocket doors are closed when I come out, so I can slip back into my room without invading privacy.