Chapter Eight
Julie
It starts because I keep telling myself I have to push through the way I’m feeling and go back to being the sociable coworker. Most of the people on this floor, I’m their superior in an ill-defined way, so I’ve got to be approachable. So, when there’s a knock on my door, and Kara from two doors down is telling me it’s Mark’s birthday, or Marcia’s—I admit I was only half-listening—I got up from my desk and put on my best fake smile.
For a minute, I feel okay. I’m distracting myself. There’s still that pervading sense of pain and humiliation, but I can channel that into singing the birthday song. It’s not until after we’ve cut the cake, and I again walk away with an empty plate. It’s not until I’m on the way back to my office and Tammy, the way-too-perky-for-corporate-work ball of inexhaustible cheer, comes up to me saying, “Don’t you just love this time of year?” It’s not until then that I lose my grip.
“No,” I answer. I start to walk away, but Tammy doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. She always has to cheer everybody up.
“Oh, someone’s a grumpy Grinch, aren’t they?” she asks. “I bet Santa’s got something special in store for you this year.”
Even with that, I’m still trying to keep my cool. “I was just heading back to my office.”
“A lot of people get down this time of year,” she says. “What you’ve gotta do is just remind yourself that things aren’t so bad when we can all come together and—”
“And what?” I interrupt. It’s right about now I stop caring about being polite. “Let me guess, everything’s going to magically get better if I just let the spirit of the season into my heart. Everything will be snowflakes and candy canes from there on in, right? Life doesn’t work that way, and bouncing around in a cute sweater Uncle Nobody gave you last year isn’t going to change that fact.”
There’s a hand on my shoulder, and I’m thinking about smacking the person it belongs to until I turn and see it’s Riley. She says, “Miss Montierth, I really need your help with something. Can I speak to you in your office?”
Before I can protest, she’s dragging me by the wrist toward my office, and once we’re inside, she shuts the door.
I sigh. “I was having a conversation,” I tell her. “What do you need?”
“What’s with you today?” she asks. “Tammy’s the office equivalent of a litter of newborn kittens dressed in tuxedos dancing with sunshine, and you were about to rip her head off and use it for target practice.”
“Vivid,” I tell her.
“What’s going on with you?”
“I just hate this stupid season,” I tell her. “I hate it when people try to cheer me up, too. What if I don’t want to be cheered up, did Tammy ever think of that?”
“This isn’t about Tammy, it’s about you.”
“You’re right, and you’ve given me so much to think about. Why don’t you go back to what you were doing, and I’ll stay here and ponder over your—”
“You saw what they did to Ghost, didn’t you?” she asks. I don’t answer, so she continues. “You forget I know these guys.”
“Whatever you do in your personal time is your business,” I tell her.
“It’s not what you think,” she says. “Nobody really talks about it with outsiders, so I know how it comes off, but I’m not a groupie. Rev’s my dad.”
“Rev?” I’d heard the name, but hardly anything else about him.
She sighs. “Someone who commands a lot of respect to those guys,” she says. “I don’t have the pull to do anything about what’s happening to Russ. I’m just Rev’s daughter—”
She called him “Russ.” Usually, it’s “Ghost.”
“Exactly how many guys at that club have you been—”
“None,” she interrupts. “I’m off-limits. Besides, those guys are family, and you are not listening to me. Russ is in trouble, and I’m not talking like they’re going to dock his paycheck. I mean he’s in the kind of position most people don’t get out of, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I got that impression last time I saw him. Look, I’m not stupid,” I tell her. “He told me it was too dangerous for me to be around him long before he told me… all that other stuff. And when I saw him walk up beaten and bloody, I knew he wasn’t exaggerating. I was really starting to feel something for him, but then I got all freaked out because I thought I was just acting out because of what happened to my brother—”
“What happened to your brother?”
I rub my temples and sigh. Maybe if I tell her, she’ll leave me in peace. I give her the short version.
“That’s terrible,” she says. “It’s hard losing people, especially when they’re as close as it sounds like you were.”
“Yeah,” I sigh again. “How do I know anything I’m feeling, or have felt isn’t just me acting out to take my mind off of what happened?”
“I’m not a therapist,” she says. “It sounds to me like Russ means something to you, though. Otherwise, why bother getting so upset about it?”
“Whether he did or didn’t, that’s all over now.” I tell her about what happened in the jail parking lot. The tears I kept to myself the last time I saw Russ, they come out now. “It’s just too much. I actually started to think maybe things could be different. I’m sick of it.”
“I’ll talk to him,” she says, and before I can get another word out, she’s closing my office door from the outside.
I’m out of my chair, walking toward the door, but I stop. Even if what I feel for Russ is real, and even if he’s only trying to protect me… Do I really want to ignore all his warnings? I still believe what he said about me not lasting two minutes in his world. Seeing what those men did to him was more than enough proof. It’s so early in our relationship that it seems weird calling it a relationship.
Not knowing what else to do, I send Riley a text saying, “I just want to know that he’s going to be okay. Don’t ask or tell him about me.”
I’m a teenager again, and not in the warm reminiscing of good times gone kind of way.
A minute later, the reply comes, “You sure?”
Yeah, I’m sure.