She’d ask Adam when he got back from being stitched up. What’s the worst that could happen? It was lunch. If he said no, it’s not like her whole world would spin in the other direction. It’s not like she’d spent a year inappropriately focusing on how much she liked his work ethic.
Oh, stuff his work ethic, she’d mostly been inappropriately focused on how he smiled a little crookedly and made her want to lie in a pile of puppies. How much she wanted to see what he’d look like with his hair loose, and whether he really did smell like green trees after a thunderstorm or if she’d imagined that from their near collision events.
She’d learned something else about herself tonight. She wasn’t that great at creating fantasies. To think she’d never tuned in to his incredible forearms when she’d imagined what his hugs might be like. She’d never be able to look at his arms again without feeling swirly inside in all the best ways.
It wasn’t just lunch she wanted to invite Adam to. It wasn’t just touch she wanted, a kiss she was secretly desperate to have. It was the idea of exploring what they might be like together as friends, as more than friends, outside work. It was the outrageous idea they might enjoy spending time together and sharing their lives.
But Adam had never done anything to encourage her to think this way, other than treat her with the same courtesy he treated everyone with. Filled water jugs weren’t a declaration of undying affection. Steadying hands and words weren’t invitations to anything beyond collegiality, much as she might want them to mean more. And especially after Dave and Christina’s flame out, she’d been hyper wary of stepping over the boundary lines to attempt an office romance. It simply wouldn’t do. Lunch was the compromise her dislocated heart could handle. She could be satisfied with that.
Liar, liar, Santa pants on fire.
He’d never done anything to encourage her and she’d never signalled she wanted to be encouraged. But this buzzing current of awareness she had, the one that let her know when he was near, even when she’d yet to catch sight of him, the cosmic room tilt that brought them close, surely meant something.
She loved her job. She’d loved it all the more this year, despite how awful Felix was, because seeing Adam, hearing his voice, sitting in meetings he attended where she could enjoy his thinking, even pouring water from the jug he’d filled, was a secret thrill, a twitch that ran under her skin, quickened her pulse and lightened her day.
So she was asking him when he got back from being fixed up because after tonight she might not have an excuse to see him again.
And that wasn’t all she was doing.
She had to deal with her forgiveness problem, put it into perspective. Some people didn’t do anything to deserve forgiveness, especially if they kept on making the same damn mistake. She was telling Stella exactly how she felt working with Felix, and exactly why she didn’t want to do that anymore, and if that meant she talked herself out of her own job then she’d deal with it. Same as she’d deal with finding another man who made her feel good just by being in the same postcode as Adam if he said no to lunch and whatever might come after it.
With that resolve simmering she waited; posting a pic to her social feed of the most unusual nativity scene she’d ever come across and scrolling past other people’s Christmas party pics, the potential harassment suits of which she happily bore absolutely no responsibility. That’s when Stella walked in, dragging her suitcase.
LuxLife’s founder, CEO and chief incredible person looked completely zapped after a month travelling to meet with investors, and yet she hadn’t gone home. Shelby braced for impact as Stella collapsed into the seat beside her, making the whole row shake.
‘Let’s never do Christmas again,’ Stella said.
‘I’d vote for that.’
‘Maybe we can leave it off the calendar, or take a moral stance against it, or I don’t know, hit people with a designer forgetfulness drug that makes them fuzzy on dates till the new year. Just the dates, they get to remember everything else.’
Shelby couldn’t help her smile. ‘Did you just suggest drugging your staff?’
Stella groaned. ‘It’s been a long month. I’m a Buddhist. I don’t even celebrate Christmas. And what happened to peace and goodwill to all men on earth? Where is Adam?’
‘Getting stitched up. Felix is—’
‘I know how Felix is. We’ve spoken. Joy to the world. I’d like to hear your version of—’ Stella leaned forward and pointed at the nativity. ‘Hey, that’s Spock. Huh.’
Shelby winced. There was no way to tell the story without throwing Adam out over the shark net. He was fish food already. ‘It might be my fault.’
‘It’s been a long year. Jesus is Lego with Spock for an earthly dad. Do not even try that it’s your fault thing on me.’
‘Felix is an arse.’ Whoa. She hadn’t meant to say it quite like that, but there it was, no backstroking around it.
‘That’s more like it. He told me Adam threw the first punch for no reason. Is he lying?’
‘No.’ Felix was too clever to get caught out by telling a simple lie. He wove his misdirections out of elements of truth and strings of good sense and particles of trust that might be stretched thin, but rarely snapped.
‘He was telling funny stories, you know how he is, life of the party.’ He’d organised all the men to wear Christmas Hawaiian shirts, but he’d made it a secret, so a lot of the women were annoyed not to be included and had whinged to Shelby about it.
‘As far as I know there was no specific trigger. Adam drew him away from everyone and punched him. Felix hit back, he put Adam on the floor.’
Felix had stood over Adam in his surfing safari Santa shirt swearing at him while everyone else was a stunned mullet. ‘Adam didn’t stay down. His eye was already closed, his brow opened, he was bleeding everywhere.’ She shuddered at the memory; she’d been as gobsmacked as everyone else. ‘He got up, and he hit Felix twice and Felix toppled over.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Lights out.’
‘I’m having trouble believing it,’ Stella said.
She knew the feeling. ‘I sent everyone home. I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Hmm. Felix is an arse. What did you mean by that?’
The smart thing to do would be to tell Stella that since they were both tired and it was late, that discussion could wait until Monday, but Felix had been an arse way too long. ‘Felix is our office psychopath.’
Stella made a sound of surprise and Shelby tried to remember where she’d filed her resume. It would take no time at all to change her status to ‘quick, I need a job’ on LinkedIn. ‘He knows how to manage up, so you don’t see his worst behaviour. He has favourites, he gaslights, he undermines, and he plays office politics.’ He could be rude, insulting and he sulked when he didn’t get his own way, but he was clever. He rarely ever let any of that show to Stella.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
That made Shelby squirm. She found Felix so difficult to deal with, so ready to put her down and find her work inadequate that she spent all her energy sucking it up and managing him. And that was a kind of forgiveness. She’d let a bully run her around and make her doubt herself. ‘I was wrong to give him a free pass.’
Stella pushed her hair off her face. She was either irritated with her fringe or with Shelby. ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’
‘I, um…’ Enough of defending him. No more free passes for Felix. ‘I didn’t think you’d see it my way.’
‘Why not?’
Oh crap. Because you’re a smart woman and you can’t possibly not have known Felix is a two-faced rat, but you put up with him for years. ‘Because Felix has been with you since you started LuxLife and talked his family into investing. You couldn’t have gotten it started without him.’
The blade-sharp look Stella gave her was the one she used to get difficult, never-been-done-before things completed on time and on budget. It forced a nervous cough out of Shelby.
‘Who told you that?’
It was common knowledge. Shelby opened her mouth to answer and Stella shut her down with a raised hand, then walked across the room to the nativity scene and studied it, tapping one designer shoe in an exasperated beat.
So that went well.
She exchanged a strained smile with the reindeer headband woman and then Stella was back beside her.
‘I have one more question,’ Stella said.
Was it how soon can you pack up your desk?
‘Why did Adam hit Felix?’
That wasn’t much better. ‘He said it was because—’
Stella finished for her. ‘Felix is an arse.’
‘I told him that wasn’t a good reason, and I believe he knows there’s no good reason for hitting someone, but he said he wasn’t sorry and he’d do it again.’ Oh God, it hurt to say that. Made her feel like she was betraying Adam with the truth.
‘He’s sweet on you, you know that, right?’
For a horrified moment, she thought Stella was talking about Felix. Nightmare scenario, not one she’d wake up from. ‘Adam is sweet with everyone.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I want you to give me a Christmas present, Shelby.’
Oh, awkward layered on awkward. ‘We had a Kris Kringle. I put your gift on your desk.’
‘Not that. I don’t give a stuff about another bath bomb, and I already know without asking that you bought a decent gift to give on my behalf. I give a stuff about LuxLife and making my best people happy and I can see I’ve not been doing a great job at that. I didn’t know Felix was saying I can’t do without him. I didn’t realise he was being an arse, or maybe I did, but I didn’t see it as a problem. That’s on me. I see it as one now.’
A punch up, someone decked in the office could do that. Change minds, redirect attention. Shelby was ready to interrupt, to remind Stella she was busy, and keeping people happy was her job, but Stella shut her down again, this time with a lip zip signal.
‘I want you to start rating your own needs as important as everyone else’s. I don’t mean putting yourself first above others. But I don’t want you to disappear under everyone else.’
‘You want me to stop being a doormat.’ At least she still had a job, even if it was ground floor level.
‘I don’t think you’re a doormat, Shelby. I think you’re the best HR person I’ve ever worked with. I know LuxLife would suffer if I were to lose you. I’m angry that I didn’t know the truth, and given Felix is your boss, I can imagine you’ve had the worst of him to deal with.’
This was like being smacked and finding it tickled and you liked it. Weirdly delightful.
‘I’m angry that it’s come to this and I didn’t see it. I know you don’t lie to me. But you didn’t come to me either. Are you protecting either Felix or Adam now?’
It was a fair question. ‘No. Half the office wants to hit Felix for one reason or another but that doesn’t justify Adam doing it.’
‘No, it does not.’
They sat in silence, Stella brooding and Shelby feeling like her New Year’s resolution was already in place. No more putting up with Felix. No more being agreeable to keep the peace with him. It wasn’t going to be easy to stand up to him when she’d become accustomed to walking things back.
A woman arrived clutching her stomach. A man holding his arm close to his side. Somewhere behind the row of chairs, Adam was having his cut brow seen to and maybe starting to regret what he’d done.
‘Stella, you don’t have to stay.’
‘One of my people is hurt. I’m staying.’
They were staying together. ‘What are you going to do about Adam?’
Stella shook her head. ‘I’m hoping Lego Jesus has some guidance for me because this is a Christmas panto I wasn’t expecting to be in. I don’t like playing Scrooge.’