chapter three

 

I cancel with Andy. I don’t need a strip club after last night’s shenanigans, and in fact, I have a feeling it’ll all just make me feel a little more lonely.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I just got rid of what’s-her-name when I get a phone call from my brother. My chest aches yet again as I pick up the call, but this time it’s because my brother is perhaps the one person I can confide in. He already knew about my feelings for Viv. Maybe I’m not as alone as I think.

“What the hell did you do to her?” he asks as soon as I answer.

Oh. It’s going to be that kind of call, I guess.

“It’s complicated.” It’s all I can think of to say, but my words come out with far more emotion than I want them to.

“You can say that again. Vivian quit on me. What the fuck happened?”

“I slept with her.”

“Goddammit, Brian.” Mark’s yelling at me. “She’s married, for Christ’s sake!”

I sigh. “Yeah, I got the memo. Thanks for the fair warning, by the way.”

“I just found out, but it wasn’t my fucking job to warn you.” He sounds tired.

“I’m just supposed to ask every girl I fuck if they’re married?” Yeah, I probably should do that. But it’s not like he ever did. For fuck’s sake, he slept with Reese when she and I were together without so much as a backward glance. They cheated on me together when neither of them knew my real motivation to keep them apart. Who the fuck is he to be yelling at me about something of this nature?

I hear his deeply resigned sigh over the phone and then I hear a crying baby in the background. I have a feeling this call won’t last too much longer, which is fine by me considering the way my own brother is coming down on me because his number one girl quit on him.

“Look, I’m not the one who fucked this up,” I say. “She is. Can’t you see that?”

“Does it really matter? The end result is the same. She quit and now all my investments are back at risk.”

“Yeah, it does matter.” I’m arguing, and it feels good to know I’m on the right side this time. “You’re tossing accusations at me like I’m the one who messed up, but she’s the one who was married and chose to slide into my bed anyway.”

“Okay, fine. You’re right. You did nothing wrong. You’re in the clear. Does that make it better?” His tone is bitterly sarcastic, and I don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep for this brand new father or if it’s something else, but he’s emotional and moody and I’m not in the mood to deal with it.

I roll my eyes at his tone, glad he can’t see me over the phone. “No, it doesn’t. She’s gone from my life now because of it, and I don’t need you yelling at me about it when there are two sides to this story.”

“I’m sorry, Brian.” His voice is sincere now, and I appreciate the apology. Before I can tell him that, he continues. “The bottom line is I don’t want to lose my relationship with a solid business contact because you decided to fuck her.”

It’s always about what Mark wants, and if history has taught me anything, it’s that Mark always gets what he wants. “I’ve already lost my relationship with her, and just for the record, it meant more to me than a quick fuck. I fell in love with her. Do you even have any concept of what that means to me? I have to go.”

I end the call then hurl my phone against the wall in frustration. I want to watch the bits and pieces of it scatter and bounce off the floor, but it doesn’t do any of that. Instead, it leaves a dent in the wall where it hit and I find a nice new crack in my screen.

Cracks and dents. They seem to be themes of the week and it’s only Sunday.

I throw myself into work for the remainder of the night, glad I made the decision not to go to the club as regret lances through me over the girl I brought home last night. It didn’t even temporarily ease the ache of loneliness. As soon as the buzz wore off and I smelled the scent of vanilla beside me instead of roses, I knew it was all wrong.

I miss Vivian.

It has only been a day since she left my house, yet I miss her with a searing ache. I want to be able to get past what happened, but I just don’t know how to set aside the one rule I live by in order to reach out to her again. And maybe she wouldn’t even be interested, anyway. Maybe she’d brush me off or tell me to go to hell—probably words I’d deserve after the way we left things.

I wonder where she is and what she’s doing. I wonder what’s going through her mind. I wonder if she’ll tell her husband.

I wonder if she’s thinking about me with a tight chest and a lump in her throat the same way I’m thinking about her.

My only thought is that whiskey might drown out some of those thoughts, so I drink until I pass out.

More regret plagues me the next morning, but this time it’s the regret of self-medication that clearly didn’t work. I regret the things I said to her. I regret drinking nearly a fifth of whiskey last night. I regret giving myself a rolling stomach and aching head.

I wonder if she’ll show up to the office this morning to gather her things. She has a key. She could’ve gone in over the weekend, and even as I think it, I pinpoint yet another regret. I should’ve been waiting at that office for her to show so I could at least see her one more time. Maybe we could’ve talked and she would’ve had some sort of reasonable explanation.

Instead, I spent my weekend acting like a teenager, fucking a stranger, and getting wasted on whiskey.

Not my finest moment.

I feel a little better after a shower and some greasy eggs and bacon for breakfast, and I feel a lot better after some ibuprofen and coffee. I grab my laptop and head into the office only a few minutes behind schedule, ignoring a call from my brother as I drive in. I’m focused on what might await me at my destination as anxiety plagues me. Will Vivian be there? Will I finally feel the aftereffects of all the truth bombs I dropped at the ball over the weekend? Will Beck and Jason just forgive and forget as they’ve done in the past?

When I get there, I don’t find Vivian in my office. I do, however, find Jason and Becker. They sit in the two seats facing my desk, heads bent close together as they review some papers in front of them.

They look up when they hear me clear my throat in the doorway. “Good morning,” I say, and my voice croaks on the first words I’ve spoken aloud this morning.

I know them both well enough to easily read their expressions. Becker looks nervous and Jason looks pissed. I walk around them and take a seat at my desk. I take a deep breath, but I don’t let them see me sweat.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

Becker slides a sheet of paper across the desk toward me. I read the words sprawled across the top.

Notice of Termination of Employment.

I continue reading and spot my name on the top line.

“You can’t fire me,” I say. “I own part of the company.”

Becker clears his throat. “Actually, we can. It was you who wanted to add a clause to our bylaws that stated any formal decision could be made with a forty percent vote. Since the two of us held onto our stake in the company, we have enough to make this decision together, and we want you out.”

My brows furrow. “You want me out? Too fucking bad. We’re co-presidents.”

Jason nods toward the paper. “Not anymore.”

“What about our triangle?” When we first started, we created a triangle that showed Jason as the head of IT, Becker as the creative consultant, and myself taking on the business angle.

Jason refuses to meet my confused and shocked gaze when he speaks. “Business managers can be replaced, as Vivian Davenport recently showed us. That triangle is a pretty graphic, but it’s meaningless when all three sides aren’t holding up their end of the deal.”

“Mark will never agree to this,” I say. And as we all know, he’s got fifty-one percent of the company. He can block this decision if he wants, and there’s no way he’ll let them do this to me.

“I called Mark a few minutes before you came in,” Becker says. “He has been informed of our decision.”

I open my mouth to protest, but Becker cuts in. His voice is mechanical, and I’ve never seen him look so disappointed in me—and we’ve been through a lot of shit together. “You can gather your personal belongings but leave all files and your laptop. You need to be out of here within the hour. Remember the other part of our bylaws that state you cannot open a competing company and you cannot try to steal FDB’s clients. Again, your ideas that we signed off on.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask quietly. “You have no idea what I’ve been through in the last seventy-two hours.”

Jason huffs out a strangled sound, but Becker maintains his cool. I’ve never seen him like this, but then again, he’s never been the recipient of my lies. He never deserved that, but I truly thought I was doing the right thing in protecting them from the truth.

“We’ve had enough of your lies and manipulation,” Becker says. “We have too much at stake for the welfare of our company to be a total lie. We’ll figure out how to sort through the shit show you’ve made and come out on top.”

“You guys are completely overreacting,” I say, pulling out an Oscar-worthy performance where I pretend like I’m maintaining my cool when I actually feel beads of nervous sweat forming on my head. “I told one little fib about why Viv was here so I could get everything back on track, and we’re there. We’re golden. Everything’s fine.”

“No,” Becker says, arching his brows in surprise like I just don’t get it. “You lied to us about what was going on. You acted like everything was fine. You had us believing Vivian was your girlfriend while you were secretly banging Tess behind Jason’s back. That’s not what friends do.”

Jason takes his turn to pipe in. “And worse than all that, you sold off a good portion of our company to your brother, and now the three presidents of this company combined don’t even have majority control anymore. That’s complete bullshit, Brian.”

I’m surprised he views that as worse than what Tess and I did, but I don’t bring it up.

“But it’s FDB. Fox, Davis, Becker. Will you just rename it to DB?” I try for levity, but it falls flat. “Then you’ll sound like the Douche Bags or the Drunk Bitches or something.”

They both stare at me with anger in their eyes, and a frisson of fear runs through me. They’re serious, even though I still think they have got to be kidding me. “So, what then? I’m just...out?” I ask.

“You’re fired,” Becker says. “The two of us don’t want to continue working with you.”

“What about three strikes?” I ask.

Becker ticks off my offenses. “One, lying about why Vivian was here. Two, lying about dating Vivian. Three, fucking Tess. You’re out.”

Jason winces on the last strike.

“I did the stuff with Vivian to protect the two of you.” I force a sincerity into my tone so I don’t sound whiney.

“Bullshit,” Becker says, slamming his hand on my desk. I jump in my chair, startled at his outburst. He has got to be the most even-keeled person I’ve ever met, and I’ve never seen him this angry before. “We trusted you to inform us and you didn’t.” He stands up and strides toward my office door. “We’re done here. Get out within an hour or we’ll have you removed.”

Jason stands, too. “We’ve been through a lot together. I considered you like a brother. But you killed that with your lies and your selfishness, and I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done.”

He storms out my door, and that’s when I glance to the little corner where Vivian used to sit. Everything is still on her desk exactly as it was before, and a sweater still hangs on the back of her desk chair like she might pop in at any minute to grab it and pull it over her shoulders.

She won’t, though. She’s done with me, my best friends are done with me, and FDB is done with me. From the sounds of things, even my fucking brother is done with me.

I glance around at my office. Becker told me to take my personal belongings with me. Aside from a football signed by the ‘eighty-five Bears in a case, there’s nothing I want. I don’t even take the notice they shoved at me because I don’t believe this is goodbye. I’ll give them a few days to cool down, but they’ll see how much they need me. Shit, I have appointments planned for every night this week. This company is my entire life. They can’t just take it away because they don’t like what I did.

I’ll fight this. I’ll find a way.

But for now, guilt constricts in my chest, and so I pick up the case with the football and walk with heavy feet toward my doorway. I pause and look around my office. My office. My home away from home. The place I spend more time than anywhere else in the world. The place where I’ve eaten and fucked and celebrated victories and fell in love with the woman sitting across the room from me.

I step over toward her chair and pick up her sweater with my free hand. I pull the fabric to my nose and breathe in the soft, feminine scent of roses.

I want to call her. I want to turn to her to tell her what happened with my friends. I want her to tell me how to fix it.

But I can’t. Even though my first instinct is to turn to her because I love her, I can’t.

I clutch the sweater in my fingertips as I make my way past my secretary. She says nothing to me, and I say nothing to her. I take the elevator down, walk through the lobby, and head to my car. I set the football down gently in the backseat, and it isn’t until I slide into the driver’s seat and pull Vivian’s sweater to my nose again that I finally break down. The emotion that has threatened me for three days finally claws its way out, and as I fist the rose-scented sweater in one hand and beat my steering wheel with the other, tears I haven’t cried since my grandfather died stream unwittingly down my face.