Chapter Nine
Liz
The next day, my lunch was a solo affair, as Amy was getting take-out with a couple of her designer friends who needed to go over some project details. I got ramen from my favorite place a few blocks away, hoping the sweet-salty soup would do something to comfort me.
It didn’t help a whole lot, and I walked back to the office, the gloomy fog of San Francisco surrounding me.
Jamie was an ass. I was dating an ass.
He’d tried to explain, yesterday, but I’d gotten myself pissed off again, because every time I thought of how he’d shut me down the other day, I got angry all over. Who the hell was he to keep yanking me around like this? I was a grown woman, and I was not to be trifled with like some… some yo-yo, or something.
I stomped the pavement, feeling the jarring of it through my heels. I’d have worn smarter shoes, if I’d known I was going to walk to and from the ramen place, but going out to lunch hadn’t been in my plan for the day. I’d just known that when noon hit, I had to get out of the office, out of Jamie’s reach.
Seriously, something had to change. We couldn’t keep going like this. At the thought of breaking up, I felt my eyes fill with tears, and the cityscape around me went slightly blurry until I blinked them away.
I didn’t want to break up with Jamie—I loved him.
But I hated how he treated me sometimes.
I’d at least have to hear him out, listen to his explanation. Maybe later, when we weren’t at work. And maybe tomorrow, when my emotions weren’t still so fresh and raw.
When I stepped back into the office, there was a new kind of energy in the air, a little bit of a buzz. It reminded me of the energy that had hit when Jamie made the announcement he would be buying Gamerz Group.
Several people at different tables were huddled together, talking. No, I realized with a smile—not just talking, but whispering. There had to be some juicy gossip going on.
Finally, something to distract me from my own angst and drama. I stashed my purse at my desk and turned around to see if Amy was done with her lunch meeting.
She was hunched over her computer, seemingly oblivious to the buzz of energy going on around us. As if she could feel my eyes on her, she spun around in her chair. The smile she gave me could only be described as uncomfortable but she gave me a little wave and a half smile.
I frowned at her, then smiled back.
Maybe there was some good news shared via email or something. I turned back to my desk, sat down, and opened up my email. I skipped through several group emails from various departments concerning project deadlines and marketing goals, until I found one from an unfamiliar email address.
The subject line was a single word: You.
If it was spam, our network system would have filtered it out, so it had to be a legit message, and not encumbered with scary viruses or anything like that. I clicked open the email.
You are a slut. Only sluts use sex to get ahead at work. You are disgusting.
That was it? I teared up. They wanted to slut-shame me? Well, it freaking worked. My face was hot, my heart beat erratically in my chest, and I wanted to put on a big old sweater and hide under it.
I’d never been bullied before. I’d lived a pretty sheltered life in my little town. There’d been bullies but for some reason I’d always escaped their notice.
In some ways, that made things harder now, because I had absolutely no skills or walls in place to deal with something so… so disgusting. They thought I was disgusting but they hid behind a fake email address and flung accusations at me. Cowards.
There was another problem, though—someone must have found out about me and Jamie.
I wanted to respond to the nasty email. I wanted to say, I love Jamie and I loved him before he owned Gamerz Group and you can go fuck yourself.
But was that the right thing to do?
My hair was down, so I used it to slightly curtain my face. The juicy buzz of gossip that I’d felt when I first got back from lunch… was that about me?
A hand fell on my shoulder, and I spun around, ready to lash out—with words, or fists, or a well-placed kick with the pointy toe of my show, I didn’t know. But the person facing me was Amy.
She looked past me, to my screen. Her face fell momentarily before she shored it up with anger. She jerked her head toward the elevators outside the office. “You wanna go grab some coffee?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think I do.”
No matter that I’d just returned, minutes ago, from my lunch at the ramen place.
Amy stuck close to my side as we made our way out of the office and out of the building. Once we were on the sidewalk, surrounded by strangers, she said, “Do you want to know what people are saying?”
I gave a half-laugh, half-sob that sounded something like a hiccup. “Um, I guess. Knowledge is power, right?”
“That’s the right attitude,” she said, grinning. “Someone saw you and Jamie fighting yesterday in his office.”
I growled under my breath. Yvonne, and that one guy, Cory. I’d seen them waiting outside when I left. I knew I shouldn’t let my temper get the best of me, but I hadn’t been able to help it. “Dammit,” I muttered.
“Someone else, when they heard about the fight, mentioned that they’d seen you two go into the wellness room together.”
I winced. “Guilty.”
“Really?” Amy laughed as we made our way into the coffee shop around the corner. “Damn, that’s a great idea. Nobody uses that room, anyway.”
“Obviously it wasn’t such a great idea, after all.” I tried to let the comforting scent of coffee sooth my frazzled nerves, but it wasn’t working. “Still, though, none of that proves anything. We could have been fighting about anything. We could have been doing… whatever… in the wellness room.”
Amy sighed. “It doesn’t matter whether anything has been ‘proven’ or not, and you know that. With rumors, you’re basically guilty until proven innocent… and sometimes you’re still guilty.”
“So, what are they saying, anyway?” I asked.
Amy couldn’t answer me right away, because we’d reached the counter. We placed our orders and paid, and then went to the end of the counter to wait for our coffees.
Amy looked around before saying, “Some people are saying you flirted your way onto the new app, and that you’re angling for more.”
“For more what?” I asked. “Geez, this doesn’t even make sense.” I covered my face with my hands. “I’d never do anything like that, anyway. I just want to be with Jamie, without having to hide anything. This is so fucking ridiculous.”
Suddenly, an image of Jamie ignoring me the other day popped into my head. The way I’d smiled and how he’d walked past like I was nothing.
He’d known, I realized. He’d known that this was coming, and he’d been trying to stop it.
I shouldn’t have gotten so angry with him.
The barista set our coffees on the counter, and we grabbed them. Instead of walking back to the door, though, I slid into one of the arm chairs in the corner of the café. I wanted to tell Jamie I was sorry but there was no way I could go into his office now. The things people would say.
I couldn’t even face the office. I held my coffee in both hands, too devastated to even think about sipping it.
Amy sat in the arm chair across from mine. “This is going to pass soon. People will realize it’s just a stupid rumor. They’ll lose interest if there’s no more fuel for the fire. Trust me, the whole thing is going to die out before you know it.”
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head. Gossip this juicy? We hadn’t had anything comparable. The drama back when Mishka was in charge had been pretty minimal, limited to who was leaving sweaty towels in the wellness room or whether two interns were dating. A CEO and a project manager hooking up in the office? They weren’t likely to forget this anytime soon.