Jimmy

“Knock, knock.”

“Do you ever say anything else before you enter a room?” I asked.

“Knock, knock, asshole?” Ross asked.

“Come in and shut the door,” I said with a chuckle. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“Oh, I’ve come back for details.”

“About what?” I asked.

“About this breakup with Nina. The work day is officially over, and the weekend has begun. I want all the details.”

“Is it already seven o’clock?”

“No? It’s five. Everyone’s day ends at five, Jimmy.”

“Not mine,” I said.

“Because you’re a freak of nature who worries about everything. Now, put the pen down, turn off the computer, and tell me everything.”

“You would’ve been a good girl in another life.”

“What makes you think I’m not a good girl now?” he asked with a grin.

“I don’t care what you do in your sex life, Ross. Just don’t bring it here.”

“And here I thought that was my appeal,” he said. “Come on. Stop stalling. Tell me all about it.”

“There isn’t anything to tell really.”

“Start from the beginning. What did you tell her, and how did she react?” he asked.

“Well, she called me up that morning needing money for another vacation. Said she had a hard week and wanted to decompress.”

“Because living off someone else’s dime is strenuous on her delicate body,” he said.

“I told her to come over and talk, and she didn’t want to, so I told her to think of it as an employee-employer meeting. If she wanted the money for the vacation, she needed to come talk.”

“Makes sense. Did she come over?”

“She did. She came in with an attitude as well.”

“Of course, she did,” he said. “She’s always had an attitude.”

“But not like this. It was like I was an inconvenience to her or something.”

“Never bite the hand that feeds you,” he said with a grin.

“I offered her a drink, and she continued the attitude. Kept making comments like ‘do I have permission to drink’?”

“What? The fuck does that even mean?”

“I made it known that she was the one with the attitude first, and then we launched into the argument that always happens with her. Then, she told me the phone call for money was a ‘courtesy call’ to let me know she was leaving.”

“Did she think she had another way to pay for this vacation of hers or something?” he asked.

“She said that, yes. She said she didn’t need my money to go to London.”

“I never thought I could hate a place like London until now.”

“And it was all attitude from the very beginning. She was upset because she thought I was trying to make her check in with me or something. Which is technically true. When we outlined our terms, the only thing I asked was that I knew where my money was going when I gave it to her. That’s how I knew about all the debt she was in and how she was struggling to get out of it.”

“Did you guys talk about that dinner?” he asked.

“We did. I told her we needed to clear the air on things, and she told me she did me a favor.”

“What?” he asked flatly.

“Yep. Said she took one look at him and saw he was a pig.”

“A look.”

“My exact response. A look. Like she was Sherlock Holmes or something. I told her that per her words the last time we were together, she didn’t work for my company. So who I took on as a client was none of her concern. She, of course, said it was and made some argument about how all these social movements we’re seeing in society right now could destroy a company like mine if I align myself with the wrong client.”

“She’s not wrong, but still, I checked him out thoroughly. Like I said, a bit of a pig when it comes to women, but he does treat them with respect. He’s a traditionalist. You know, a woman knows her place and all that. But he doesn’t force women into that role, if that makes sense.”

“She kept insisting she did me a favor, and I told her I highly doubted that she did, and she accused me of not being able to see her worth,” I said.

“You pay her worth. At least, you did,” he said.

“She mentioned that she knew we nailed the other client.”

“How the hell did she know about that meeting?”

“That’s the only thing I’m worried about. I have no idea. She gave me this sly little grin and said she had ways of figuring this stuff out. It was eerie. I caught her manipulation before it started, though. That was when I told her I wasn’t funding her trip to London.”

“Just the trip to London?” he asked.

“I told her I was getting tired of her shit and that I wasn’t doing it with her any longer. That I wasn’t going to save her monetarily whenever she decided to jettison around the world and throw her budget out the window. Then, she got pissed.”

“Wait, she wasn’t pissed until this point?”

“Nope,” I said. “That’s when she said she didn’t need my money, and I told her I didn’t believe her. But even if I did, I didn’t care. I told her if this was an actual employer-employee meeting, she would’ve been fired. She cost me a huge client, she threw a childlike fit about it afterward, and because of that, I couldn't trust her around another client. She negated her purpose, and I told her that was grounds for firing her.”

“Then you fired her. Right?” he asked.

“She tried that argument again. About me not being able to get any further without her, and I told her it wasn’t true. That the company succeeded before her and would succeed after her.”

“Then you said the words ‘we’re done.’ ”

“Not finished. You wanted details, so stop interrupting,” I said. “Because she wasn’t done. I told her she was acting like a spoiled brat.”

“You called her a spoiled brat?”

“Oh, yes, I did. I told her she was kicking back at an arrangement we had agreed to for well over a year and then was demanding compensation for doing nothing. Then she yelled that she sat around and waited for my phone calls all the time and how that ate into the life she really wanted to live.”

“Uh-huh. I’m not following,” he said.

“There was a point in time where I went almost three months without needing her. Apparently, that was what pissed her off. She waited for my phone calls, and they never came, and then when I needed her back to back, she felt taken advantage of.”

“You were still paying her, right?”

“Every month at the top of it.”

“Then what the hell’s she complaining about?”

“That she wasn’t some woman who sat in an ivory tower backstroking in the money I sent her.”

“Like Scrooge McDuck?” Ross asked. “It’s actually a pretty funny image.”

“In a way, I could see where she’s coming from. Being at my beck and call doesn't allow her to have a life. She told me about dates she’s turned down from other men and other passions she can’t indulge because of what we’re doing. And if she was telling the truth, it makes sense.”

“So you went through all this shit only to sympathize with her?”

“Not to her face, but that was the end of the argument. She called me a spineless idiot and walked out.”

“Where’s the part where you told her explicitly that you two were done?”

“Wasn’t that obvious?” I asked.

“When you have an arrangement like that with someone, you have to be explicit. Come on, Jimmy. Seriously? You practically had a contract with this woman.”

“I had emails.”

“That created a paper trail. You pussyfooted around the topic, but you never specifically expressed the fact that you two were over. You said you weren’t funding her vacation, you fought, you told her the company would survive if she was gone, and that was that. That wasn’t a breakup, Jimmy. That was simply another argument.”

I sat in my chair as the blood drained from my face. Holy shit. That woman had done it again. Or maybe I was to blame this time. Either way, this was not good.

“Fuck.”

“Yep,” Ross said. “You fucked up.”

“Damn it. And I can’t fix it right now. I have that meeting at six with the hotel guy she fucked things up with,” I said.

“You’ll have to fix it later. Right now, you need to get ready. It’s five thirty.”

“Shit. Okay. Um, go downstairs and tell my driver to be ready. I need to change my shirt, and I’ll be ready to go.”

I couldn’t think about Nina and her bullshit right now. Maybe she got the message or maybe she didn’t. Either way, I couldn’t concern myself with it. This meeting was important for us, and I would have to do a lot of ass-kissing to smooth over the damage Nina had done.

Twenty minutes later, I was walking into the same restaurant I’d been in with this man a week and a half ago. I came over to him and shook his hand, but I could tell his eyes were looking for Nina.

“I see you decided to take my advice,” he said.

“The only woman who should be at the table is a businesswoman,” I said. “Nina is many things, but a businesswoman she is not.”

“Good on you, son. I take it the two of you resolved things?” he asked.

“The best way they could be resolved,” I said.

“Hah! I almost lost my wife in a fight like that too. How big was the ring?”

“What?”

“The ring you got her. How big was it? There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned fight to bring out the best in one another.”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“A woman doesn’t get all pissy like that without wanting something. With my wife, it was a commitment. Nina was acting the same way she was all those years ago. Pissed I was spending more time working and less time with her. Dragging her to meetings thinking she wanted to meet all my business partners. I made that same mistake when I was younger.”

Shit. Holy shit. I felt myself panicking. Was I really going to have to tell his man I’d broken things off with Nina? But were things really broken off? Ross made it seem like things weren’t really over yet.

What the fuck was I going to tell this man?

“Things between us will work themselves out one way or another,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to let that squabble come between you two. She’s feisty, but Nina seems like a good woman.”

“Why don’t we get back to the business at hand?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m doing. I can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats the woman at his side, Mr. Sheldon. She’s still at your side, right?”

I felt the blood drain from my face as the man sat back in his chair. I watched his eyes fall to my left hand like he was labeling me the wishy-washy man I was. How the hell had I already lost control of this conversation?

How the hell was Nina still controlling this damn meeting?

“Listen, son. You got a lot to offer me. But you also got a lot to learn. A businessman needs to do two things very well. He needs to run his business with a moral code he can be proud of, and he needs to be able to stay committed. He can run at the first sign of trouble.”

Holy shit. I was about to lose this damn client. Again.

Because of Nina and her bullshit.

“Sir, I can promise you I am a man of my word. I couldn’t have built the company I have today if I couldn't stay committed. Mr. Fowler? The man you’ve been speaking with? He’s not simply my COO. He’s been my best friend since our college days. And if you want to do business with us, you don’t simply have a contract with us. You have a commitment from us and my company.”

“You talk a good game, and that’s what got you to where you are. It’s what gets all businessmen rich and famous. Real commitment comes into play when you decide to hang onto a woman. To put up with her antics because you know she’s good for you. I can see it in your eyes, son. You look lost.”

I looked angry. Confused. Frustrated. But not lost.

I hadn’t been lost for years.

“I feel this is leading into a conversation that puts us on uneven footing for the second time,” I said. “And if that’s the case, I do not want to take up any more of your time.”

“Learn what true commitment means. It’ll be a lesson that’ll do you well in this world.”

I wanted to slug him right in his fat face. I bit down on the inside of my cheek and walked away, anger pouring from my veins. How the fuck did Nina still have a grasp on this fucking meeting when she didn’t do a damn thing? She sat there, looked pretty, and interjected with laughter whenever a client made some bullshit joke.

That was it.

I couldn’t lose another client over something as stupid as that.

I got back into my car and told my driver to head to the nearest jewelry store. Any one that was open would do. He gave me a weird look, but I brushed it off. Screw whatever the hell Ross had said. This commitment thing was serious. I wasn’t an idiot, and I wasn't conjuring things up. That shit was serious in this world, and we weren’t going to move forward unless I appeared exactly the way I needed to appear.

Strong, intelligent, and committed. To both my company and a woman.

In the business world, a woman was a status symbol. Anyone could treat her as well or as badly as they wanted, but having a woman at a man’s side was a symbol. Men who had women at their sides were treated with more decency and respect than men who didn’t. I didn’t know why the fuck that was, and I didn’t care. All I knew was that it was the truth, and my company couldn’t afford for me to fuck things up now.

I slammed out of my car and walked into the jewelry store. My eyes landed on men’s wedding bands, and I picked out the first one that jumped out at me. It was black and shiny. Made of onyx and had a small diamond sitting right in the middle of it. I had it sized and handed the man my card and told him there was a very nice tip in it for him if he could get it to me quickly. I stood there and waited as the man worked quickly, sizing the ring and making sure nothing cracked in the process.

Then he handed it to me, and I slid it on my hand.

My left ring finger.

It was a weird feeling. A foreign one. I wasn’t a jewelry man. A watch every now and again, but that was it. Looking at the ring, it seemed out of place, but it was necessary. I wasn’t going to lose another client over some bullshit unwritten rule about businessmen, commitment, women, and marriage.

Fuck. Sometimes I really hated my job.