CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He seems almost as surprised to see me as I am to see him.
I open the door and give a polite, professional smile, but it’s like being hit in the face with a pot of boiling water and still trying to play it cool.
I hurry back to my seat as he makes his way to join the rest of the team.
Mason introduces him as the final member of the team, in charge of all of Europe.
He seems out of place amongst the team. He’s more mature, easily the oldest; he’s 45 while the rest of the team is maybe in their 30’s.
He’s dignified, as he always was. He says a few words about being excited to be working with us and how together we are all going to be leading the future direction of the company. He makes it a point to look at everyone in the room, but it seems like he stares at me a little longer than the rest.
My eyes find the table or the wall or anything else that’s not his gaze. The dollop of cream cheese is still on the wall.
Mason assumes control of the meeting again. “You’ll be assigned into new teams, based on past performance. It will be your jobs to become experts on your regions. Your managers will help. You’re to do nothing without their consent. That includes wiping your asses or sneezing. I’ll let the leads take it from here.”
The managers take turns getting up and calling out the names of the people that will make up their teams. As they do, they get up and leave the room with their new team members.
As the room clears, dread settles in. There are only a few of us left, and only Mason and Weismann yet to call out their teams. I’m not sure which is worse, working with Mason or Weismann. A premonition of doom tells me which team I’m on, though it doesn’t warn me of the extent of the disaster.
“I’ll leave you the room,” Mason says to Weismann as he exits with his team.
There’s no one else left in the room but us.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Weismann says. “You look well.”
I don’t know what to say. Several parts of me are fighting. The old me is passive and intimidated, the current version of me is ready to spit fire and bolt. The professional me says to keep things just that. “Thanks,” I say, not sure which side has won.
“Is there somewhere else we can go?” He asks. “We don’t need this big room for just the two of us. Let’s move to your office,” he says. “Much more intimate and a better place to discuss strategy.”
I’m tempted to protest, but he doesn’t wait for a response.
He heads toward the door and stands there with it open.
“Lead the way,” he says.
I get up, reluctantly, and we make our way to my office.
I take a round about way to my office. He makes chit chat about the niceties of the facility along the way. I make it a point to pass Rachel’s office; we exchange a quick wide-eyed glance as I pass by.
We get to my office and enter. He closes the door behind us.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says.
“Do you?”
He smiles the confident smile I once fell for. “I do.”
He takes a seat in front of my desk while I sit in my seat behind it.
“Look at us,” he says. “Tables have turned, eh?”
“Not really,” I say. “You’re still the boss.”
He laughs. “Well, some things don’t change.”
“What are we doing?” I ask. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re working on a future,” he says. “A professional one, of course.” His words sound sincere, but the look in his eyes is anything but. He gets up and walks around the office. “I’m proud of you,” he says. “I always knew you had the makings for success. I have an eye for these things, you know.” He looks at me and winks. “It’s a shame things went as they did before, but I’m glad to see you’ve found success here. And in Frankfurt, I hear. That’s why I wanted you on my team.”
“Team? Where’s the rest of it?”
“In Europe, of course. Home field advantage.”
“So why are you here then?”
“To retrieve the star player.”
He sits on my desk, coming too close into my personal space. My mind flashes back to other instances where a desk was a conduit to shared personal space.
I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the memories, but as I see his eyes this close and as he steadies himself on my desk and I get a glimpse of his hands I’m taken back to the effects they both used to have.
His cologne has also filled the room. We picked it out in the Cologne airport, ironically, coming back from a sales trip. His wife hated it. As I remember her my eyes notice that he’s no longer wearing a wedding ring.
The real me finally decides to take charge. “Can we talk about what’s actually happening here?”
He smiles. “Direct, I always liked that about you. It’s why you do well. At least in this capacity.”
I take the compliment and double down. “So?”
He gets off the desk and sits back in the chair. “I may have been out of line concerning our…past experience,” he says. “But let’s be honest, we were two consenting adults. Perhaps not entirely honest, but consenting none the less.”
I don’t bother arguing, the statement is true enough.
“What I felt for you,” he continues, “it was completely honest.” He holds up his open hands and flips them back and forth. I think his way of showing he has nothing to hide. He points to his ring finger. “With her, not so much.”
There’s a look in his blue eyes that tell me what he’s saying is sincere. “So what happened?” I ask.
“Honesty,” he says. “I have you to thank for that. After you left, I was forced to be honest with myself. About who I was and what I felt.”
I can see that he feels better, but I don’t. What he says translates to guilt for me and I can’t help feeling like a home-wrecker. “I’m glad I was the liberator from your lies,” I say.
His expression changes.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I say. “It’s not professional.”
“But it is true,” he says. He smiles. “And direct, which again, is a trait I’ve always admired in you.”
“Well that’s all fine and dandy,” I say, continuing the streak of honesty and directness, “but where does that leave me?”
I want to answer my own question and tell him that it left me down in the dumps and with bouts of violent, angry drunkenness, but if I’m honest with myself I know that I’d only be blaming him for my own stupidity. Still, I don’t like the idea of having his wife hate me for what I did. Though I guess, that’s also the price I pay for being the other woman in the first place.
“You don’t have to answer that,” I say. “You’re no more responsible for my life than I am for yours.” I realize I actually mean that as the words angrily come out.
“I understand that, and I understand your anger,” he says. He leans forward in his chair and folds his hands between his legs. He looks down at the ground for a moment. “Closure is critical,” he says. “I’ve come to realize that myself. For the sake of closure, know that everything that happened between us was ultimately for the better. My wife and I were best friends, still are, though no longer married or lovers. She has moved on, as have I. She didn’t know you were the catalyst, you deserve your privacy, but she did know it was a man.” He goes on, but I don’t want to hear any more.
“Look,” I finally say.
He raises his hands and leans back. “Let me say one last thing. Somewhere in my mind I hoped that the young man I fell in love with would still harbor those feelings for me. Perhaps he’d want to go about things in the proper way, without being manipulated by someone who should have known better, but was deeply in love.”
He looks into my eyes, his filled with hope and vulnerability. Mine are hardened, not by anger anymore, but by a similar hope and vulnerability. For Patrick.
“I don’t see that happening,” I say.
He looks down at the floor for a moment, then back at me. “I understand and respect that,” he says. He gets up to leave but stops short of the door.
“The new position,” he says, “I’m the one who recommended you as my successor. I’d rather you heard that from me than elsewhere.
“It had nothing to do with how I feel for you personally. Your success was all you. I’d like to tell you it was part of what made you so damned attractive, but those would be my personal feelings.
“There’s a brand new team there waiting for a leader,” he says. “I won’t be going back, but I hope you will.”