James
Life at the office had become a living hell. Amanda was a downright bitch. It was even worse than before. She had been difficult before – fussy and pedantic – but she had been business oriented and that had been a quality I had needed.
I didn’t know what had happened but she was being a woman now, they way other women were, not like a machine. She had mood swings and she let them get in the way of business. She was difficult for no reason at all. When I did something one way she wanted it another way. When I did what I had to do she wanted to do it again, but better. Her way.
I had a feeling it had to do with the fact that I knew, now. Everything was out in the open and even though nothing would come of it – I didn’t want her acts to leak out and sink the company and she had a hold on me with the signed documents. Still, it was out now and everything she had worked so hard to keep secret had been exposed.
I knew now that she was a backstabbing bitch with no intention other than to please and save herself and I was the idiot that she’d taken along for the ride.
She’d never stolen from me specifically. She’d done a lot of things wrong and some of them had been personal – like sleeping with Charlie and like filling in papers on my behalf – but I still couldn’t work with her. I couldn’t see her as the person I had before. God, I’d defended her when everyone had told me that she was up to something. Caleb, Ava… I had been warned again and again.
Of course, no one wanted to know that the choices they’d made were the wrong ones. Me, least of all. I had prided myself on the ability to break away from my dad’s control. It was a kick in the gut that I had only fallen into the control of another.
I knocked on Amanda’s door.
“What is it?” she asked.
I held up a paper that had been faxed through. “The projections for the next financial year,” I said.
Amanda held out her hand. I walked over to her like an errand boy and handed it to her. She only glanced over it before she put it down on the table.
“Shouldn’t we discuss it?” I asked.
“Later,” she said. “I’m busy.”
I rolled my eyes and turned my back on her.
“You know, it won’t hurt to be nice to the people you work with,” I said at the door. “You’re making life hard for all of us. What are you so sour about?”
Amanda looked up at me, eyes spewing fire.
“Maybe I would be nice to you if you didn’t go behind my back and get two more people involved in my business.”
“Ha!” I cried out. “That’s the most hypocritical statement of the year.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Bite me, James.”
I shook my head and left her office. There was no reasoning with her. She was a bitch. She’d hidden it before – she didn’t make the effort now. It was no surprise she had ended up sleeping with Charlie, of all people. They were the same in so many ways.
In my own office, I opened a window and lit up a cigarette. It tasted like an ashtray every time I did it, but I needed the distraction. It was a horrible habit to pick up but Caleb had always smoked and I had nothing else, now.
Since I’d found out about Amanda and what she was up to, I’d stopped drinking. It had been hard at first – I hadn’t realized how much I’d relied on it. I wasn’t addicted, though. I’d told myself that I wasn’t and even though it had been hard I’d been able to break free.
It wasn’t my favorite move, although it was probably good for me that I’d stopped. I needed to have my head in the business always. I had been sleepwalking through my career for so long it was my absence that had let Amanda go behind my back so easily. I had been too trusting, too accepting, too damn drunk to do anything about what was happening. I hadn’t even noticed that she’d taken me for a ride.
Luckily – because of Caleb and Ava – I had managed to get the idea before it was all too late. It had been dangerously close already.
I missed drinking, I had to say that much. It wasn’t that I craved it, although I’d had withdrawal. It was more that I missed having an escape when there was so much darkness around me. Alcohol had helped me forget. It had made me feel good – about myself, my past, my business – and it had helped me sleep.
That was something I struggled to do every night, now.
I’d picked up smoking – a habit I had managed to kick years ago – so I would have something to replace the alcohol with. I was starting to regret it.
I hadn’t been back to Hush, either. Not since that night I’d walked out on the dancing girl. It wasn’t about kicking bad habits this time. No, this time it was about Ava. I knew that there was no chance I would get her back. I’d had my unlikely second chance and I’d blown it. I had been so blind to what was happening I had lost her along with everyone else.
I wasn’t even about her kissing Caleb, either. It was because I hadn’t let her feel like she was enough to win me over. I hadn’t given it my all, and as a result, she hadn’t been able to give me her all, either.
The worst was not being able to drink myself into a stupor when she was pinned to my frontal lobe. Lately, she was on my mind all the time. I was right back to where I’d been fifteen years ago, with a girl on my mind I was never going to have.
I breathed in deeply, sucking on the filter, dragging the smoke into my lungs. I blew it out again in a cloud and watched it dissipate in the air outside the window. I looked out over the city.
Was this my empire? Was this what I had worked my whole life to achieve? In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t seem like all that much.
“I’m going mad with Amanda in the office,” I told Caleb. I was in his office after work. “I can’t stand her anymore.”
“You told me how she’s being,” Caleb said. “I don’t know what to say to you, man. It’s bad.”
I nodded.
“What if you buy her out?” Caleb asked.
“Haven’t we talked about this? I don’t think I’ll be able to give her as much cash as she wants. She’s greedy more than anything else.”
Caleb nodded. “What if we match her price, though? Then you have the company, she has her money and you’re rid of her.”
I shook my head. “We?”
“I’ll help you,” he said. “You can pay me back once you have everything back on track.”
I blinked at Caleb. “You would do that for me? Why?”
Caleb pulled up his shoulders. “Because you need to get away from here. I think we can do this.”
I thought about it. Caleb was willing to bail me out. After everything that had gone wrong while Ava was here, he had stuck by my side. We had been sticky for a while but things were back to normal though. Caleb was more loyal than any of my family members had ever been.
“That really means a lot to me, Caleb,” I said.
“Don’t get soppy on me, Jimmy,” Caleb said, grinning.
I chuckled but it turned into a sigh.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull it off,” I said. “And running the business on my own…”
“Well, I can always advise you, financially,” Caleb said. “But you have all your managers and directors in place. They’ll just be answering to you now, not Amanda. I don’t think the step will be that big.”
I swallowed, hard. I wasn’t so sure. I had been messing around for a long time. Even though I had started taking care of myself and my life, now, I wasn’t sure had what it took.
I’d only been paying attention for a short while lately. I was pretty hands-on with as much as I could be but I knew there was a lot that Amanda took care of, a lot that I didn’t know.
“You know, you can always employ someone to help you pick up the pieces until you’re on top of it again,” Caleb said. “You’ll need to sort out this mess Amanda has created first and we’ll have to bury what’s happened until now to save your company, but once that’s happened we can get someone to help you. A nice young thing with a few years’ experience, a business degree and the will to succeed.”
He winked at me. I chuckled listlessly. A fresh young thing… I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted.
“I think I should rather opt for a man, this time. Someone who will definitely take the job seriously and be stable and obedient.”
We paid for our food and walked out into the street. I pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. Caleb raised his eyebrows.
“Since when do you smoke?” he asked.
“Since everything in my life turned into a shit storm and I can’t get drunk every night otherwise Amanda will cheat me out of my own business completely.”
Caleb nodded slowly, watching me suck on the cigarette.
“You’re going to regret that,” he said. He took out a cigarette of his own and lit it up.
“Already do,” I said. We stood together in silence for a while watching people walk past, smoking.
Caleb cleared his throat.
“Have you spoken to Ava?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She won’t answer my calls. I’m not going to keep trying if she doesn’t want me.”
Caleb nodded slowly.
“You’ve spoken to her, though, haven’t you?” I asked.
Caleb nodded again. “Briefly. She is doing okay, I guess. She doesn’t sound like herself.”
“What does she sound like?”
“Down.”
I nodded, not making eye contact with Caleb. “It’s better this way,” I said. “I don’t know how to give her what she needs.”
“How do you know?” Caleb asked. “How do you know that what she needs isn’t just you and your love?”
I shook my head. “It’s not that simple.”
“I think you’ll realize that it is. Women just want to be loved, James. And she wants you to love her.”
“What makes you such an Ava expert?” I asked. “Is it because you’ve been there?”
Caleb pulled a face. “Don’t be petty, Jim. You can see her feelings for you a mile away. The only reason I hadn’t paid attention to it was that I didn’t think you had hooked up with her again.”
I frowned at Caleb. “You can see how she feels about?”
“If a woman looked at me the way she looks at you, I would be a happy man. You should go after her. Go out there and bring her back.”
I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen.”
I felt like I was stuck in a time loop. Everything was just repeating itself. Maybe not exactly in the same way, but we were separated again. One of us wasn’t contacting the other, again. I had gone after her before and that had failed. I wasn’t going to do that again.
“It’s your choice,” Caleb said. “But I told you before and I’ll tell you again. If I thought I had a shot with someone like her, at all, I wouldn’t let her slip through my fingers. You’re being an idiot.”
I shook my head. Maybe Caleb was right, but I had missed my opportunity. Twice. That ship had sailed and I was stupid enough to not be on it. Again.