Banging on my poor keyboard, I took my frustration out on the computer equipment. The tweet in front of me required a witty response. And all I could think was, “Who cares?”
I pushed back from my desk, I needed to get out of the office for a few minutes. Clear my head. I tapped on the doorframe to Maggie’s office. The door was open.
“Hey, I’m going to go get a coffee. Do you want anything?”
She picked up her coffee cup and wagged it at me. She was good. I paused briefly outside of Bria’s office; the door was firmly shut. That meant she was deep in creative mode, and she needed to be left alone. So, I kept on walking. Matt and Brian were nowhere to be found. I was on my own for coffee.
Once outside, the dismal weather hit me hard. It was cold, it was gray. It was wet. The end of February gloom wasn’t helping my mood at all. Without a reply from Chase everything in my life seemed to have gone from bad to worse. The weather was bad. My mood was worse. The stress was impacting me physically. My face was breaking out, and my hormones weren’t behaving. I hadn’t had my period. I was off schedule by almost a week.
If that wasn’t enough, Mom continued to press me about Amelia’s vocabulary. I wouldn’t know anything until she was assessed. She was two and a half pushing three. How many words was a toddler supposed to know? I knew she should be talking more than she was. But how much more was more? At what point did baby babble turn into real speech? We had an appointment, but it wasn’t for weeks yet.
I didn’t know what to do about work either. Social media marketing started off as fun. It was almost like playing for a week or two. And suddenly, now, it was work. Instant Twitter responses depended on my ability to be witty. It was hard to be witty when everything was so dreary. Plus, I was sad. Chase hadn’t texted me back. I was afraid to text him, afraid of what he would say.
Wrapped up in my thoughts, I walked down the block and into the coffee shop. The warmth of the shop wrapped around me when I opened the door. The rich smells of coffee, chocolate, and cinnamon made me decide that I deserved something to make me happy. Instead of coffee, I got hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and a muffin. Because muffins always made my mouth happy. And if my mouth was happy, maybe the rest of me might think about being happy too. And maybe, if I was happy, I’d be productive. Because I certainly wasn’t being productive in the mood, I was in.
I ate my muffin, more like a mini coffee cake with sugar crumbles on top, and slowly made my way back to the office. A black car pulled up in front of the doors to the CP Manhattan building. Shit.
If that was Chase, what was I gonna do? I couldn’t see him right now.
A tall woman who looked familiar stepped out of the back of a car. Her hair was long, medium brown, and straight. It took a moment before I recognized her as Jennifer, John’s fiancée. Damn. I couldn’t go into the building now.
What if I ran into her in the elevator? She would tell John she saw me. I couldn’t have her do that. I turned around and walked away. I had no destination in mind other than to keep myself away from work. Now was not the time to be found out by John. I didn’t have accurate numbers yet. I had numbers. They were good numbers, but they weren’t enough to prove that my job and marketing made a difference to his business. Those were the kind of numbers I needed to prove to him that my job was not simply playing on the internet.
Suddenly my stomach, even full of muffin, had this weird hollow emptiness inside. It had to be the stress of getting caught by my brother. I knew part of it was the stress over Chase. What would happen if he didn’t want to meet Amelia? Could I continue to work this job if things were over between us? Why was I still at this job? If John found me, he would fire me immediately.
Every day was a risk coming here and if Chase wasn’t talking to me, was it worth the risk? Of course, I was making up wild conjectures in my head of what he would say the next time we saw each other.
I braced my hand on my abdomen. No wonder I was stressed. I was a mess.
He hadn’t texted me back yet. I thought he was supposed to have been back from Europe by now. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was still there and that’s why he couldn’t respond to any of my messages.
I didn’t know. I ran my hand over my face and tried to force my brain and my insides to calm down. The stress was messing me up and I did not like it. I stopped walking and took a deep breath to centre myself.
“Look Gemma, you’re badass. You can do this. Now, turn yourself around and take your ass back to the office. You have work to do.”
Following my own instructions, I headed back. One foot in front of the other, I forced myself back to the building.
Dammit if there wasn’t another black car pulling up in front. Why was I so concerned? Black cars pulled up in front of our building all the time. Half the time they weren’t even for our own offices. CP Manhattan didn’t take up that much of the building. We only had four floors. Why would I assume that all of the cars were for our office?
It was time to ignore the car and just keep walking. Go through the doors, go up the elevator, and go back to work. I had a destination, I had tasks to be done. If I needed a distraction, I could look up delayed speech patterns in two-and-a-half-year-olds. I could do that.
Except for some reason, I couldn’t move. I stood there with a muffin wrapper in one hand and a warm hot chocolate in the other. I stood there and I watched Chase step out of that car and walk into the building.
That asshole was in town, and he hadn’t texted me? He hadn’t called me, hadn’t stopped by my office. How many days had I been playing these games in my head?
How much longer was I going to put myself through this? I may have decided when I was five that I was in love with him and that I wanted to marry him some day. When I was fourteen at his father’s funeral, and he didn’t recognize me, I knew better. I knew better and yet I continued to ignore the reality. Because the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wanted him. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I sniffled. I couldn’t go back in there. I couldn’t go into that building, and up the elevators to CP Manhattan, and go into that marketing department pretending to be happy and smiling like I cared anymore.
I turned around and started walking. I don’t know how long I walked for. Eventually, I was on the other side of the city. It was cold and getting dark. I was miles from home and miles from work.
I ducked into the nearest cafe, ordered a cup of coffee. It was bad but warm. I pulled out my phone and shot a quick text to Maggie.
“I am so sorry. I wasn’t feeling well. So sorry about that. I’ll be back in the office tomorrow morning.”
The next call I made was to a car service to come to pick me up and take me home. When I got home Mom already had Amelia in her highchair and they were singing together. Amelia didn’t say words, but she sang along as Mom fed her some beans and rice.
“Hey,” I said.
“Oh Gemma, are you okay? You don’t sound too good.”
I shook my head. “I’m not feeling the best. That smells good. What’s for dinner?”
“Yana ordered some Cajun food. There are red beans and rice and some kind of sausage, and then a jambalaya. Are you hungry? Do you want to have dinner?”
I looked at her, I felt numb. “I don’t know. Yes, maybe. I just… I’m just really tired and confused.”
“Sit,” Mom ordered.
I sat. I shrugged. “I told that guy about Amelia, and he hasn’t called me back.”
Mom gave me that ‘I-told-you-so’ kind of look. The kind she would give me if she caught me playing with a bee. ‘It’ll sting you,’ she would say. And then I’d get stung. And she’d have to deal with me crying and blubbering about being stung by the stupid bee after she had told me not to play with it. It was a look I deserved.
“Well, this is why you needed to tell him so that he didn’t confuse you or break your heart,” she said matter of factly.
I couldn’t tell her my heart was already broken. “You’re right.”
“Why don’t you go have a nice hot bath. I’ll put Amelia to bed. Maybe in the morning, you’ll feel better. Get your head on right. You can eat dinner later once you’re hungry.”
She was right. As I climbed the stairs to my room, I thought maybe I should just quit. But I wanted the job, and I liked the job. And dammit, I really wanted to prove John wrong. Now, I needed to get over the fact that I’d have to work with Chase.
I could be an adult; I could do it. If he wanted to ghost on our relationship and pretend that nothing happened between us, I could let him play that game. I didn’t want to. But I was prepared to do it. I needed to stop running away and hiding when things got messy.
