“Yes, sir?”
“I know you’ve taken another sick day—” there was a contemptuous emphasis on the ‘another’—“but I need you to come in today, in an hour. Marianne is out with the flu and somebody’s got to cover her workload.”
My heart leapt again before I could remember that Marianne was the name of the other woman in the department, and she didn’t get any great jobs either. Still, there was a tiny strand of hope left: “And the Knox account?”
He laughed, a hard hacking sound that was only barely recognizable as mirth. “Don’t kid yourself, Allison. After the hash you made of it last time, there’s no way I’m letting you more than forty miles near that one.”
I felt the sinking sensation of worthlessness in my stomach as he spoke. He was right. I ruined everything I touched—no! No, I couldn’t let myself think things like that. I had to fight.
I tried to rally. “Well, I could work on the Jefferson accounts, or pitch for the Insignia deal, I’ve done a lot of research on—”
“Stick to what you know,” he sneered. “You’re lucky you did moderately well with the hygiene products last year, or you’d be out on your ass right now. There’s a new tampon line to work on, and with Marianne out with the flu you can come in and look it over, see if you can manage something simple.”
And then he hung up on me.
He’d never done that before. He’d been dismissive, sure, but he’d coated it in polite phrases and sweet-sounding sentiments. This…contempt…that was new.
It probably meant he was getting ready to fire me.
I tried to make myself feel something about this as I slowly stood, trying to remember where I’d last seen my purse and keys and everything else I’d need to make it into work. All my hopes and dreams were about to go up in smoke. I should have felt crushed.
But I already felt crushed.
This…this was just a grain of sand on top of the mountain that was already crushing me.
I thought about Hunter. I couldn’t help it; it just came to me in one painful flash: his smiling face, his strong arms, the partial glimpses of his past and the silence that hadn’t shut me out but had invited me in, invited me to really open up and let someone else in for the first time.
But now it was all over.
My career was on its way to being all over too.
And I had absolutely no idea how to turn any of it around.
TWO
I was having trouble following the plot of this reality TV show—there was something about someone cheating on somebody who had maybe cheated on them before, and also something about a car that somebody was supposed to have bought for someone else, and also some sort of competition based on putting together a ridiculously expensive birthday—but it was okay that the plots were labyrinthine and endlessly embroiled, because the more energy I expended trying to trace complicated plotlines and digest my rubbery General Tso’s chicken, the less time I was spending wallowing in the spectacular blow up of my relationship with Hunter, and the subsequent slow, painful disintegration of my career.
Well, in theory, anyway.
My phone shrilled on the coffee table, and I jumped up, simultaneously muting the TV as I check the caller ID, cruel hope twisting my heart into pieces.
It wasn’t Hunter.
But it wasn’t my boss, either, which I tried to feel grateful for.
It was Paige.
I wasn’t exactly up for a feelings share with my big sister—my feelings felt too big and spiky and painfully sharp for sharing, or for anything that wasn’t locking them up tight inside me where I could be the only one who was hurt by them. I still answered the phone, though, because the last time I didn’t answer she showed up on my doorstep with a dozen cupcakes and a first aid kit.
“Hey, Paigey, how’s it hanging?”
I sounded horribly fake even to me. There was no way I would ever have phrased things like that if I were doing half as well as I wanted to be. And there was no way that Paige would be fooled, either.
And she wasn’t; I could tell by the cheerfully brittle tone of her voice. It made her sound frighteningly like our mother. “Oh, nothing. Just missed you, thought we could chat.”
I sighed. “I’m fine, Paige.”
A pause. “Are you, though?”
I blinked back my tears. Damn that woman for knowing me so well. Damn her for loving me. Damn her for not letting things lie, for not letting me lie to myself.
“People get broken up with every day. It sucks and it sucks and it sucks and then it starts to suck a little less and eventually it doesn’t suck at all anymore. I can’t skip the initial suckage, though.”
Paige gave a half-hearted little laugh. “I wish I could help you skip it, though.”
“Dream on, dreamer.” There was a lump in my throat; I tried to talk past it like it wasn’t there. “And don’t worry so much about me.”
“I’m your big sister. It’s in the contract.”