“It’s not like you don’t need it,” he interjected. I felt my cheeks flame again, hating that he was right. Grant turned and edged toward the door, making to leave. “I’ve seen the state of your apartment, remember. Of course, there are some things this won’t be able to fix, like your propensity for John Steed posters. It really is a pity that money can’t buy taste.”
Fresh anger rose in my veins like magma in a volcano. “Dammit, Grant, we still have to work together. Can’t you at least be civil!?”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Grant’s entire body locked tight, and he wheeled around, stalking slowly towards me while the rage built like blue flames in his eyes. “Oh, I doubt you’ll be working here much longer, Lacey. A talented girl like you, I’m sure you’ll find somewhere else much more suited to your ambitions.”
His words were like a slap in the face. “Oh, are you firing me now?” I snapped, refusing to back down. “That’s your modus operandi, isn’t it, as soon as someone disagrees with you or doesn’t give you exactly what you want—”
“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” Grant snarled. The ice was completely gone now, replaced by fire. “You never understood me, and you never understood the company. You just needed us as stepping stones on your way to bigger and better things, so I suggest that while we have to ‘work together’—” he was right across the desk from me now, his hands gripping the wooden edge—“you stay the hell out of my way, and don’t try for one second to pretend you ever cared about…about this company.”
He stood on the other side of the desk, seething down at me, and my own anger allowed me to meet his gaze with a matching fury.
As I shot to my feet, my legs and my voice both shaking with rage, I grabbed his lapel and yanked him even closer toward me. “How dare you say I don’t care about the company when—”
My hand was on his lapel.
“When…” I repeated.
My mouth forgot what it was saying.
My hand was on his lapel, and his mouth was so close to mine, and we were both breathing so hard, and his pupils were dilated and he just smelled so good and I wanted to grab him and kiss him and say that I never wanted to leave him and that I never would again, never—
Grant’s eyes went cold again. “No need to get hysterical, Miss Newman.” He plucked my hand from his lapel gingerly, as if it were a fly he had found in his soup. “It was only business. I don’t see what you’re getting so emotional about. You wanted it over.” He smiled, and I shivered at how empty and dead an expression it was. “So it’s over.”
He stalked to the door and pulled it open, revealing a cluster of employees who had been eavesdropping just outside. They froze mid ear-strain before scattering back to their cubicles and copy machines. Great. Just what I needed: more fuel for the gossip inferno. More fires to put out.
Grant turned back, silhouetted in the doorway, and my pathetic, traitorous heart leapt into my throat, but all he said was, “Best to move on, Miss Newman.”
He shut the door carefully behind him as he left, as if nothing at all had just passed between us, but some part of me wished he would have slammed it instead. At least then I’d know he had some feelings left, that maybe he still cared about me. But clearly he didn’t. What he’d said was true: it was over.
FOUR
Kate had taken one look at the expression on my face and dragged me out of the cafeteria. Now we were in a smoky little dive bar where the cigarette fumes were stronger than a tobacco plantation on fire, hiding at the corner booth with ripped red plastic seats and a nicotine-stained plastic palm tree strategically hiding our faces.
Above us, a blinking white light made me feel like I’d been dragged into a police interrogation as Kate pushed a ginger ale across the table at me—it was the middle of the work day, after all—and demanded that I first drown my sorrows (for whatever value of ‘drown your sorrows’ you can get with a ginger ale) and then spill my guts.
“—and then he was like, ‘so it’s over,’” I finished. “Like I’m being completely unreasonable to just want a cordial work relationship!”
I wasn’t being unreasonable, right? We’d had some good times, but I wanted more and he didn’t, so the best thing for everybody had been for me to pull back, hadn’t it? Why did I have to keep second-guessing myself?
I took a swig from my bottle, trying to pretend the bite of the Jamaican ginger was the bite of alcohol.
“I can’t believe he’s acting like this,” I went on, stoking my rage to avoid thinking about my pain. “Okay, I threw him for a loop, but obviously he’s fine, the company’s going to bounce back fine, why the fuck can’t he get over it? Why does he have to shut me out? What’s with the fucking Ice-Man act?”
Kate stirred her own non-alcoholic drink and tried to suppress a small smile.
“What’s with the Mona Lisa face, Katie? And which part of this is amusing to you?”