Chapter 9

Kelcey

I think it was harder for the fact that Anna clearly didn’t like doing this, that soft sad look in her eyes. Her office felt oppressive, a scary place, when it was normally a nice, safe place to stop in and share my feelings about the work. Or just to talk about her and Lucy and how cute they were.

Stupid of me to think we were friends. I guess they were just humoring me anyway. It was kind of obvious now looking back at it… all the patronizing smiles that I hadn’t really thought about.

“While you’ve definitely done a really good job starting the project…” she started, and I looked down.

“You don’t have to sugarcoat it.”

“I am impressed with how well you’ve done. That’s a fact. But I think at this point it will be easier to take you off the project and have someone else finish up where you left off.”

I chewed my cheek. “I’m sorry I messed up the event…”

She sat up straighter. “Kelcey… while we’re here privately, can I tell you something?”

I winced. “Yeah…?”

She leaned in closer, clearing her throat, and she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Veronica had it coming to her. That was a nice throw. I didn’t know you did taekwondo.”

“Oh—thank you.” I sat up a little taller. “I actually don’t know where it came from either.”

She sighed, giving me a sad little smile again. “If I had all the power, I’d say you’ve learned a lesson and we’ll pretend nothing happened. But… Berg and his CFO are upset, so wherever they meddle directly, my hands are a little tied. Only person who can put Berg in his place seems to be my mom, and I am not bringing her in.”

“Why was she even at this event? There’s no way mom privileges are a thing.”

She hung her head. “She tried that line on you, too, huh? I’m hoping I can get her to lay off since her showing up meddling got Veronica hurt this time…”

I winced. “Sorry… is she okay?”

“It was just a bruise. She did worse to you.” She sat up taller. “We have… another project to put you on.”

My breath caught a little. That meant I wasn’t completely useless, right? “I’m listening.”

She strained a smile. “There’s a lot of data records that need checking to make sure there’s no corrupted or bad data on them… it’s a tedious task, but Berg wanted me to assure him you’d take care of it.”

I stared at her for a minute before I said, “Um… I’m positive we could just run a script to check them…”

“We’ve already run a script over them, but just the… human touch to make a hundred percent sure. Higherups wanted to invite you to work remotely while you’re on the project, so you don’t have to worry about commuting in just to handle data scrubbing.”

I folded my hands in my lap, looking down. “So, um… you’re telling me to leave the office and not do anything.”

She sighed hard, hanging her head. “It’s not that I don’t think you can do it… it’s just that the rest of the team is irritable right now and they’re not going to work very nicely with you at the moment.”

“The executive board wants to get rid of me but they don’t want to upset my grandfather by firing me.”

She winced. I think she tried not to, but I knew her expressions pretty well. I saw her weigh her options for a second before she softened. “I know it’s not much relief to hear, but Lucy and I both stuck up for you in the meeting. Talked Berg down from moving you to a contracted role. Lucy and I have your backs as much as we can…”

“I have a good sample clip,” I said meekly, suddenly feeling like I was letting Nic’s efforts go to waste—that she’d gone and put in the overtime over the weekend doing the animation parts that were typically somebody else’s job anyway, just to try to stick up for me, but I was too useless to save. Despite Anna, Lucy and Nic all trying to save me. And implicitly, my grandfather. “We were making good progress.”

“I know… and we’ll get the project finished up from what you have on it, and we’ll do what we can to make it as clear as possible that you were the major contributor on it. We’d like to have you properly back in the office by the new year.”

Everybody tripping over themselves to try to save me from my own incompetence was not the reassurance I needed right now. I sighed, standing up slowly. “Would it be easier if I quit?” I said, and she frowned at me.

“Kelcey, I understand why you’re taking this hard, and I would too, in your situation—”

“It’s not this. Not really. Just… realizing how much I’m here as a nepotism hire. Like… maybe it’s fairer if I step aside and let someone more competent fill the role.”

She gave me a lopsided smile. “Kelce, you are not the least helpful person in this building. Not by far. Even if you don’t know how to get the work done sometimes, you’re a pleasure to work with and you listen to people, which puts you above a good seventy-five percent of people here.”

I stopped, prickling, and I felt my eyes watering embarrassingly. “Yeah…?”

“I mean it. Lucy will back me up.”

“Just because I don’t complain as much as Miranda does?”

She put her hands up. “You said it, not me.”

“Just… just because I don’t watch porn at work like Richard does?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Jesus, I forgot about that.”

“I mean, technically, it’s just his last open tab when he opens it. I guess he just watches it at night and then doesn’t use the tablet again until morning.”

“I do not want to think about the porn consumption habits of a man in my office old enough to be my grandfather. Please never speak to me of this again.”

I hugged myself, looking down. “I feel like everyone’s always making allowances for me because I’m stupid. I don’t want you to feel like you have to… coddle me too.”

She looked sadly at me, brows furrowed, before she said, “I’m not—”

“Okay, but you are, though. You and Lucy stood up for me at a meeting and got me this whole new project thing. Anyone else would have been fired in my position. But I’m immune, I guess.”

Anna didn’t say anything, drawing her lips in a tight line. I looked down.

“I’m not complaining at you. I’m really grateful for your help. I’m just complaining at myself… I’ll make sure the, uh, the data is thoroughly scrubbed and checked very closely.”

“Lucy and I are still just a ping away at any point,” she said. “We’re still here for you however we can be. Let us know how things are going.”

I smiled thinly. “I will,” I said, even though I wouldn’t. Dirty little liar that I was.

I walked the walk of shame packing my things up and heading out of the office, keenly aware of everyone’s eyes on me and feeling myself burn under the awareness of it, and once I got back to my car, I stepped into the driver’s seat, tossed my bag into the passenger seat, dropped against the back of my seat, and I let out a rush of air through my lips, staring straight ahead at the frost accumulating in the corners of the windshield.

Why was it I kept ending up useless again? Every time I set out to make myself better—to fix my issues—I made things better for a bit before I found myself drifting back to my old ways. Back to being clueless and messing up everything in my orbit.

Come to think of it… it was always Veronica. Every time I was thinking I’m getting it together and doing better now , it was because I was trying to get her attention, or that I just had gotten her attention and I was trying to live up to it. And then things would go south and I’d fall off a cliff with it.

I was a big believer in Christmas miracles. I just wished they believed in me. This was a terrible miracle.

I needed something to get me out of my rhythm, something other than just going straight back to my apartment, or I’d associate my apartment for the rest of forever with sad… sad sack energies. With a heavy sigh, I pulled up my phone, hovering over my chat with Nic before I swiped away. I’d… tell her later. Tell her that I let all of her overtime go to waste. I went to my maps instead, plotting out a course to the coffee shop—I’d gone full stalker and tracked down the spot that had been in the photo Nic had sent, since it had looked so cute and Christmassy, and when I realized also maybe that meant there was a chance I’d run into Nic there… it hadn’t dissuaded me from going as much as it was supposed to.

Not that I’d be likely to recognize her if I saw her. All I had to go by was a mostly obscured picture of her dress, but even in that she was jaw-droppingly beautiful. As if I wasn’t already crushing on her enough! But unless she showed up in that dress, I probably wouldn’t even recognize her. She wouldn’t recognize me. We could very well be at adjacent tables and not know it.

We… probably wouldn’t be, though. But a little fantasy was what I needed right now, the imagination of something nice.

The shop was as cute and cozy as it had seemed in the pictures, and I trudged inside, still feeling like I needed to cry and not being able to—like I’d been hollowed out and the part of me that actually made tears had been taken out too, and all I could do was vacantly put one foot in front of the other to push in through the doors, into where hanging light strings and tinsel tied in boughs brightened my spirits a little bit. And the stuffed Rudolph on the counter next to the register and the Santa hat at a jaunty angle on the corner of the register brightened my spirits a little bit more.

“Hi—” I said, stepping up to the register, and I flinched hearing how small and sad my own voice sounded, putting my hand to my throat. “Oh, uh, sorry. I was just… choking.”

That was a bad lie. The guy behind the register stopped, knotting his brows in concern. “Are you… okay?”

“Yeah, I stopped choking. Just got… muffin in my throat. Yeah. I’d like a muffin. Is what I meant…” I scratched my head. “I could go for a second muffin. Clearly, the first one didn’t go well.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, staring blankly at me. I welled up a little bit.

“Can I… get a pourover too? That would actually be really nice.”

He softened. “Absolutely. The bean on pourover right now is a Brazilian medium-roast. Is that good?”

“Viva Brazil,” I said in a watery voice. When he stared at me, I said, “That is to say… that sounds great. Thanks.”

He got me an apple-cinnamon streusel muffin that smelled so good I thought I might cry and he started on a pourover, and while I waited for it, I scanned the shop and found my heart crushed to dust, shattered on the pavement and ground into ruin, because the one thing I’d pointed out that I liked about the place—specifically the red-and-blue nutcracker from the window Nic had taken a picture of—was gone.

Just that one. Everything else in the place was the exact same. None of the other nutcrackers had even moved. I just said oh, that guy seems nice and the… the snipers took him out. It was the last straw, and I broke down crying, burying my face in my hands, leaning back against the counter, curling my fingertips into my hair and crying quietly. I heard the poor barista make a noise in his throat before he said, “Miss… ma’am. Are you all right?”

“I ruined everything at work because of my stupid ex and my stupid self, and I’m getting taken off the project that was the one shot I had at proving I wasn’t completely useless, and… and they got rid of the little blue nutcracker guy,” I said, my voice thick and wavering, pointing to the windowsill. “I loved that guy. What did he do wrong?”

“Again with that nutcracker…” he said, and I gave him a blotchy, tear-stricken look. He shrugged. “Just the other day, this girl came up and insisted on buying it, said it was for a gift. I told her to just go ahead and take it, since I’d never known someone to have such strong feelings on a nutcracker, but, uh… she said then it wouldn’t be a good gift and insisted on paying for it, so I charged her ten bucks, which I think was about how much it had cost at Target.”

I stared at him with a sudden nervous sensation tangling in my stomach. I’d… now that I thought about it, I jokingly asked Nic to get me that one. And… I wiped my eyes, speaking in a small voice. “Nic?”

He scratched his head. “Maybe? I don’t really remember her name. I could ask my friend… he was here on a date with her that didn’t last long because apparently she was desperately hung up on her ex. This a friend of yours? You the nutcracker brigade?”

She’d gone on a date. What? When? She hadn’t said a word. Desperately trying to get over her ex? “What?”

He looked at his phone. “I think he texted it at some point… yeah. Veronica.” He pursed his lips. “Veronica? Goes by Nic? Who does that?”

Oh… oh, no. That didn’t seem right. That was probably a mistake. Probably just a coincidence. That someone else was interested in that specific nutcracker. And that it was someone with my ex’s name. My ex’s name which did… in fact… now that I thought about it… have Nic in it.

She’d been too shy to talk freely about herself. Had mostly steered the conversation to talk about me. But she had talked about an ex-girlfriend who was a little overexcitable… the first time she’d really dated a woman. She’d gotten me—clicked like I was talking to Veronica all over again.

Because I was.

The barista knotted his brows. “Ma’am, I understand you’re having some hard feelings, but if you lean on the counter there, I can’t… I can’t pour the water for your coffee.”

Oh. That was why he’d asked if I was okay. I moved in a daze, my face feeling cold, and I heard myself say thinly, “Can I actually have it to go?”

“Oh, uh. Sure.”

“Why is it her? ” I said, my voice shaky, thin, low. He shook his head, muttering.

“Ma’am, I’m not sure how to help your nutcracker disputes. You can buy one just like it at the Target down the street instead of brooding at the windowsill.”

“Don’t worry. I’m going as soon as I get my coffee.”

“Jesus, woman likes a nutcracker,” he muttered to himself, finishing up my coffee and pouring it from the mug into a travel cup, handing it over together with my muffin. “Enjoy your—”

I didn’t even notice he existed. I took the coffee and the muffin, and I stormed out of the door, my face drawn in a tight, cold mask of a hundred different feelings, and I got in the car and didn’t stop for one second the whole way back to the apartment, where I’d just kicked off my shoes and outerwear and gotten into the bedroom to stand at the balcony with my coffee in one hand and clutching the phone with the other to text Nic. To text Veronica. Dammit.

I hesitated over it, hovering over the keyboard—that last cute little message, good luck with your meeting! I’m sure it’ll be fine, you’re too charming to get rid of. Real likely. I hadn’t been too charming for her to get rid of.

I hit the call button. It rang, and it rang, this awful feeling rising in my throat the whole time—something like anger but more like humiliation, mocked like this, because she hadn’t hurt me enough I guess—and when it rang out, I hit call again. She sent a message.

Kelcey, what’s going on?

I gritted my teeth against the prickling in my eyes, and I typed a reply. answer the damn phone, Veronica

I hit the call button again, my hand shaking as I held it up to my ear, struggling to keep my breath steady. It almost rang out before it picked up, and my heart shattered at the sound of Veronica’s voice on the other side. I’d expected her to be snide and laughing at me, or maybe flirting, which—I didn’t know which would be worse—but I got the worst option of all, one I didn’t even know existed, which was that she sounded even shakier than I was, small and scared. Well—maybe she should have been shaky. I wasn’t letting myself feel guilty.

“Kelcey, I’m…”

“When were you going to tell me?” I snapped, squeezing the phone tight enough I thought it might break. Her voice came through thinly.

“Once… once the project was done. I didn’t want… this coming up… to get in the way of you doing this job, when I know how much it means to you.”

Dammit. She could not say something like that. I sucked in a sharp, shaky breath, letting it out slowly. “And the reason you didn’t tell me at the beginning? What’s that about, Nic? ”

She sighed, heavily, hard, defeated. I felt sick. I’d never once heard her sound like that before. “Don’t know, honestly… no, I guess I do. Because I’m selfish and short-sighted and all I could think about was that I wanted a chance to talk to you again.”

“You had your chances. And you pushed me away. You—you only want me when you can’t have me, Veronica. I can’t believe… this whole time, when I trusted you—how did you manage to find another way to break my trust and break my heart? Do you ever rest? ”

She was quiet for a long time, long enough I wanted to scream—she didn’t get to be quiet after all this, didn’t get to make me wonder if I was overreacting—and she spoke in a small, crackling voice when she finally answered. “I’m sorry, Kelcey.”

“That’s not enough. Ugh… I don’t know what could be enough at this point. I can’t believe… I don’t… why won’t you just leave me alone? ” I choked, sinking against the door, squeezing my eyes shut and squeezing my coffee. “What were you hoping for with talking to me again? That you’d get me in bed again? What, while it was dark enough I wouldn’t notice it was you? Were you planning on sexting me?”

“I wasn’t planning on anything, I just… love you… and when Danielson told me you were our contact for this job and that I was on duty to talk you into signing the contract, I panicked and couldn’t think of anything else.”

I swallowed, hard, my head spinning. “You don’t love me. You never did. And you were never going to. You loved my body, and you loved my money. Because—that’s what people are always going to love me for, isn’t it? My family’s status. I’m just the stupid girl who can’t even keep… an easy job… who can’t manage to stay in the office even as the nepotism hire.”

Her voice sounded panicked. “What—Kelcey, did they fire you?”

“Oh, so you care so much about my career and my wellbeing? Just drop it. Drop everything. Forget about it. And delete those pictures I sent you. You don’t get to keep them. You don’t get to have me, because… you’d just stop wanting me anyway.”

I hung up, and I turned and threw my phone into the bed, where it bounced and flopped off onto the carpet. I couldn’t even angrily throw my phone right. I was a lost cause. I sat down on the edge of the bed, dropping down hard, and I clutched at my hair, crying through gritted teeth.

At least I had a muffin to cry into. That always picked up a situation.