Page 68 of The Boss

I hadn’t expected to be going home for good today, which meant I didn’t have a box or big bag, but I had little of my own here. Honestly, I hadn’t had the time to get used to having a desk of my own. As an intern and a runner, I’d had a small locker in the breakroom where I’d kept my meager possessions. When I’d been given a desk, I’d simply moved my purse to the desk drawer. It hadn’t been until Flora had commented about my lack of personal items that I’d brought some things from home.

A picture of my mother and me, taken after she’d gotten her first all-clear from the cancer that had almost made me an orphan. Well,almostan orphan. Next to the photo was a short line of little mementos that Mom and I had gotten each time she’d had another test saying she was in remission. We hadn’t been able to go on vacations, but we’d always done something special, even if it was going to a movie or seeing an exhibit at a museum.

I half-expected Mr. Hancock or Ms. Lamas to come talk to me, find out what was happening. A part of me even thought they might come to the rescue, tell me that they’d speak to Nate, that I was too good of an employee to lose, especially since they hadn’t replaced Flora yet.

But no one came.

It took me only a few minutes to put my things in my purse and double-check that I hadn’t forgotten anything. I heard the low murmur of voices as I walked past the others on my way to the elevator, but I didn’t feel anyone looking at me. I hoped that meant I still had time.

I was a little surprised that Nate hadn’t made security escort me out, especially since it seemed like he had serious trust issues. Granted, he’d been right that I hadn’t been entirely forthcoming about my reasons for choosing to work at Manhattan Records, but I hadn’t done any of the other things he’d accused me of. Whatever the reason, though, I was grateful for the chance to leave without glaring fanfare.

I considered taking a cab home, but then I remembered that I no longer had income and should probably save my money. I couldn’t bring myself to walk, though. Not today. Not even though it was turning out to be a truly beautiful spring day. I didn’t think my legs would hold me the whole way home. They barely got me onto the subway.

I clutched my purse on my lap and watched for my stop, repeating the information over and over, as if I was some first-time New Yorker who had to worry about getting lost. As if I hadn’t made my way from home to school to doctor appointments and chemotherapy when I was still in school. Losing a job shouldn’t have struck me this hard, especially not a job I hadn’t really wanted to begin with.

To my relief, I got home without incident and without crying, both of which had been real possibilities, but as soon as the door to my apartment closed behind me, I stopped holding them back. Within seconds, I could barely see. Blindly, I stumbled to the couch, my fingers fumbling as I dug my phone from my purse. There was only one person I wanted to talk to right now.

She answered on the second ring. “Ashlee?”

“Mom.” I swallowed a sob. It was one thing to call her upset, and it was something else entirely to lose it on the phone. I couldn’t do that to her.

“What’s wrong?”

The story spilled out of me, and by the time I was done, my nose was stuffed, my throat sore, and my eyes felt like I’d rubbed sand in them…but I felt better. Sort of.

“Are you going to call that son of a bitch who doesn’t deserve you?”

Leave it to my mother to say exactly what I needed to hear even when she was making sure I wasn’t going to do something inanely stupid. Well,moreinanely stupid than what I’d already done.

“No, Mom,” I assured her. “I won’t call him. I plan on never seeing him again, and hopefully never even hearing his name again.”

“You’re an amazing woman, Ashlee.” Mom’s voice was soft. “Don’t let some bastard make you feel like you’re anything but that.”

I smiled, even though she couldn’t see me. “Thanks.”

“Let’s play our game. What can we do now?”

Those four words soothed me the same way they always had. We’d come up with the game when I was a kid. When something bad happened, we’d ask what we could do now that this event had turned our lives upside-down. Like when Mom first got her cancer diagnosis, we’d said that we could go on a cross-country trip, fly to the moon, search for the lost city of Atlantis, and then we’d decided that taking a trip to the zoo would be our little detour from reality.

I went first. “Well, I could go back to college and get a degree in veterinary medicine so I could deal with actual dogs.”

She laughed. “You could come visit me, and we could have a tea party like we used to when you were younger.”

“I never played tea party,” I reminded her.

“That’s right,” she said. “You preferred playing Congress with your stuffed animals. Bored the hell out of me.”

“That’s what you get for raising me on CSPAN.”

“Touché.”

“Can we go back to the game?” I asked, needing the distraction.

“We could go on vacation.”

I paused, “That sounds like a good idea. Some time away to clear my head. You could use it too. It’s not like we ever really went on vacation before. Something was always in the way.”

“All right. Vacation then. Where are we going?”

---