Page 49 of The Vegas Rerun
The morning drags on, and every time I have to leave my desk, the rooms around me are filled with barely concealed smirks and too loud whispers. By the time my lunch break rolls around, I’m exhausted from pretending not to notice that I’m the center of the gossip.
At least my lunch break is long enough for me to go out to eat. I don’t usually bother leaving the office – I just eat in the break room – but today, I will definitely be leaving the building. I step out into the fresh air, grateful for the temporary reprieve from the whispers that follow me around the office like echoes. I grab a sandwich and a soda, and I eat and drink while window shopping for nothing in particular.
But the reprieve doesn’t last long. My lunch break flies by, and I have to return to the office. I realize that I have to be even more careful with things like breaks and arriving to work on a morning now, because if I’m so much as a minute late while these rumors are circulating, the next thing will be how I’m getting special treatment because I’m fucking the boss.
I return to the office and ride up in the elevator to the seventh floor. I avoid catching the eye of the receptionist who sits at a large desk outside of the elevator, but I’m sure she’s in on the joke that my life has become. I manage to get past the other workstations, and I’m almost home and clear and at my desk.
My heart sinks when I see that my desk, my sanctuary from all this madness has been infiltrated. And not by just anyone. No, the person waiting for me at my desk is Sarah, the secretary who already hates me because she wants my job. She also has a thing for Joshua so I’m sure this rumor is going down well with her. Like she didn’t already hate me enough. Oh well, it’s not like I’m exactly her number one fan either.
Her arms are crossed, and as I get closer to her, I can see the self-satisfied look on her face. I’ll be honest – that look throws me off. I expected her to be upset or angry, but why does she look so happy? Maybe it was her that found out about the christening and spread the rumor and that’s why she’s so pleased with herself. Whatever it is, I won’t give her the satisfaction of acting like I’m bothered by any of this.
“Hi Sarah,” I say with a fake smile when I’m close enough to speak without yelling. “What can I do for you?”
“Molly,” she says, her voice all false sweetness and her face twisted into a smile that’s every bit as fake as mine was. “Can I have a word?”
CHAPTER 34
MOLLY
I hesitatefor a moment when Sarah asks me if she can have a word with me. I could just say ‘no, fuck off, I’m busy’. No one would blame me; everybody knows Sarah is kind of abrupt and rude, and most people know she took a major dislike to me when I got the job that she had been bragging about going to be hers. As tempting as it is to do that, I rise above the need to treat her as badly as she treated me.
“Sure,” I say. “What’s up?”
“Not here,” she says. “We need to talk in private.”
We could go into Joshua’s office. He still isn’t in yet and I don’t think he’ll mind but will that give connotations that I think I can use his office because we’re dating. I hate being put in this position where I’m questioning how everything will look. Before this rumor started, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use the office. That surely means it’ll be ok now then.
I didn’t think I would ever have anything to be grateful to Sarah for, but she saves me from having to make a decision about whether or not it’s ok to use Joshua’s office for this or not.
“Well? Come on then,” she says and then she turns on her heel and walks away, not even bothering to look back to make sure I’m following her.
I don’t like her attitude or her assumption that I will just blindly follow her, but I am curious as to what she wants, especially when she wants to talk in private. The Sarah I have gotten to know since starting work here would want to have things out in public with me to try and make me look bad.
She hasn’t decided she likes me overnight, so why not try and embarrass me now? Maybe she’s fucked something up and she needs my help to put it right. If that’s the case, do I be petty and refuse, or do I be the bigger person and help her? Truthfully, I’d love to take the petty road, but I know that if it comes to it, I will no doubt help her, and she’ll be grateful for a day or two, maybe be nice to me, but then she’ll slip back into her old ways and nothing will have changed.
Sarah leads me down the corridor, past the rows of office doors, some open and some closed, until we reach the elevators. I’m about to tell her that I don’t have time to go out of the building, but she ignores the elevators and keeps moving to the door of the stairwell. She finally turns back to look at me.
“We can talk in here. No one uses the stairs,” she says.
Ok, so she doesn’t want us to go outside. That’s ok then. The stairwell is actually a good place to talk privately, because she’s right, no one uses the stairs, or at least no one on our floor does.
She pushes open the heavy door and steps through it. She holds the door open for me and as I follow her through the door, my pulse kicks up a little bit. Something feels off here – maybe it’s the smile Sarah gives me as I step through the door, a smile that wouldn’t look out of place on an evil scientist type in a B list horror movie.
I tell myself to get a grip. She’s not some movie villain; she’s just a jealous girl who doesn’t realize she is her own worst enemy and that her attitude is keeping her from a lot of opportunities.
“You know this could have been different, don’t you?” she says. She still has that strange smile on her face, but it drops when she finishes her sentence, leaving her face strangely expressionless and blank.
I have no idea what she means by that, but I don’t have time to dwell on it before Sarah suddenly takes a step towards me. Her nostrils flare in anger and her mouth twists upwards. She looks like a rabid animal, and I take a step back.
“Sarah …?” I start, about to try and talk her down.
Without warning, she raises her fist, and I take another step back. Is she seriously going to hit me? No, I read that wrong. She doesn’t hit me. She slams her fist into her own nose.
What the actual fuck is going on here? I think to myself. She has officially lost her mind.
A sickening crack fills the stairwell as Sarah’s nose explodes in a burst of blood. My eyes open wider in shock as she follows up her punch with another one that looks to be even harder than the first one. That sickening crack comes again as her nose pops. More blood bursts forth, spilling down her lips and onto her pristine blouse. It comes out in a kind of spray and a few warm droplets of it land on my face. I reach up to wipe them away.
Sarah watches me and I watch her, horror gripping me.
