Page 18 of A Little Red
“No,” she said slowly. “That isn’t…”
“You’re bag smells like another guy. You won’t let me see you naked or touch you. Give me another explanation. Tell me those aren’t handcuff marks.”
She stared at him, her face a picture of guilt.
“Right,” he said. “Don’t be here when I get back.”
Episode 10
Resignation
Scarlet
It took most of the next day for Scarlet to realize that Liam was intentionally avoiding her. Yes, the company was in full duck-and-cover mode and Liam was on the front line, but there was still time between meetings. As the clock ticked toward the end of the day and beyond, Scarlet felt her dream of an easy resolution to their argument dying.
She hadn’t decided quite what to tell him, but she thought she could at least tell him that she’d been part of a protest and had been handcuffed to a tree. She’d frozen when he’d asked her about it the first time. It had never occurred to her that anyone could interpret the bruises the way he had. In retrospect, considering the various things that she and Liam had done in and out of the bedroom it actually seemed like a reasonable supposition. But it hadn’t occurred to her at all. And now she felt like she was never going to be given a chance to explain that part because he was convinced she’d been lying to him all along. Which, of course, she had been. And if she wanted him back, she was going to have to lie more.
The third time he left the room when she entered, she got the hint and stopped trying. But by the end of the day, she was desperate and decided to take action. Hiding out in Brittney’s cubicle, she waited until she heard him come down the hall and open his office door.
Taking a deep breath, she went to his office and stood in the doorway, trying to look confident.
“What about now?”
“What’s the point?” he asked pulling on his jacket and refusing to look at her.
“You aren’t even going to give me a chance?”
He shouldered past her into the corridor.
“You have some sort of magical explanation?” he said, checking his phone, still not looking her in the eye. “This ought to be good.”
The elevator dinged on the silent floor and Scarlet paused to see if someone would be coming their way or going back toward the break room. To her frustration, a man walked directly into the maze of cubicles from the elevators, navigating easily. He was wearing slacks and a button up under a cowl neck sweater. He had somehow managed the feat of dressing up while still managing to look rumpled. Perhaps it was that his dark, near-black hair—the same shade as Liam’s—was sticking up.
“Yo, bro,” he said genially. “You ready to go? Don’t want to be late for Anna Allanach. Her hotness will only wait so long. Although, for you, she’ll probably wait a bit longer. Hellllllo.” He came to a stop in front of Scarlet. “I’m Paxton. The slob over there is my brother.”
“Scarlet,” she said, unwillingly shaking his hand.
“Scarlet is just my secretary,” said Liam.
Scarlet felt sucker punched. From his dismissive tone to the sneer on his face, Liam had reduced everything they had been to each other down to a tawdry work-place affair.
“I don’t think Scarlet isjustanything,” said Paxton looking offended on her behalf.
“Time to go,” said Liam, walking toward the elevator.
“Someone’s in a mood,” said Paxton. “Bye, Scarlet.”
Scarlet waved weakly at Paxton and then sat down at her desk and took gulping deep breaths. Her hands were shaking and Scarlet realized that there was no way she could go back to beingjustLiam’s secretary. Reluctantly, she opened her computer and typed out a resignation. She included her MBA, apologized for the SWOT and left anything personal out. This would probably go in her official file and the last thing she needed was to have a whiff of that following her to the next job. If there was a next job.
Scarlet stilled herself and took a deep breath. There would be a job. Azure wasn’t right. Scarlet’s dreams of a career weren’t stupid and she could do this. Obviously, sleeping with her boss had been an error. But she could recover. She would just never sleep with anyone else ever again and that would solve that.
Scarlet put the letter on Liam’s desk and took the subway home. There was a problem on the line somewhere and everything smelled like skunk or possibly weed, she couldn’t tell which because she didn’t do drugs. But her life was misery now, so transportation that took an extra forty-five minutes and smelled like shitty weed was probably her new normal.
She made it all the way home without crying, but the tears came in ugly wracking sobs once the door was shut. She stumbled into the bedroom, gasping for air and unable to draw a full breath. She heard her plants rustle sympathetically as she passed, but she couldn’t see them—everything was swimming in tears. She fell onto the bed and curled up into a ball, sobs heaving her rib cage painfully. At some point she stopped crying, but that only meant that she was laying on a bedspread that was damp with her own tears and snot. Eventually, she pulled herself off her bed, swiped at her eyes and went into the kitchen. She had broccoli in the fridge. Sometimes she really hated her mostly vegetarian lifestyle. She opened a bottle of wine and looked for a glass. All two of the wine glasses were in the sink because she’d been trying to pack and get to Liam’s before the holiday and had run out of time to wash. There were water glasses somewhere, but she no longer cared about doing proper civilized things. Instead she drank straight from the bottle, then took it out to the living room and turned on the TV.
“I miss rabbit,” she said to Tom Silva on a re-run ofThis Old Houseas he mitered a corner on some molding. “There I said it. I even miss squirrel. I would fucking kill for some venison.” She drank some more and flipped channels then got up and looked in the fridge again. The broccoli hadn’t moved. She gave up and went back to the couch, falling face first into the cushions. Eventually, she turned her head and watched four episodes of Bob Ross while swigging wine periodically from the bottle and trying not to drip it on the couch. Then she burst into tears when Bob Ross said that a happy little wolf pack probably lived right back there in one of his paintings and she had to go find Kleenex.
She came out of the bedroom and saw that all of her plants looked sad for her—their leaves drooping listlessly over the edge of the containers. She patted at one and tried to put on a brave face. She needed to pull herself together. She was going to have to go out and hustle for work tomorrow and she knew she would have to look … not whatever she looked like now. She checked the mirror by the front door. Like shit. She looked like shit.
