Page 73 of Bossing My Holiday
“It’s nine in the morning.” Francine sighs, but she’s already moving toward the bar in the corner of the room since they gave the staff the morning off.
“Time is a construct, Francine,” she retorts. “Especially at my age and in my health.”
“Maybe if you had your oxygen in your nose instead of around your chin, that would help,” Francine quips.
“What was that, dear?”
“Nothing!” Francine chirps as she fills glasses with scotch and brandy.
Tristan rises off the sofa. “Let’s do gifts before we all get too drunk or too tired to move.”
Tristan and Alain do the honors of doling out gifts. Buying for the Ouests is always a challenge because what do you get the people who not only have everything but could buy themselves whatever they want? Waverly was struggling with this too whenever we were out shopping.
I usually go for showpieces for Alain—a flask I won at auction last summer that belonged to Hemingway. For Francine, I bought her a gold and crystal ballerina figurine with sapphire eyes for her collection. Grand-mère is the toughest, and this year I bought her a riverboat cruise she can get on right here in Paris that takes her through Europe, since she’s always complaining about how she never goes anywhere but refuses to do anything about it.
The Ouests lavish me with cool pens—my total weakness—top-of-the-line gadgets, and, as always, two thousand shares of Ouest stock, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Tristan and I decided years ago not to exchange presents. We do most things together anyway, and if I want to go to a Celtics or Patriots game, I simply buy two tickets and bring him along, and it’s the same for him with me. We’re best friends, not lovers.
Waverly is nervous as she hands out her gifts to everyone, but everyone oohs and ahhs over them. Even Alain smiles when she hands him two antique brandy snifters she found in a market. He tells her they’re perfect and hugs her and proceeds to wash one and use it immediately, which makes her beam and Tristan smile in a way I wish she saw.
Francine goes into tears over her personalized jewelry tray, and Grand-mère kisses Waverly’s cheeks when she’s handed the bottle of champagne I know Waverly spent the most money on. It’s what was served at Grand-mère’s wedding, and it took Waverly some digging to find.
Now it’s on to Waverly, who, in true Waverly fashion, refused to open gifts first.
This is the tricky part for me. Yes, I already bought Waverly that necklace. But I bought her other things as well, and I can’t exactly give some of them to her here since I’m playing the part of friend and boss, not lover.
As if sensing this, Tristan throws me a side-eye. “Do you want to do the first one with me?” he asks, and I tilt my head, not understanding his meaning. “The one we got for Waverly.”
Nerves hit my gut. I thought we were going to give her this in private tonight. That’s what we discussed.
A sparkle hits his eye, and I rise off the sofa and head toward him, throwing hima what the fucklook as I go. “Sure. I’d love to.”
“What’s all this?” Waverly asks. She doesn’t like presents. Or more she doesn’t like people spending money on her, especially us. I get it. I grew up with nothing, living in foster care, and when your narrative is that you’re broke and have to work hard for everything, gifts feel like charity. People spending money on you makes you uncomfortable. Particularly when you’ve already taken money as part of a contract with one boss, and you work for the other.
Tristan still hasn’t told her that he upgraded her Nana’s room situation, and Nana either didn’t or isn’t able to relay it. They spoke for over twenty minutes yesterday, and Waverly is still clueless about that, but I know it was a good conversation, which made Waverly happy. Evidently, it’s hit or miss with phone conversations.
I know it makes Waverly sad that she can’t be with her grandmother on Christmas, but Waverly said she’s happier and does better when she doesn’t visit her, so we didn’t press it.
“Yes, we’d all love to see what you got her,” Francine agrees, and Waverly’s face goes hot.
“That’s not necessary.”
“Nonsense.” Grand-mère waves her away as she sips her scotch. “Your boys got you something, and I want to see what it is.”
The way she saysyour boysgives me a moment of pause, but Tristan is reaching beneath the tree to pull out a gold-foil-wrapped box. He hands the box to me, and we go over to Waverly and take the seats on either side of her.
“I know you’re going to be mad,” Tristan starts. “You have enough issues balancing between being my girlfriend and being my assistant, and now you work directly for Brax as well. But neither of us really cares about that. We wanted to acknowledge all of your hard work.”
He looks at me, and I sigh. I’m not here right now as the boyfriend. Just the boss. And I wanted to look into her eyes and tell her all the reasons why I wanted to do this.
“This acquisition wouldn’t have gone nearly as smoothly as it did without you orchestrating everything behind the scenes,” I tell her. “That’s what you do. You make everything run efficiently and perfectly. You know our company inside and out, and you know how it runs better than we do. This is from us as your bosses.”Not lovers, I almost say, but stop myself. “But it’s something that’s more than necessary and a long time coming. So please accept it.”
25
WAVERLY
With tremulous hands, I unwrap the gold-foiled box and lift the lid to find… papers. Official-looking papers, but still papers. There’s a thick stack of them, and I quickly glance at the top page. OuestHicks Chief Operating Officer official offer letter. I scroll through the few paragraphs and nearly shove it off my lap.
