Page 6 of A LIttle Christmas: Samm
Fantastic.
This is the best job he’s ever had in his entire life. He’d hoped to stay with Mr. Demarco forever. If Mr. Demarco changed jobs, Samuel had hoped he’d go with him.
Which is probably ridiculous. His therapist has many opinions regarding his fixation with his handsome, older, meticulous boss, most of which boils down to Samuel turning his romantic attentions elsewhere.
Which is exactly what he was trying to do!
He grabs his pillow and screams into it. Which is better than crying. Which he already did today for an hour.
His phone rings.
Oh god, it’s Wendy.
“You know!” he says accusingly when he picks up the phone. His voice wavers.
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
“I pressed send, got a cup of coffee from the office kitchen, sat back down at my desk, and realized what I had done. It was an accident! I don’t even know how it happened! He’s so good at his job, he’d already read the damn thing! The look on his face, Wen. One time, he stepped in dog shit and had to wipe it off his shoe before we went into a meeting, and the look on his face was just like that. I’m dogshit to him!” he wails, and sobs into his pillow.
“You are not dogshit! You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and that includes his ex-wife!”
“Well, obviously,” Samuel mutters and wipes at his nose with his sleeve. Which is a disgusting thing to do. He’s gone through his box of tissues and is now onto a roll of toilet paper, which he left in the kitchen when he went to get a cup of tea. He gets up to go get it.
Mr. Demarco’s ex-wife is a cheating bitch the poor man still has to pay alimony to.
“Look, Bryan’s not happy about it, either. I don’t think he’s going to fire you. He doesn’t want to. That’s why he called Ryan in the first place.”
“Did he say that?” Samuel whispers.
“Well… no. But I’m sure of it. What would the grounds even be? You didn’t mean to send it to him, so it can’t be harassment, can it? And it was deleted as soon as you realized your mistake, right?”
“Yeah, I went into his email and deleted it. But what if they check for inappropriate content? I had my personal and my private email accounts up. They’re both Microsoft.”
“Well, let’s blame Bill Gates, then. I’m sure he’s got it coming, too,” she says.
“I don’t want to get a new job. And the way he looked at me, like he didn’t even know me. He’s so disappointed,” Samuel says, and then he’s crying again. Mr. Demarco’s disappointment is the worst thing in the entire world. It could literally destroy Samuel.
Wendy huffs. “Look, Bryan is a stick in the mud. His parents were too religious. The kooky kind. And so were Kathy’s. They were married at eighteen for crying out loud. They probably did it through a sheet! I’m sure the email was fine and he’s overreacting.”
He wipes his eyes. “It was bad.”
She huffs. “Well, don’t quit. Make him fire you if he’s so high and mighty. You go into work tomorrow and act like nothing happened. It’s not like you work for Hobby Lobby! Who cares? He doesn’t even know about pineapples!”
That gets his attention. “Really? I thought everyone knew about pineapples.”
“Exactly!” she says triumphantly.
“Did he,” he sniffles, “tell you what the email said?”
“Honey,” she says, and he wonders if his mom would have sounded like that if she’d lived. Like she cares. Like nothing is so shocking and horrible that it would make her not love him. “Are yousureyou want to be fooling with a man who chose Ballbuster69 as his email address?”
Samuel groans in shame. “Mr. Demarco saw that?”
“Call him Bryan. Good grief.”
Samuel winces. He knows he should, but that isn’t how he thinks of the man. It feels wrong.
“He’s a nice enough guy. I’ve met him at a munch or two, and I never liked him all that much, but lately I’ve just been—” he gets up and goes to the kitchen to get some water. “Lonely. I’m so dang lonely, Wen. And he’s not horrible. He’s older, and he’s hadboys before. We’ve been chatting for a while, but this weekend we were gonna play. Monday is a holiday, and I’d have the day to recover.And then it’s basically Christmas…. Beggers can’t be choosers, you know?”
