The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan
Chapter Forty-Nine
‘Benjamin, you should go,’ Celia says, her usual decisiveness suddenly returned in full force. ‘And I mean go. I don’t want you waiting in the stairwell or in Fia’s office or down in the lobby. You need to leave this building right now. And when you come in tomorrow morning, you come right to my office. Are we clear?’
He just nods. And then, with a last glance in Fia’s direction – she feels it, ignores it – he’s gone.
Celia and Fia say nothing until the lift doors close. Even after that, the silence between them lingers, the horns and screeches of city traffic audible but dampened at this height.
‘I’m gonna have one of these,’ Celia says after a moment, brandishing the cigarette packet that’s still in her hand.
‘Sure,’ Fia replies, though it doesn’t seem like her approval is truly being requested. Already, the other woman is lighting up, sinking into a wrought iron seat.
‘… You want one?’
The offer is somewhat barked out. Nonetheless, Fia can sense an olive branch when it’s offered to her.
‘I’m good, thanks,’ she replies, wishing heartily she were a smoker.
Even so, she feels bold enough to take the seat beside Celia. Unlike Benjamin, she does not seem to be dismissed just yet.
For another long moment, there’s quiet. Celia inhales a drag, releasing it. ‘I gotta say, Fia,’ she murmurs, ‘you would have been the last person …’ She trails off, begins again. ‘And before you say it, I know you’re not the first. Not by a long shot. I know that. But, what? You think ’cause the men have always done this type of shit, that gives us licence to do it, too? That’s not how this works.’
Fia feels the shame burn through her anew, still unable to offer anything in her own defence.
‘Like I said, by rights, there should be an investigation here – a whole disciplinary process,’ Celia continues, blowing out another long plume of smoke. ‘If I don’t report this, don’t think I’m not aware of all the ways it could come back to bite me in the ass.’ She lets out a heavy sigh, clicking her tongue against her teeth. ‘I can’t decide tonight. I need to think about it.’
Fia just nods. She once imagined that at the top of the tree, from where Celia sits, there would never be any fear for your own future, that you would always know exactly what to do.
‘Might I get away with a warning?’ she asks then, timidly. Maybe other people might not need to ask – maybe other people could be more dignified in the face of their own demise. But Fia suspects all of them would be independently wealthy. ‘If HR gets involved, I mean. Or would it be … more than a warning?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ Celia replies quietly. ‘Of course, Benjamin is only here for another, what? Ten days or so? He’d be long gone in any case. Always the way.’
And there’s a softness, almost a sympathy, to her delivery now. In a certain way, Fia thinks that might be even worse than anything that came before it.
‘You’d do well to remember who gets left carrying the can in these situations, Fia,’ her boss continues. ‘Here’s a tip: somehow, no matter what, it never seems to be the guy.’
Under the intensity of Celia’s expression, the dead-seriousness of her tone of voice, Fia feels as though those words seep down into every cell of her. Consumed by utter, excruciating embarrassment, she lets her own gaze drift out towards the city skyscrapers, the sight not remotely magical any longer.
In her five years here, Manhattan has never seemed so huge, so hostile, as it does right now.
The following morning, Fia walks into her office to find Benjamin’s desk gone.
The place feels veritably spacious without it, and it’s certainly a lot quieter now that she has the place to herself again: nomore of his clutter or his clack clack clacking away on the keyboard. Anyone would think he’d never been here at all.
The only thing that has lingered, just slightly, is that distinctive scent of his.
Fia has no idea how to describe it – she’s sure a more creative person than her could come up with a better attempt. Rainwater and juniper and masculinity, or whatever. In fact, she knows it’s just cologne. Some other sort of product, maybe. Whatever it is, Benjamin Lowry has always smelled incredibly, unbelievably good to her.
And yet, the thing is, she’s never even been able to properly enjoy it.
There was, first of all, the period when she hated him – hated the fact that she liked anything about him.
Then, there was the period when she didn’t hate him, not at all, and that smell was the most powerful temptation to be resisted inside this little space.
And now …
Well, now, there’s a degree to which it actually slightly sickens her, this remnant she’s been left with, the ghost of him.
She hasn’t heard a dicky bird from Benjamin since he walked away from her last night. He hasn’t contacted her to, for instance, apologize profusely, to take back everything he said, to provide some sort of account of himself.
Deep down, though, Fia doesn’t really expect any of that. After all, wasn’t Benjamin himself the one to teach her that sometimes the simplest explanations are the best?
What he said last night was what he meant. Perhaps he hadn’t planned to say it right then or in precisely that way, but the substance, she’s sure, was true. She and him, these past weeks, have merely been scratching an itch, having a bit of fun, blowing off some steam.
How naive to have even briefly imagined anything else. How mortifying, to have bleated on to her roommates about romance.
More than any of that, how utterly, unforgivably stupid Fia feels, having allowed Benjamin to be the one to decide that they were done. It was, all along, the very thing she least wanted.
All the speeches she composes in her head now, all the things she’d say if she could, the ways in which she might foreseeably claw back some agency … they are no use.
Because, as the hours tick by in her big empty office, as the hours become a day, and one day becomes two, the reality makes itself clear to Fia. It settles like concrete in her stomach.
Benjamin will not be texting or calling or dropping by to chat further about where they go from here. He won’t be sending her any messages on Facebook.
He is just gone. Again.
And, of course, there are ways in which it’s different from the last time he seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. For one thing, this time around, she knows exactly where he is. She hears on the grapevine that he’s been moved up to the fifty-ninth floor, ostensibly to assist Brett more closely on the Goldsberry merger.
She simply cannot bring herself to go up there explicitly in search of him, though, no matter how much she wants a do-over on their coda. She will not chase after him. She does have some pride left.