A Deal with the Bossy Devil by Kyra Parsi

4

It tookme all of eight seconds to clean out my desk.

A pair of noise-canceling headphones, a stale pack of strawberry gum I’d completely forgotten about, and a sample-sized tube of hand lotion. That was what went into the giant box Frankie had pushed into my arms when I’d walked out of Adrien’s office.

He’d been instructed to escort me through the process of packing and leaving. Just in case I decided to swipe a stapler or something, I guess.

“Done,” I announced, picking the box up. “We can go.”

Frankie ticked a brow. “Were you just hired?”

“Nope. Been here two years.”

“And that’s all you’ve got?”

I shrugged. “Never been huge on collecting junk. Hey, anyone ever tell you that you look like a double-jacked-up Mr. Clean?” He had the earring and the silver eyebrows and everything.

“Yes.”

“Cool. You’re better looking, though.”

“I know,” he responded without hesitation.

I laughed and fell into step beside him as we made our way back out to the elevators, ignoring the not-so-quiet whispers and not-so-subtle stares of my former coworkers, two of whom were not so secretly filming my awesome, sparkling departure.

None of them came over to say goodbye, and that was okay.

I’d never made any friends here. Didn’t really see the point. This was always meant to be a temporary gig, just until I could find something that wasn’t… I don’t know. Something that didn’t suck on my soul and slowly turn my brain into stale oatmeal, I guess. That would be a good place to start.

Frankie accompanied me all the way out the door and took my keycard, emphasizing that I wasn’t allowed back in the building and yada, yada, yada. A rep from HR would be in touch with me within the next few hours. That was all I needed to know.

Though I doubted I’d get any sort of severance. They had more than enough cause to justify my termination according to their corporate code of conduct.

I knew because I’d been bored enough on my second day of employment to read the whole thing.

“Hey, you’re home early, wh—” Jamie stopped short when I pushed my way into our apartment, her mouth falling slack as she took in my glitter-covered everything. “Whoa, what the hell?”

“Hey,” I said, dropping the massive, mostly empty box onto the floor.

I’d have given it back to Frankie and stuffed the gum and lotion into my purse (or thrown them out), but I wouldn’t be able to afford the rent here if I couldn’t find another job soon, and moving boxes were expensive.

“What happened?” Jamie asked, eyes wide.

“Well, let’s see… Adrien figured out I was Waldo, locked me in his office, and then I accidentally set off a glitter bomb, and got fired. How’s your day going?”

“You’re not coming in here like that,” she said. “Go outside and take your clothes off.”

“I’m not stripping out in the hall.”

“Ria, that stuff is gonna get everywhere. I don’t fuck with glitter. How did you even get home?”

“I walked.” It had taken forty-five minutes and there’d been a lot of questioning stares. But there was no way I’d have been able to get on a train like this, so I’d just put in my headphones and forged ahead.

Jamie sighed, her eyes bouncing up to the ceiling like she was asking it to grant her patience. “Wait here a sec.”

When she came back, it was with a plastic bag and the vacuum cleaner.

“Uh, no,” I said, knowing exactly what she had in mind.

“Uh, yes. Open the door and step outside.”

“What will the neighbors think!” I threw my arms up dramatically as Jamie plugged in her weapon.

Then she held the steel tube up with both arms and pointed it right at my head, her evil eyes thinning.

“Whoa, easy there,” I said, bringing my palms up.

“I said open the door and step outside,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

I swallowed thickly, taking a step back. “Listen,” I said, my voice and hands trembling. “You don’t wanna do this I— My name is Ria, I’m a wife and a mom and b-babies. I’ve got babies. Seventy-eight of them. There’s Jolly the Walrus and Bubbles the Fish and Princess the Bear, and they’re going to be worth a fortune in a few years, I promise! We can split the profits!”

But my generous, multi-billion-dollar Beanie Baby bribe fell on deaf ears.

“You stole him from me!” Jamie screamed. “He was mine and you just… you took him away!”

“He initiated it!” I insisted as my back hit the door. “I s-swear it. Toebeans came to my bed willingly!”

I’d known it was wrong. I’d told him to get out—to go back to her. He was her cat. She was the one he needed to be spending his nights with.

But he never listened.

“Don’t do this,” I whisper-begged, my shoulders hunching with fear. “Please don’t do this. Think of my babies.”

She cocked her weapon.

Oh god.

As if on cue, Toebeans Maguire trotted out of my bedroom, chirping like the adorable little cuddle slut he was.

“Hi, cutie,” I cooed as he nuzzled my legs. “Have you been the bestest, most handsomest boy all morning?”

“All right, seriously get out before you get that shit all over him. I’m gonna vacuum you.”

I let my hands fall. “Fine but stay away from my face. We’ll use coconut oil for that. Oh, and I get to do a Sailor Mars transformation sequence first. With the sparkly spin and everything.”

She barely agreed.

* * *

Alba was officially giving me the silent treatment.

I hadn’t heard from her in over four days, and it hadn’t been for a lack of trying. Even Ben was ignoring my messages. She’d gotten her husband to shun me. That was how pissed she was.

By Friday night I’d had enough. She had every right to be mad at me, but we were going to handle it like grownups, damn it! The least she could do was ignore me to my face, though I much preferred it if she yelled. Around fifteen or twenty minutes of that usually calmed her back down.

I showed up at their front door with a box of Alba’s favorite donuts (crème brûlée from this tiny shop on the other side of the city), and a few treats for Olive.

“She’s not home,” Ben lied as soon as he opened the door.

“I could hear her talking before I knocked, dork. Tell her I need to talk to her.”

He hesitated for a few seconds, then threw a glance over his shoulder and stepped outside. The door shut behind him. “Listen. Now’s really not a good time,” he said quietly, pushing a hand through his brown curls. “You should probably come back in… I don’t know. Just give us some space.”

Us. He said us.

He hadn’t been ignoring me just because of Alba. He was pissed. And it wasn’t until he shifted under the porch lights that I noticed the dark rings circling his eyes, and the way his hair was sticking out on all sides like he’d been running a frustrated hand through it all day.

“You, uh… you okay?” I asked. Had they been fighting again?

“Not really, no.” He shoved his fists into his pockets, tension squirming through his jaw. And then he said it. “She got fired, Ria. Because of what you did.”

At first, I thought I’d misheard him. Because there was no way he meant that Alba had lost her job.

Alba, who’d devoted the last four years of her everything and more to Adrien Cloutier.

Alba, who constantly prioritized her work over her own health and sanity and wellbeing. Over her family. Over me.

Alba, who was supposed to go on maternity leave in seven weeks. Paid maternity leave. For a year.

“What?” I said.

“He fired her,” Ben repeated, his entire body coiled with stress. “With cause. So no package, no severance, no… nothing. She got nothing.”

What the fuck?

The air in my lungs went stale as the reality of what he was saying set in.

“She was supposed to go on maternity leave in less than two months. Does she… is she still…”

“Nothing.”

I blinked, my mind reeling.

It hadn’t been her fault. She hadn’t done anything. It had all been me. I’dbeen the one who’d hit him. I’d made the mess in his office.

“What do you mean he fired her with cause?” I asked, my voice unsteady with panic and anger and… shame. This was all my fault. “Alba didn’t do anything. She wasn’t even there. She didn’t even knowabout it until the video and—”

I cut myself off when the front door opened again, revealing my very pregnant, verytired-looking big sister.

She was a mess.

Her hair was half crumpled into a bun, her makeup-free face weighed down by stress, and her eyes… she must have been crying nonstop for days.

“Hey,” I said, swallowing back the ball of barbed wire scratching at my throat. “Ben told me what happened. I don’t understand. How or why or… you didn’t do anything.”

Maybe she had a case. For wrongful termination or retaliatory dismissal or something.

I didn’t know.

I wasn’t a lawyer.

And whose fault is that?

“Just come in,” Alba said, stepping aside to make room. “It’s cold out here.”

I hesitated, shifting on my feet until she tugged at my sleeve. “Come on. My feet are getting tired.”

I walked in and slipped the box of donuts and treats onto the coffee table. “Where’s Olive?”

“My parents took her for the weekend,” Ben said. “We needed time to… we have some things to figure out.”

My fault.

Alba lowered herself onto the couch with a deep sigh and leaned her head back, her throat working like she was trying not to cry.

I stood in the corner awkwardly, waiting for the tongue lashing to start.

Except it never did.

“Albs—”

“The pass,” she answered before I could even ask. “You used my pass to get into the hotel and they traced it back to me. Adrien pulled me into a meeting as soon as I got to my desk. I was fired before he even saw you. It’s a security thing. I’d signed a document when I first started agreeing it would only be used by me apparently.”

My stomach sank. That was the business he’d needed to take care of? He’d been late because he was firing Alba?

“Why didn’t you tell him I stole the card or something?” I was going to be in trouble either way. It wouldn’t have mattered.

I was the one who’d begged her for the pass. “You’re not using the gym anymore anyway!” I’d argued when she said no. “I’m paying a hundred and fifty dollars a month for equipment that’s basically held together by duct tape.”

The one at the flagship hotel, though? It was a gym rat’s award-winning wet dream, complete with a free smoothie bar, complimentary massages, a pool, and private sauna pods.

After two months of begging and pleading, Alba had finally caved and given me the card for my birthday. Allof this was my fault.

“You could still do it. You could still tell him I took it,” I said, grasping at the thinnest straw of hope that maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe we could somehow salvage the situation and she’d get her job back. “You could tell him you didn’t know, and, and…”

“Why don’t you tell her the rest?” Ben interjected bitterly, talking to his wife.

“Ben—”

“She should know, Alba.”

I looked between them, my heart crawling up to the base of my throat. “What? What aren’t you telling me?”

“He was going to press charges,” Ben said. “He was pissed as all hell and was going to press charges and sue for damages. Alba spent two hours begging him to let it go instead of asking to keep her job and keep us afloat—”

“Ben!”

He shut up. He wasn’t happy about it, but he shut up. Right before he stormed off. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

“What the hell?” I said.

“He’s just stressed,” Alba responded. “It wasn’t a good time for us to lose my income with… well, you know.” She gestured to her stomach. “And it’s not like I can get another job right away, so things are going to be tight for a little while. He’s worried about the mortgage.”

I was having a bit of a hard time catching hold of my breath. “No, Alba, what the hell?”

“It’s not a big deal,” she said. I didn’t know which one of us she was trying to convince, me or herself. “Adrien owed me a favor and I cashed it in.”

Wait a minute. “He owed you afavor and you didn’t use it to keep your job? Or have him write you like a billion-dollar check?”

She turned her head to glare at me. “Are you hearing yourself? What part of ‘he was going to press charges’ do you not understand?”

My heart was galloping inside my chest, my fists tight at my sides. “It doesn’t matter! I—”

“It matters to me!” she snapped, cutting me off. “It matters to me, Ria! I care if he presses charges. I care if he goes after you with his lawyers. I care if your life gets ruined. I do! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

I had to remind myself to keep breathing. That a screaming match wasn’t a good idea when she was seven months pregnant. She was stressed enough as it was, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Look at you! Look at your life,” Alba said, pushing herself upright. Her eyes were wet with frustration, and it made me feel like absolute shit. “You’ve been on this prolonged self-destructive streak for years and I can’t sit back and watch you do this to yourself anymore. It’s fucking torture.”

She brought a protective hand to her stomach and swallowed a few times, trying to blink back her tears. “I don’t recognize you anymore, Ree… and it’s… scary. I don’t know what to do or how to fix it. I don’t know how to help.”

Alba paused, waiting for me to say something, but the only thing I could do was stare back at her, unmoving.

“I care,” she said again. “I care about you.” Her lower lip wobbled and she wiped her leaking eyes with a shaky hand. “I know what happened with Josh was unfair. I know how… demoralizing it must have been for you. But it’s been ten years, and I just… you’ve let him win. You keep letting him win. You don’t care about work, you don’t care about meeting new people or making new friends. You don’t date. You don’t have any goals or ambitions anymore. You laugh and make jokes and pretend like nothing ever bothers you, but you’ve given up. You’ve numbed yourself to the point where you just… you don’t live. You exist and that’s all.”

Her voice softened near the end of her speech as she watched for my reaction.

I didn’t have a mirror in front of me but judging by the way her eyebrows pulled together, my expression was as blank and empty as I suddenly felt.

“Ree?”

“I didn’t ask you to fall on your sword for me.”

Her shoulders sagged with a deep sigh. “You didn’t have to, that’s the point. You’re my little sister. Not to mention you would have done the same thing for me.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Okay. Anything else?” I asked.

It took her a second to respond. “Huh?”

“Anything else I need to know or that you need to get off your chest?”

“Uh… no.”

“Cool. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Wait, what—you’re leaving? Now?”

I glanced down at my phone. 5:56. Adrien almost always worked late so if I took an Uber, I’d still be able to catch him before he left the office. Maybe. If security didn’t stop me.

“Yeah, I’ve got something to do,” I said as I ordered the car. Black Nissan sedan; less than a minute away. “We can finish this conversation later.”

She sighed again. “You’re mad at me.”

“You’re mad at me,” I pointed out.

“Is it because I brought up Goldman?”

I slipped my phone back into my pocket. “Yes. He’s on my off-limits list of topics for a reason. We’ll chat tomorrow morning.” After I’d fixed my mess.

I was out the door before she could argue.