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“I’m sorry,” he said finally. It was pitiful. What was sorry going to do? What did he possibly hope to achieve from saying it?
“You’re sorry?” Amy laughed in disbelief. “Well, I’m sorry too.”
“Sorry for what?” John could feel himself frowning in confusion.
“That you had to come back here.” She turned and walked out before he had a chance to react to what she’d just said.
*********
Chapter 7
Amy
Her dad was due home any minute. She’d been dreading his return for weeks, because she knew what it meant. It meant that it would finally be time to tell him about her plans. She had to tell him about the interview. She had to tell him that she wasn’t going to work for him, even though he’d paid for the entirety of her education. She couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Have you got your bags packed?” Amy asked John as she entered the kitchen to wait for her parents’ imminent arrival.
He frowned at her. “I’m not even sure I’m going tonight.” He shrugged.
“Where’s Stacy?”
“I sent her out for the evening. I thought it was best with Dad coming back.”
“So, you know he’s going to go mental when he finds out that she’s here?” Amy smirked.
“Sure, but he’s also going to be pissed when he hears that you’ve been taking job interviews,” John shot back at her quickly. If she wanted to be a total dick to him, then he wasn’t going to sit around playing Mr. Nice Guy with her. “You know you’re his little lawyer in training.”
He was right and Amy knew that. The fact that John had brought his girlfriend home was going to be nothing compared to when he found out about her job interviews. Silence had dropped between them, broken only when her cell phone started to ring. “I’ve got to take this,” she told John, who was looking at her curiously.
She walked out of the room and out of earshot of John before she lifted it to her ear. “Hello, Amy speaking.”
“Amy, hello,” Liam said cheerfully. “I’ve managed to wrangle the privilege of calling you myself. It’s good news. The position is yours, if you want it?”
“Oh, wow.” Amy could feel a proud smile spreading over her lips. “I can’t believe it; of course I want the position.”
“That’s good to hear, Amy,” Liam told her quickly. “We can have you start on Monday, so I was thinking I’d take you out to dinner on Saturday, so I can talk you through the job?”
“You want to take me out to dinner?” Amy asked.
Liam chuckled. “Purely for business purposes.”
“Um, sure, I guess I’m free on Saturday.”
“Okay, that’s great. I’ll send you through the details when I have them.”
“Okay, thanks for calling.”
“It’s my pleasure. I look forward to working with you, Amy,” he told her and then hung up.
Amy took the walk back to the kitchen slowly. She couldn’t believe that she’d gotten the job. She could feel her head spinning, as it tried to come to terms with the information. She’d gotten the job. She’d gotten her dream job and there was nothing but her dad standing in the way of her starting that following Monday. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel possible, but the call log on her phone confirmed what her memory was trying to tell her. The call had happened. She’d gotten the job.
“You look happy,” John told her when she walked back into the kitchen.
She took her seat at the breakfast bar and nodded slowly. “I guess that’s because I am.”
“Who called you?” John pressed her. “Was it your boyfriend or something?”
“You think I have a boyfriend?” Amy asked with an amused expression settling over her happiness.
He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know.”
“No,” she shook her head, “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Well, what else could make you smile like that?”
“You know,” she told him slowly, “there was a point in our lives when you would have known.”
Silence fell between them. Amy glanced over at John when she was sure that he was looking away. He looked deep in thought. The sound of the front door opening was the next thing to break the silence between them. “Is that Dad?” John turned to her with a worried expression that pulled his eyebrows together over his nose.
“Yeah,” Amy told him when the sound of two sets of footsteps filled the hall. It didn’t take long for the footsteps to reach them. The kitchen door opened and Amy watched as her overly plump father and stick-figure mom walked into the kitchen. They were both a deep shade of orange. The kind of orange that was normally only associated with fake tans, but that they had managed to achieve by abusing the sun.
“Oh, my,” her mom said when she saw John sitting behind her daughter. “Haven’t you grown since the last time you were here?”
“Why are you here, son?” his dad cut off her mom. His relaxed, holiday temperament had vanished. In its place was a deadly focus, which Amy was glad wasn’t pointed at her.
“I need to talk to you,” John said quietly.
“Well, you know how to use a phone, don’t you?” his dad asked coldly.
Amy could feel herself getting confused over her stepfather’s reaction. Why was he being so cold towards his son? What had John done to deserve that?
“It’s not that kind of conversation,” John told him, standing from the stool next to Amy’s. “Can we go somewhere private?”
His dad looked like he was considering it, but then he shook his head. “No, not right now, let’s have something to eat and then we’ll talk.”
“Oh, that sounds good,” Amy’s mom said approvingly from behind her husband. “I’ll call the chef down and tell him to make something nice for dinner tonight.”
********
Chapter 8
John
The tension in the room was thick. It made the air in the room feel heavy. The expanding windows that reached almost to the ceiling were doing nothing to help. Sure, there was enough natural light in the room to make the place feel breezy and large enough for the four of them, but there wasn’t enough to combat the situation that was taking place.
The silence seemed sharp. Nobody around the table was even breathing heavily. The occasional sound of a glass being lifted and then placed back on the table was the only refuge that could be found. He glanced over at his dad. He’d aged in the years that they’d spent apart. His raven black hair was peppered with grays. The serious look on his face was eased with the wrinkles that lined his skin.
“So,” his dad finally broke the silence when the soup dishes had been taken away. “I got a phone call yesterday.”
John looked over to Amy and then back to his dad. It wasn’t clear to him who his father was directing the remark at. He could tell from Amy’s worried expression, though, that she thought it was something to do with her. “Dad,” he found himself being the next to speak, “I really need to discuss some matters with you.”
“I’m sure you do.” His dad barely even looked at him. The intensity of his focus was alienating Amy at the table. It was clear the phone call had been about her. “But, I need to talk about the phone call I got. Amy, do you have any idea who called me?”
John glanced over at her. She was shaking her head softly. She didn’t look up from the empty place setting in front of her.
“Well, it was about the job you applied for at Green Corp.”
“You applied for a job at Green Corp?” John couldn’t help but be impressed. He knew that she’d been applying for other jobs, but this was something else. Green Corp had tried to sue his father on multiple occasions. There wasn’t a law firm that he hated more.
“Actually, I got the job,” Amy spoke up for herself. “They called me earlier and told me that I start on Monday.”
“You will do no such thing,” John’s father raged. “I didn’t pay for you to achieve the results that you did in law school so that you coul
d take those skills and use them against me.”
“This isn’t about using what you gave me against you,” Amy told him firmly. “I want to back causes that I believe in. You can’t fight fire without the passion to do so.”
“Is that what you were smiling about?” John asked when the break in the conversation allowed for it. He could still see the way she’d smiled when she’d walked back into the kitchen. It had lit up her whole face. It had taken him back to every time they had laughed together and it had taken him forward to what those lips would feel like on his. It had been mystical, and impossible, and undeniable. She needed to smile like that. She needed to be doing anything and everything she could in her life so that her smile could live on through the years.
“Yeah,” she nodded with a quick glance over to him. “Big surprise, I was happy I got the job.”
“You’re not taking the job,” John’s father cut in. “I don’t care whether they have offered it to you or not. You’re not taking it. You will be working for me. If you want to start on Monday, that’s fine, I’ll get that arranged for you.”
