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Sitting at her desk, Stacy was chewing on the top of her pen. What was going on with her? Why was she so drawn to Demetri?
“And why the hell does he keep biting me?” she grumbled to the empty room.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Stacy looked around the room, expecting to see someone who would answer her question. Or at the very least someone who would make a sarcastic remark. But she was still alone in the office.
“Great. The one time I would actually appreciate someone to pop in and give me an answer, they don’t.” She sighed.
Beside her the phone buzzed, startling her out of her thoughts. “Yes, Ms. Pope?”
“I would like to see you in my office a moment, Stacy.”
“Of course.” Great. Now what did she want? Her boss had an uncanny knack of reading her mind at the worst of times. Stacy really didn’t want the other woman inside of her head at the moment.
But then, maybe she was overreacting. Perhaps, if she were lucky, this would fall under the category of her private sex life, and thus Ms. Pope would be unable to read her thoughts. Dare she hope?
Going through the now familiar hallway, she paused at her boss’s door and knocked.
“Come in.”
Stacy entered the room, but refrained from sitting down. Instead, she stood beside one of the chairs, waiting to hear what her boss wanted. She just really wasn’t in the mood to play guessing games. There was too much going on in her life right now—too much she needed to figure out.
When she looked at the woman behind the desk, Stacy noticed an expression of mild surprise on her employer’s face. One delicate eyebrow was arched slightly, as neither of them spoke.
“Straight to the point, then,” Ms. Pope said huskily. “Have you come to any decisions regarding your soon to be ex-husband?”
“No.” Yay. Now that was just one more thing she had to worry about at the moment. Would you care to add anything else while you’re at it, she thought sarcasticly knowing it would be overheard.
“My, my, we are in a bad mood today. Would you care to tell me why? I know you had fun with Tina. I also know, thanks to the wonderful black spot I encounter, that you had more fun when Demetri returned you to your apartment.”
“I just...” She gave up the battle. She sank down into one of the chairs and leaned back. “Well, first, why do you make me spell everything out? You know what’s bugging me, I know you do. You’ve made that perfectly clear by the way you answer questions I haven’t even had the chance to ask yet.”
“I make you ask,” Ms. Pope said in a strangely motherly voice, “because if I answer the question before it is asked, you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
“Then why don’t you wait for all my questions to be asked?”
She shrugged. “Some require more delicate handling than others.”
“Why don’t you just save us all a lot of time and aggravation and tell me what’s wrong with me? While you’re at it, just go ahead and answer the questions I want to ask that I don’t realize I want answered, and just tell me what’s going to happen to my ex, since I know you already know that too!” Stacy paused for a breath. “And this is one of those times that I’m really not sorry that I tend to give you migraines. I’m frustrated, I’m confused, I feel like I don’t know what’s really going on and anyone who could help me with the answers, or even help me know which questions to ask are shutting me out and giving me these proverbial pats on the head while they tell me how well I’m doing... I just want to understand what the hell is going on in my life. Is that too much to ask for? ” She screamed the last question. She hadn’t meant to, but she did.
“No, Stacy, it isn’t. But then you are the only one holding yourself back.” Ms. Pope stood up, then walked around her desk. Then she did something that Stacy believed rarely ever happened. Before her eyes, Ms. Pope rearranged the chair beside Stacy until it would face her, and sat down in it. “We are all bound by our agreements. There are questions you want answered that no one is at liberty to answer. Yet. There are certain things you must learn to accept. And while I applaud your ability to adjust faster than most any human we have employed in centuries, still you refuse to accept the most simple of all truths.
“You already know the answers to the questions that we cannot answer. That is why we cannot answer them. If you refuse to help yourself, then there is no one in this company who can or will help you. You know what you want where your ex is concerned. You simply refuse to admit it, even to yourself. You know why everything around you seems so drastically different from your previous life, but again, you refuse to accept it. I cannot give you the answers to these questions because you must find them inside of yourself. Do you understand?”
“No,” she pouted.
“Stacy...” Ms. Pope’s voice held a slight warning.
Stacy nodded. “Yeah, I guess. But I think it would save us all a lot of time, effort and headache medicine if you’d just give me the answers,” she grumbled.
“That it truly would.” Ms. Pope massaged her temple. “But then you would never learn anything. I am, however always here if you need to talk.” She held up a finger to stop Stacy from interrupting. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter if the other person already knows what you have to say. Sometimes the act of just saying the words is exactly what we need.”
The two women sat there in silence for a moment. Ms. Pope, as always dressed in a very elegant yet incredibly sensual outfit, seemed to truly care about her. As she stared at her boss—no, at the moment, she was her colleague—Stacy thought about all the bitching she’d done. Yeah, it was mostly inside her head but still, she’d done it. She complained because she wasn’t told things. Because she felt she wasn’t given answers. But look at what she had been given.
Thanks to this company, to Ms. Pope, Stacy had more than she’d ever had before in her life. She honestly had friends she felt she could trust. She actually felt she had people who cared about her—a
nd not just what she could do for them.
“And now, you’re on the right path to finding your answers,” Ms. Pope whispered. “I give you this little hint. There really is truth in the old saying ‘The best revenge is simply to enjoy your own life, find happiness, and become successful’.”
