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My project with a staff full of people he chose.
“Great.”
He purses his lips and shakes his head before rubbing at the tense skin between his eyebrows and taking a seat in his chair. In my effort to keep things civil, I’ve taken my concise responses too far.
“You don’t have any idea, Trent,” he chastises, “what it takes to run a multibillion-dollar company like this.”
I clench my fists in my pockets and prepare for the speech he can’t stop himself from giving me. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times, and I don’t know that there will ever come a time when he thinks he can stop.
“It’s more than strong-arming and thinking you know what’s best. It’s collaboration and humility. Listening and learning instead of ordering people around. Sometimes you’re not the expert, and you have to be okay with that.”
I laugh inside. Is he even listening to himself? He should try following his own fucking advice sometime.
“I’m making sure you’ve got the best group of people around you. Experts in their field.”
The pointed statement rubs against my skin like sandpaper, and I can’t help but throw out a sardonic question. “Who do you think I was planning on hiring?”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m sure you would have hired people who seemed like experts. But it’s not always as simple as a fancy resume and smooth-talking, Trent. I’ve had years and years to get an eye.”
“Through experience,” I stress. “If you don’t ever let me fully take the reins, how do you plan on having me learn it?”
He smirks then. “Through observation. If you want to learn through trial and error, you’ll have to do it with your own money.”
And that’s the real crux of our issues. Trent Turner Senior doesn’t think it’s possible for anyone else to invest as much interest and care into the business he built. He thinks I’ll take what he’s made and run it into the ground with carelessness and laziness and entitlement.
But none of those things are true of me.
There’s nothing that means more to me than the business he built on his back, and there’s no one, despite our disagreements, who respects him as much as me.
That’s why I put every ounce of blood, sweat, and time I have into it.
That said, all I have to give him is a tight nod. I don’t trust myself to respond any other way.
“I’ll let you know when you can meet them.”
Fan-fucking-tastic.
“You have nine months, Trent,” he says in closing. “Nine. Don’t fuck this up.”
Greer
Vomit pools in my throat as I move my purse from one side to the other and back again in the bulky leather office chairs in the waiting room outside of Mr. Turner’s office.
Helen, his bob-sporting assistant, smiles at me awkwardly, and I know she’s noticed my fidgeting.
Great.
I sit up straighter and smooth my smart pencil skirt down over my knees. Helen pushes a crinkly plastic-covered candy toward the edge of her desk and then turns back to her computer.
Helen, it’s now obvious, is someone’s mom. That kind of care and compassion is nothing short of maternal, and it’s the sort of thing I missed out on as a kid.
My brother and my grandfather did their best, don’t get me wrong, but there’s only so much motherly instinct inside a body with a penis.
Grateful, I get up to take the candy, regardless of whether I want it or not. My stomach hasn’t decided, but accepting the gesture seems like the right thing to do either way.
When I get back to my seat and look at its contents, red and white pinwheeled together, I realize Helen really has thought of everything.
Peppermint soothes nausea.
I pop it into my mouth and suck until it disappears, and by the time I finish, I’m feeling a little better.
Helen types furiously on her computer without looking at the screen, clearly transcribing something for Mr. Turner, and then stops immediately.
She touches the Bluetooth piece in her ear. “Yes, Mr. Turner?”
A brief pause.
“Of course. I’ll send her in.”
I gather my purse and portfolio and stand as Helen gestures me forward with the curl of two fingers, saves the document on her computer, and rounds her desk to hold open Mr. Turner’s office door for me.
She is efficient to the point of madness. I hope I can live up to the employee standard she’s set.
Trent Turner is an attractive older man who’s started to gray around the edges. His temples and hairline are more salt than pepper, and a wire-framed pair of glasses sit perched at the end of his nose.
Helen knocks on the frosted-glass pane of the door to announce my entrance, and he looks up and tosses his glasses to the surface of his massive desk before rounding it to greet me.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Turner,” I say as I shake his hand.
