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“Clearly.”
She leant on the counter across from him. “I’m not good company.”
“Lucky I’m not here for your scintillating wit.”
She could trust Bryan, but he still talked to Tom and she didn’t know how she felt about Tom. “What are you here for again?”
“You’re thinking about suing right now, aren’t you?”
She straightened up, pushed her shoulders back. “I’d be a fool not to be.”
Bryan got off the stool and walked around the counter. He eyed the coffee machine Jay bought her. You more or less needed a pilot’s licence to drive it. “You’d be a fool if you did. I investigated it, and I had a more clear-cut case; unfair dismissal, but there was no guarantee I’d win and even if I did, the additional reputation damage that’d come with it would’ve be crippling. Does this thing do your taxes too?”
“And my weekly pedicure.”
Bryan grinned. “I’d settle for a flat white. You’re also thinking about copping it sweet and settling for what is still a pretty damn good job.” He turned back to look out at the rest of the apartment. “With outstanding perks.”
She nodded. It was the most practical option and the one that made her want to scream until she lost her voice.
“It’s a rare problem you have.”
“Rare? There are two of us in this room who’ve had the same problem.”
“Half the world still fights for food and shelter. They drown baby girls in some countries.”
“God, Bryan. I’m supposed to feel okay about being passed over because it’s a First World problem.”
His hand shot out and closed over her arm. “No. You’re supposed to have some perspective.”
She pulled away and turned the coffee machine on. It’d cost eight thousand dollars. It was hard to remember that people still died for lack of fresh water.
Bryan guessed the right cupboard and got two cups and saucers out. “Then there’s the whole take this job and shove it notion.”
She needed to trust somebody, preferably someone she didn’t have to pay for that privilege, like an employment lawyer or a headhunter. “I’m sensing you’ve had some experience with this kind of thing.” She put the cups under the coffee machine’s spouts, and retrieved the milk.
“Funny. You were always funny when you weren’t scared, Jac.”
Bryan had seen her scared. He’d seen her fight it to stand up to Malcolm. As a kid she’s been all spit and gurgle. Now she was like the coffee machine, quietly efficient but boiling inside.
She put the flat white, cafe style, in front of him. “I haven’t been truly scared for a long time.” Which was true if you didn’t include the bomb blast, which was a natural reaction, and you ignored Brent, who was a mistake no amount of red paint on a canvas helped her forget, and Mace, who was something else altogether. “I’m not scared now.”
“Well, you should be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This is one of those crossroads, Jac. Not one of your choosing, but a fork in the proverbial road if ever there was one. Time to ask yourself what you really want, when what you wanted can’t be anymore.”
She sipped her coffee and studied him. The extra weight looked good on him, so did his complete ease with himself. “When did you get so Zen?”
“When I decided it was okay not to be like Dad.”
She’d never realised it before the discussion with Tom, but it was clear now. She and Bryan had both tried to be like Malcolm on his best days and neither of them had been able to kill off enough of their real selves to get the job done properly. They were lousy actors. Tom, on the other hand, for all his flaws, was his own person and no threat to Malcolm because of it.
“You too, huh.”
“Until the moment he sacked me I wanted to be him.” Bryan sipped and sighed. “Stupid. Best thing that ever happened to me, after Kath said yes and we had Brianna.” He looked at her under raised brows, like a proper older brother, one who genuinely cared might. “So what do you really want to be when you grow up, Jacinta Wentworth? Answer that question and you’ll know what to do now.”
She’d felt mostly anger all day. A heated fury that made her joints ache until the call with Henry left her blistering, wanting to scrape her own skin off to cool down. Now she felt oddly detached, like she’d caught sight of someone in the glass of a shopfront and was shocked to realise that random person in the reflection was her.
