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Forest:On scheming, maybe. Alcohol, no
Ria:Are all your brothers so cryptic?
Forest:You’re a fortune teller. Don’t like cryptic?
Ria:My grandmother is a fortune teller. So, no.
Forest:I’ve got a plan. Are you free tomorrow?
Ria:I can be
Forest:My office. Nine am.
Ria:Sure. Let Jenni know I’m coming, will you?
Forest:Who?
Ria:Blonde receptionist. Deserves a raise. Don’t make her have to put up with my shit again.
Forest:I’ll make sure the front desk is informed
I was about to lock my phone and try and get a triumphant hour of shut-eye when my phone pinged again.
Ria:It’s a date.
I threw my phone onto the desk. Why did my stupid heart skip a beat reading that message? Something about attractive women turned middle-aged men into teenagers. And god, I was approaching 40 now, wasn’t I? Jude was only slightly older than me, and he was now almost fully silver-haired. It wouldn’t be long for me.
And yet I felt both youthful and ancient. In work terms, I was elderly, probably dying. I’d worked more by my age than some people would their whole lives. In social terms, I still felt like I was in my twenties, on account of having socialized so little since adulthood. Work didn’t count as socializing, I knew that.
And the thought of Ria somehow made my heart throb like I was back in my teenage years. Sylvester liked to bring up the funny fact that I’d been a jock in high school, a popular member of the football team. It had been on a sports scholarship that I’d studied computer science at university. Back then, pre-Emory, I’d not had a care in the world. I’d loved freely, as only teens could, and had my fair share of dalliances and romance. Nothing that had stuck, but I was young, I wasn’t thinking long term.
And now? I had no time for it. Was I lonely? Sure, objectively. But the life I’d only half-chosen didn’t have space for a partner. Every time I’d briefly envisioned the possibility of forming a life with someone, I’d only been able to imagine a kind of put-upon housewife figure. She’d be consistently unfilled and lonely, furious that I worked so much, having affairs on the side just to give her some excitement in her life. And who would choose a life of consistently disappointing someone over comfortable loneliness?
But then I’d not felt his way about anyone until Ria. And before we could even make a start of it, before we’d even met, she’d betrayed me to my half-brother – the one person I could never forgive. A romance that was doomed before it even started seemed par for the course in my life.
I managed to gettwobleary hours of sleep at my desk. I showered in the management showers and dressed in the clean clothes I’d started keeping in my office since I’d been getting my dry cleaning dropped off here. Work-life separation? Not needed when you didn’t have a life.
I was basically assembled and caffeinated by the time Ria arrived for her appointment. I watched her enter the reception on CCTV. She chatted with Jenni for an infuriatingly long-feeling five minutes before entering the elevator.
This gave me food for thought. Ria may project confidence, but in a building full of some of the best-paid software engineers in the world, she’d made friends with the shy receptionist. What did that say about her? That she felt out of place here, maybe. Or that she wasn’t superficial – she didn’t feel the need to network with the ‘higher-ups’. Or that she felt small – she knew her place, and it was with the reception staff, in the grand scheme of things. It could be all of those things... or none of them.
I scowled at the CCTV screen. If I had Ria’s intuition, I’d be able to ascertain more about her character from watching that small exchange. I was so transfixed in my thoughts that the knock on my door came before I realized that Ria was even on her way. I quickly closed down the CCTV window and called her in.
She was more cheerful today, and wearing a garish yellow suit that on anyone else would have looked dreadful. Unfortunately, it suited her complexion and personality perfectly. She looked radiant, and more than a little intimidating. You didn’t mess with a woman confident enough to carry off a banana-yellow business suit, that was for sure.
Amongst the drab grayness of my office and attire, she certainly stood out. But she didn’t seem phased. “Lay out the plan, then.”
I tutted. “Impatient.”
She took a seat opposite me, crossing one leg over the other and rolling her eyes. “You messaged me at four in the morning asking me for a meeting at nine. I assumed you were raring to go.”
“I am quite pleased with the plan, actually.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the problem is, I think, that I’ve been trying to come up with a complete plan from start to finish, accounting for all of the variables and possible reactions that Apollo might have. But he’s been managing to get under my skin, and he’s done it by being lazy.”
“Lazy?”
