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"I'm trying, Betts. You were the one who told me it was going to take time."
She nodded, conceding my point.
"It's just for today. I'll come down at lunch, and we can all go eat together."
She didn’t look completely convinced, but she turned. "Dean? Do you know anything about web design?"
24
Betts
When I first saw Todd by my desk, I panicked. I’d just been returning from a bout of morning sickness in the ladies’ room. I knew I needed to tell him about the baby, but in the middle of the marketing department’s work area wasn’t the place. Then I saw he had Dean with him.
I was trying to decide whether Todd was being honest with me. Was he tapping me for this task because of our past encounters? Was he taking advantage of the fact that we'd slept together? Or was it true that he thought of me because Dean and I had gotten along okay at the haunted house?
I finally decided that maybe both were true. If I wasn't here today, he likely would have found someone else. But our relationship at times had crossed over into personal, which probably made it easier for him to come to me than to someone else.
I grabbed my laptop and took Dean to the large work table just outside my desk area. I opened the mockup of the hockey team's website redesign that we were working on.
"We are using a fairly straightforward drag and drop program, so no coding is required. This is the fundraising page. All the content is there, just needs some cleaning up and maybe a little redesign for finesse. Do you think you could do that?"
"Does this computer go on the Internet?"
I remembered Todd telling me he'd taken away all of Dean's electronics. I imagined Dean was salivating at the idea that he could go online and connect with his friends or play games. "It has limited access. There are sites that we use for things like graphics, but anything else will get the laptop shut down. So, no TikTok."
He let out a breath, and his shoulders hunched.
"If you’d rather, I could have you sift through data that we use to see what marketing campaigns are working and why."
"No, this is fine."
I left him to it, returning to my desk to review data on our current marketing campaigns. An hour and half later, I decided it would be a good time to check on Dean. I rose from my computer and stretched.
I approached him. "How's it going?"
"Looks alright to me." The smirk on his face told me something was up. I looked over his shoulder at the screen, finding it filled with gifs and memes that paid homage to potty humor.
I sat on the edge of the table so I could look at him. "How old are you?"
The smirk dropped. Clearly, he was not expecting that question. "Sixteen."
I looked at the screen and then him again. "And this is still funny to you?"
He tensed, his defenses rising.
"Did you think at all about what I asked you to do?"
"I don't really care."
Well, that was obvious. "You should care. This is your father's company."
Dean's jaw tightened. "That makes me care even less. I hate him."
I tilted my head, studying him, wondering what the right course of action was. I was a marketing director charged with showing this young man how marketing worked, not a social worker or therapist.
But I couldn't think of anything to say that would put him on the right path for both our tasks today, so I said, "Because he took your phone?"
He made a pfft sound. “No."
