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I slept in my boss’s bed when I should have been working.
This won’t look good on my resume, and I expect the first words from his lips will be, ‘You’re fired’.
My stomach is churning as I dread the prospect of facing him, and there are no excuses at all. I was caught sleeping on thejob—literally, and I may as well accept the fact it’s game over for me at Remington Industries.
I don’t even hear the door open and then I catch sight of the man himself in the mirror, which makes me jump and turn to face him with ‘guilty’ written all over my face.
“I’m sorry, I…” I attempt to speak, and he holds up his hand and shakes his head.
“Tell me later. You must be starving.”
I don’t believe I can eat a thing because I feel sick about what I have done.
“It’s fine, I’ll, um, grab something from the food bank on my way home.”
“The food bank?” He raises an impeccably groomed eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I doubt I have a job anymore and a girl’s got to eat.” I attempt to make light of the situation and he shakes his head as if disappointed somehow.
“There will be no food banks in your life, Laura, other than when you drop off a donation.”
I say nothing as he nods in the direction of his bedroom.
“We need to talk.”
I have no words as I follow him miserably into the room and he points to the edge of the bed I just vacated. “Sit.”
I drop down like a prisoner awaiting interrogation and he sits in the chair by the wall and studies me with a blank expression.
“Now, are you going to tell me what happened when you left the office yesterday?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He appears angry. “So, when you left, you went straight home?”
“Not really.”
“Then where did you go?”
“To the coffee shop opposite the subway. I ran into an old flame, and he invited me for a catch up.”
He stares at me hard and I notice a muscle working in his jaw, which makes me defend myself with an abrupt, “I wasn’t working; it was in my own time.”
“What happened?”
“It’s none of your…” I say quickly, hating divulging any personal information about what a fool I was, but he says roughly, “Tell me. You are my employee and you have turned up disheveled and agitated for work. I need to have the facts before I deal with you.”
Deal with me.
I blink, not really knowing what to do. He’s probably right, though. I’ve broken some company law or another and he is establishing the facts for my dismissal interview.
“Well, if you must know–” I hate how my voice shakes as I remember my deep love for Oscar turning to disinterest somewhere along the line.
“I met Oscar at college. He was the quarterback on the football team and drop dead gorgeous.”
I’m not sure why I’m going into such depth, but I want him to understand what a big deal it was to be asked to ‘catch up’ by him.
“Anyway, I wasn’t popular, beautiful, or even in the running. I was a nerd who studied too hard and never really got the results she wanted from it. Well, I imagined he liked me and fantasized about it being mutual. The trouble is, he was going steady with Antigoni Matthews, one of the cheerleaders who was everything I wasn’t.”
