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“What?” Ian asks, clearly surprised.
“You can’t fire her.” Thank god the perfect excuse comes to me. “Technically, you’re not her boss. I am.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Unfortunately for you, it is. A year ago, you decided you didn’t want to be burdened with inconsequential activities, like paying your property taxes and your electric bills. You asked me to draw up paperwork putting me in charge of managing your properties. Which I did. It’s part of why you keep me on retainer. It’s how I hired Savannah for you. Ergo, you are not her boss. I am. Ergo, you can’t fire her.”
“Fine. Then you fire her.”
“I’m not going to.” Because Jesus. Firing Savannah is the only thing that might make this situation worse. “Regardless of how you feel about her personally, she’s done nothing to justify letting her go. She’s an excellent chef. She’s doing her job. The job that she needs. And I’m not going to fire someone without cause just because you think she’s pretty.” I lean forward, trying to convey exactly how serious I am. “And if you can’t see why it’s wrong that you're even asking me to, then I might need to suggest some sexual-harassment training for you. As your friend. Not as your lawyer.” Then I shrug and add, “Both, actually.”
Ian frowns, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant child. “If you wanted to, you could come up with some reason to fire her.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I don’t want to.”
Clearly annoyed, he stands. “Fine. I’ll just have to figure out how to tolerate it.”
He’s almost out the door, when I ask, “You know Ava was full of shit, right?”
He pauses to look back at me. “We covered this already. She was a petty bitch, etc. etc.”
“Yes, but she was also lying. She was never with you out of pity. She was with you because she wanted to be. It just pissed her off that you didn’t care.”
He seems to be rolling the words around, trying to make their meaning fit into whatever paradigm he has in his head. “So you’re saying the problem wasn’t with her, it was with me? The problem was that I was a bad boyfriend?”
Well, fuck, I wouldn’t have put it that way.
I hate how she used him. How she manipulated him. When they first met—even though he was rich, successful, and over thirty—Ian was relatively inexperienced. He’d spent so much time focusing on his company, he hadn’t had time for a relationship. He’d had one girlfriend (that I know of) in college and she was only around for a few weeks. Then nothing serious until Ava.
I’m pretty sure his lack of experience thrilled her. She thought she’d be able to train him into the perfect lap dog, but he had no patience for her theatrics. When he wouldn’t come to heel, she threatened to leave. He never understood the performance, let alone his role in it.
I don’t think there’s any point in explaining that she wanted him to fight for her.
If he had shown even a fraction of the interest in Ava as he was showing in Savannah, I would have stepped in and explained it to him.
Which is why, I now tell him, as gently as I know how, “You probably were a bad boyfriend. I won’t argue with you about that. It’s not in your nature. Ava knew that going in. She just thought she could change you. She thought she could make you care about her. When she couldn’t, it pissed her off. That’s on her, not you.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you’re my lawyer and not my therapist, because as far as pep talks go, this one is total shit.”
“You’re not paying me to give you pep talks. But if you were, consider this: just because you never cared enough about Ava to put in the effort, that doesn’t mean you won’t ever care about anyone else. You’re a smart guy. Beyond smart. If you wanted to be a good boyfriend, you could learn how.”
Ian leaves without saying anything else and I have no idea if I helped him or not.
I sure as fuck didn’t help myself.
I don’t know how Trinity is going to react when she finds out how much I meddled behind the scenes in her sister’s life. I don’t even know if I can explain why I did it.
Sure, there are logical, no-nonsense reasons that I pull out to justify my actions.
It is true that Ian needed someone to cook for him. Someone to put in a modicum of effort to make sure he’s eating on a regular basis. Actual, real food and not garbage pizza.
And it is also true that Savannah needed a job.
Correction, she didn’t just need a job. She needed a financial miracle. The kind of debt she was in would have ended in bankruptcy. She never would have gotten a business loan to start her own restaurant after that. As for Trinity, yeah, I dug around in her finances as well. Most people who get their PhD leave school with college debt. That’s not an insurmountable problem. But I could tell how much worse things had gotten for her since her father died. Their mom too for that matter.
And no one’s future and security should be at risk just because their parent didn’t update their will.
I could argue that what I did for their family is what anyone in my position would do.
