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“I don’t love her. I just met her.” But that wasn’t really true. None of it was. I’d known her my whole life, in a way. And I found that I very much wanted to know her for the rest of it too.
“And as long as you keep lying to yourself, Daniel’s going to know you’re not happy. Do it for him, Mike.”
I stared at her, unable to believe this was Shelly telling me to go do something to make myself happy. “You really think I should?”
She nodded. “I was wrong about something else. I thought it would make me unhappier if you were happy. But I think it would make me happy to see you happy.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I mean, it might not look like it. It will also piss me off and make me jealous, but somewhere down deep inside, it’ll make me happy too.”
That sounded about right. “Thanks.”
She sighed and then pulled herself back up to sit straight. “Okay. I better go.”
I watched my ex-wife stand and walk to the door, still feeling too rough to even be polite and go open it for her. “Shell?” I called from the couch.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for this,” I said.
As the door shut behind her, I let my eyes slide shut again. For now, I needed to sleep off this hangover. And then? I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I knew it would have something to do with Addison Tanner.
32
Don’t Upend the Pens
Addison
Icalled my boss to let him know I was coming back early, and things didn’t go quite the way I’d imagined.
“We definitely have a place for you here,” he told me. “It just might not be the same place you left.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, Addie. It’s just...I mean, you upended my pen cup the day you left.”
“Is that a metaphor?” I’d been really angry about Luke that day and didn’t remember exactly what had happened when I’d stormed around work and told my boss I was taking leave.
“No. It isn’t an expression. You dumped all my pens on the floor.” He said this in the same tone one might say, “you stormed in here with a knife and took hostages.” My workplace was traditionally quite sedate. Upending pens was practically a violent offense.
“Um. Sorry?” I didn’t feel sorry. I’d been upset.
“Anyway, I was pretty sure that after that, you wouldn’t be coming right back, and we needed an analyst. So we hired one.”
That hurt a bit. “So where does that leave me?”
“Junior analyst.”
“Roger. I’m thirty-five.” I’d spent ten years working my way up to the position I’d left not four months earlier, and now I was going to be demoted?
“And a bit unpredictable.”
I would figure this out with him in person. “Fine. Fine. I’ll be back Monday.”
“Ah, okay. We’ll see you then, I guess.”
After that less-than-positive interaction, I had to scour my network for a place to stay, finally landing a couch with a friend from college for one week.
