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“You know that you have to advise the parties in the room that you’re recording the meeting, son,” he chides.
“It’s been sitting in plain sight, I haven’t hidden anything intentionally,” I convey. “Sasha saw it when I hit the button, I nodded to it, she was aware and I thought you’d observed it as well. I’m sorry if you didn’t pick up on that. For all those aware, this meeting has been recorded since walking into the room, before that there was no conversation taking place. Do we all agree?” I ask, eyeballing Sasha. I wouldn’t put it past her to lie.
“Considering I entered the room at the same time as you, I agree,” Dad replies.
“I agree, and you did show me,” Sasha answers, trying to save face. “I’m sorry, Aris. I thought you felt the spark between us the way I did. I meant no harm and wasn’t trying to harass you, I thought you needed a little encouragement to act on those feelings.”
“I told you, time and time again, that I didn’t feel anything for you outside of employer and employee, did I not?” I ask as I get a response back from Tim telling me he’s on his way.
She drops her head and tries to defend her actions. “I thought you were saying that because others were around and you didn’twant them to know that we were building something. I thought it was foreplay, a way of getting to know one another.”
“I’m going to advise that we cease this line of conversation until Tim arrives,” Dad orders, sighing deeply and pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is a clusterfuck.” My eyes widen when he says that and I point to my phone, reminding him that everything he says is going to eventually be listened to by other people’s ears and will be transcribed.
The next two hours are a lesson in reprimanding an employee by our human resource officer, and I watch as my father lets her go after a proper scolding. With a blemish on her record. He does give her a small severance package but cautions her that he’s only giving her monetary funds because it’ll take her some time to find anyone willing to hire her with an accusation of sexual harassment tacked onto her employment file.
Once Sasha walks out of the room with her shoulders slumped and a tear stained face, Tim and my dad turn to me and lecture me on waiting so long. One warning is substantial and sufficient. I’m ordered to file a complaint on the next, second transgression. It doesn’t matter to either of them that I thought I could handle it on my own, that if she reported it first, and turned the tides, it would’ve ended up being a legal nightmare.
Since I see their point of view on the matter and know that people like that do exist in the workplace, I acquiesce, swearing that if it ever happens again in the future, I’ll report it post haste.
I don’t want to lose a career that I worked my ass off on gaining for it to be ripped away from me because I didn’t succumb and fall into a woman’s bed. I leave that room feeling dirty, and that’s not something I’ve ever experienced before in my life.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
BERLYNN
When Aris walksin a couple of hours later, he looks crushed. His eyes are downcast and he’s rubbing his temples trying to ward off an approaching headache. Whereas a few minutes ago I was starting to feel drowsy from boredom, I find that I’m suddenly wide awake and ready to hurt whoever made his shoulders sag.
“What happened? Are you alright, Aris?” I know he can hear the concern laced in my voice because he lifts his head and attempts to shoot me a smile.
“I’m okay, Berlynn. Promise. I just hope I never have to have a meeting like that again. It doesn’t feel good to be the reason someone loses their income.”
Wanting to console him, I get up from my lounged position and stand. Gathering my courage, I walk up and place my hand on his shoulder. He’s so tense and tight that if he’s not careful and doesn’t let some of the tension go, he may snap.
“Sit,” I mandate, pointing at his rolling chair. As I begin rubbing the gnarled knots loose from his stiff shoulders, I ask him to tell me what he can about what went down behind closed doors so that I can help him work through it.
Throughout the retelling of what occurred, I hem and haw in the appropriate places but other than that, I don’t say a single word. He needs to release the emotional turmoil from his psyche and free himself from the burden he’s placed upon himself.
When he’s not as rigid as he was before I started kneading his swollen muscles, I drop my hands and lean down, placing my lips near his ear and whisper, “You have a soft heart, Aris. You try to hide it from anyone outside of your inner circle, but you have always cared about us underdogs.”
“You were never an underdog, Berlynn. Don’t say that shit about yourself,” he chides. “I can’t stand it when you do that.”
“It’s time for you to face the facts, Aris. I was not part of the ‘in’ crowd. Didn’t aspire to be either. I wanted to study, practice, and hang out with my three best friends. I didn’t put myself out there because I knew that I was different from everyone else in school. I was an easy target for our classmates because I simply didn’t care. Not about what they thought of me.” Again, I start ticking off my bulletin points with my fingers. “Not if they liked me. Not if I wore the right clothes, had the right hairstyle, and not if I made any of the popular teams. The only people whose opinions were worth a damn and mattered to me were yours, Addison’s, Berk’s, and your parents. It was easy pickings as far as the masses were concerned, but you never let them get away with treating me as lesser than. Did you?”
He adamantly shakes his head in denial. Hissing through his teeth, he refutes, “Never. Just because they couldn’t see thetreasure before them didn’t give them the right to bully and harass you. They were fools, every last one of them. The actuality that they saw you as the weaker link was bullshit. They didn’t stop long enough to see the fire burning inside of you, or they would’ve known you had more strength in your pinky finger than they did in their entire being.”
“Do you have anything to do that can’t be put off until tomorrow?” I ask him.
“Nothing that’s substantially important,” he denies. “Why? Is there something else you’d like to do other than sit here and do some tireless research?”
“Let’s go someplace and do something to help us decompress. We’ve both been under a lot of stress lately,” I suggest. “Maybe some putt-putt or bowling?”
“You despise golfing, Berlynn,” he chuckles. “What if we go back home, change into some jeans, and go for a ride around the bluffs.”
“You still have that old motorcycle?” I ask, excitement strumming through me. Very seldom did we go out for long rides since I was always training and scared that we’d have an accident that would end up stealing all of my hopes and dreams at earning myself a gold medal. Now, it’s a moot point since those hopes and dreams have already been taken away from me, there’s nothing holding me back anymore.
“I do. I’ve even updated it,” he jokes. “It no longer resembles a tin can on wheels.”
