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This sends a sickening shiver up and down my back and across my neck. She’s a predator, Melissa. Really look at Tommy the next time. Look at what you see there. And you won’t see a busy worker, you’ll see someone being groomed as prey.
I swallow thickly under this, barely able to keep down the little bit of lunch I’ve managed to eat.
I’ve also stopped listening to Isabella now, but I don’t care. Between my lingering sourness over Dennis, how he just ended things like that with me, and my budding concerns about Tommy and how well his new job is really treating him, I don’t have the attentiveness I’m used to having. I also don’t have the emotional availability.
Probably a good thing, as if I were too available for my emotions, I wouldn’t be here at work. I wouldn’t be able to carry on a single sentence, let alone answer phones, and direct important calls for eight hours a day.
Even if poor Tommy is being groomed or molded into some kind of slave or appetizer for Ms. Vanacore, I can’t do anything just yet. I can’t be sure of anything or say anything. I have to get a chance to talk to him. Look at him properly. As it is, he’ll barely even stopped and talked to me. My mind goes to a little over a week ago when I happened to hear exactly what Ms. Vanacore thought of Tommy and me being seen together in any capacity. Which I doubt is an accident, given I’m just the “lowly secretary” and Ms. Vanacore doesn’t want her assistant mingling with the likes of me.
I put that thought out of my head, as well as the follow-up one about Dennis and Ms. Vanacore being a good fit for each other, and continue to focus on work. I do so until the end of the day.
But my self-control, my mantra of taking my mind far, far away from Dennis, cracks the minute I’m in my car. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I suddenly don’t just feel like letting him end it right then and there. He can’t break up with me like that, without another word from me. Without some other bit of hell to pay for everything.
I dial his number and wait on the line before I’ve even had time to ask myself what I’m going to say to him or why.
Unlike all the other times in the past few weeks or months, he actually picks up right when I call. Dismally I think that all it took was for him to break up with me for him to finally act like a “good boyfriend.”
He says, “What you want? I told you we were over, Melissa, so you better not be calling me thinking that you’re going to try and plead your way back into my life.”
Whatever I was going to say (and again I have no fucking clue what that would’ve been anyway), that goes out the window, and out comes my anger. My rage. My sorrow and confusion about being dropped like old news. My embarrassment at being labeled a crier and manipulator. “No,” I say, I didn’t call you to cry or plead for you to come back to me. Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, fighting the cracks in my mask, “don’t flatter yourself by thinking you are worth any more tears or wasted nights, Dennis.” Never before have I realized how close Dennis is to being a bastard. Not until now. “I just called to let you know that I’m not going to let you just break up with me and not have to hear or take any hell from me.”
Dennis makes a sound like he’s scared, but he’s not.
And that just makes me angrier. “Enjoy your new life with that little girl toy of yours while you can, Dennis,” I say, “that little Tinkerbell who is granting all your wishes, but you’re going to get what’s coming to you. You’re going to pay for thinking so little of me.”
“Oh?” Dennis chuckles, but it’s far from sexy or kind. “And how are you going to do that? Come to Paris?”
“It doesn’t matter where I go or don’t,” I say, formulating a plan right then and there, “I’m going to make sure you pay in literal money for all the heartache and pain you’ve caused me.”
Dennis laughs, and I hear a little cruel, bemused giggle underneath it. His new girlfriend is with him, and I’ve just realized it.
I jut out my jaw. “You two are laughing now, but you won’t be when I finally bring a suit against you for all the monetary gifts and support I’ve ever given you over the months.” I pause, thinking instantly of Tommy.
Though he’s not technically a practicing lawyer yet, by what I saw on his resume that fateful morning, he’s skilled. He’s observant and tenacious. If given the opportunity, I’m sure he would wreck Dennis in court. He would get him on anything and everything he could.
