All I Want. Nicole Helm
CHAPTER TWO
“OBVIOUSLY WE’LL OFFER you a reference as this isn’t a reflection of your abilities.”
Charlie sat in the cushy chair of his new boss’s office, which had been his old boss’s office, but now...
He blinked, trying to make his thoughts follow a straight line. This wasn’t out of the blue. He’d known this possibility existed. But now it was here and he somehow couldn’t wrap his brain around it.
“We’d like you to stay on for a few weeks, ease us through the transition. You’d be compensated, naturally. Alisha here will go over your severance package once that’s done.” Mr. Collins nodded toward the human resources woman Charlie had never met because she’d come from this new company.
It didn’t matter who she was or what she went over, he was being let go from the position he’d worked his ass off for. He’d poured ten years of his life into this company and what did he have to show for it? A severance package?
“I’m sure you’ll land on your feet. You’re sharp. I’m sorry we couldn’t keep you, but you know how these things go.”
Mr. Collins held out his hand, the same dismissive gesture Charlie had extended to others in the past. But always for performance reasons. He’d never had to lay off a member of his team just because.
But Charlie had been businessman professional too long not to smile politely, take the offered hand and let Alisha usher him down the corridor to her office. An office that had belonged to Marissa, a mother of three, not that long ago.
This new woman’s office was spare and efficient, absent of a million hand-painted drawings with goofy magnets along the edge of the filing cabinet. No giant bowl of hard candy at the edge of her desk either.
Things like this had been happening for weeks, and he was shamed to realize how it’d failed to hit him until he was the one getting the ax. Change usually meant a person’s life was being upended. The changes that had been sweeping through the office hadn’t been voluntary or easy for most involved.
But he’d been too wrapped up in himself, in how much he deserved to stay, to notice how it was affecting people, and that shamed him too, deeply.
There was paperwork to fill out. Alisha spoke in gentle, patient tones, so he nearly felt like he was back in kindergarten, complete with her escorting him back to his office.
His office. His.
“You’ll want to start notifying your clients,” Alisha said in that elementary school teacher voice. “Before they hear from anyone else.”
Right. Work to do. Clients to notify so the company that was firing him—no, laying him off—didn’t lose any business. He would need to prepare everything to turn over to his replacement, whom he’d meet tomorrow. It didn’t matter that he’d been let go, there was still work to do.
For the afternoon, he worked as diligently as he had the previous ten years. Making sure clients understood nothing would change, readying files and binders. He efficiently and methodically worked to make his job something he could simply hand over to someone else.
It was a long day of continuous surrealism; none of it really sank in. Because he had a few weeks ahead of him, of training someone else to do his job. He had weeks of making sure things were “in order.”
So, at the end of the day, when he shut his laptop down, he thought this would feel the same too.
Instead he stared at the blank screen. His usual next step was to snap it shut, slide it into his briefcase, check his phone one last time for emails or messages and then walk out. Most Thursday nights he ate dinner with his parents. It wasn’t a day to stay late in the office, like he did every other night.
But the IT Department had asked him to leave the computer so they could prep it for his replacement. He didn’t know how to walk away from this extension of himself that was going to be handed off to someone else.
His replacement.
He looked around the office that had been his for almost two years. He wasn’t a knickknack kind of guy. There were some awards on the wall, a picture of the Wainwrights from Lainey’s first birthday on his desk next to his Stan Musial–signed baseball.
It would take him ten minutes tops to erase himself from this office, and he didn’t know what that said about him, or his job, or his life; he only knew it felt like it meant something—something not particularly good.
* * *
MEG PACED THE SIDEWALK outside the church trying very hard to breathe through the sobs that racked her body.
She couldn’t hear what was happening inside, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She didn’t want the prayers or priest’s words telling her Grandma was in a better place. What better place was there than here—at Meg’s side?
Meg tried to mop up her face, but she’d neglected to bring tissues, so she had only the collar of her dress and the backs of her hands. And she just kept crying, so it was a completely useless exercise anyway.
She might not want to be in there, but she knew she should be. Grandma would want her in there, would consider it the right thing to do.
But she also wouldn’t want a scene, and if Meg tried to get in a second time...
The broken sob was impossible to swallow down. How could they turn her away from the funeral? How could they ban her? Grandma wouldn’t have wanted that. Grandma had always loved her.
No matter what.
Meg knew, in a way, this was her fault. She hadn’t planned well and the black sweater she figured she’d throw over her tattoos had boasted a giant hole in the armpit when she pulled it out of her closet.
Meg had spent ten frantic moments pawing through her closet trying to find something acceptable to her parents that would also cover her arms and match and be suitable grieving colors and she’d just...given up.
What was the point of scrambling through your closet when your grandmother was gone and your family was going to snub you anyway? To her parents, the tattoos were the visible slap in the face of all Meg had thrown away, all the shame she’d brought to their doorstep. In the world of her parents, appearances were everything.
So she’d accepted that Mom would sneer at the simple black dress that allowed some of her tattoos to be visible. She’d accepted that she’d probably have to sit alone, maybe even toward the back of the church.
But she’d never imagined it possible, not in a million years, that her parents would bar her from her own grandmother’s funeral.
The church bells tolled and Meg felt like she was eight again, alone outside this church, not understanding what was wrong with her—why her parents would rather pretend she didn’t exist than hug her.
She’d run out of church one Sunday, determined to just run. Because the priest could talk all he wanted about God’s love, but it hadn’t been infused into her parents. All they’d ever cared about was what their friends might have said behind their backs, or to their faces. The deals Dad might have lost if certain business partners found out he couldn’t control his daughter. The Carmichael name.
“I won’t go back there,” she muttered aloud, no doubt looking like an insane person. But surely this couldn’t be the worst behavior anyone had ever seen at a funeral.
The stately church doors opened with a groan, and everyone began processing out. Red eyes, tears, handkerchiefs. Some people didn’t look twice at her. A few of her distant relatives touched her arm briefly on their way to the cars that would take them to the cemetery.
But everyone knew not to stop and talk to Meg. Meg the addict. Meg the failure. Meg the giant black splotch on a proud and old-moneyed family.
When Mom approached, her eyes held more fury