“Is everything okay, Lis?” I asked, my default always making sure everything was okay.
“Everything’s fine. You just—you look tired,” she said. Something about the sympathy in her voice brought heat to my skin.
Ilooked tired? Me? Had she looked in a mirror recently?
Lately, every time I laid eyes on my sister she looked thinner or her eyes looked more sunken in. Every time I saw her she looked exhausted, and what was her response to me voicing my concerns about it?“Some of us have to work, Alta. Not all of us get to play on our phones and make copies all day.”
Sure, it had been a while since she said anything like that, but I still remembered it coming from her mouth. Her. Of all people, the one I looked up to the most.
For some reason, seeing that concerned look on her face made me so irrationally angry that suddenly the only thing I wanted to do was cry.
The fact made me even angrier because, why couldn’t I just scream? Why couldn’t I just call her a bad name and flip a chair and storm out? Why did I always have to take the weaker route?
What was wrong with me?
Lis bore witness to the storm of emotions raging inside me and what did she do? My cold, near emotionless sister softened. Her face almost never changed, but you could always see everything in her eyes and right then her eyes were taunting me. Saying‘poor defenseless Alta’, ‘poor sensitive Alta’, ‘poor naive Alta.’Right now those soft eyes weremockingme.
“Maybe you should go home, Al. Get some rest,” she said.
My jaw suddenly got hard. Nothing hurt more than those placating words coming from her. I tried to keep my cool, not wanting to fight with her. “I’m fine but thank you.”
“Do you want to get lunch with me, then?” she tried. Sheneverwanted to get lunch. Whenever I asked her, she was always too busy and suddenlynowshe wanted to get lunch? It didn’t add up. No, it stunk of‘take care of poor little Alta.’
I hated it.
“I’m okay, Lis. I know you’re busy,” I said simply.
She swallowed, her arms wrapping around herself tighter like she was getting frustrated. But she persevered, always so good at being headstrong. “Do you want to get lunch with Ceci instead? I don’t have to be there, I just think maybe you?—”
“You just think maybe what, Lis? That I don’t have any work to do? That I’m not busy?” I asked, my patience snapping out of nowhere. My voice was suddenly shaky and watery. “Some of us have work to do, Melissa, so I would really appreciate it if you would let me do mine.”
I tried not to look at her again, attempting to burn a hole in my open notebook with my eyes. But when it became apparent that she was just staring at me, I blinked up and I watched her.
She ran her eyes over my face once, twice, three times before she visibly swallowed. Wrapping herself in an even tighter hug, she nodded.
“Okay,” is all she said before she stepped away and returned to her office.
My hands shook as I ran them over my face. Thank God they came up dry because that feeling of wanting to cry had graduated toneedingto cry. Harper was wrong about me being a saint, because what I had just done to Melissa wasmean. And for the life of me, even though I felt bad about it, I couldn’t stop feeling worse about everything else happening in my life. And that just made me feel selfish. I was now two things I hadn’t been two days ago. A selfish liar. And what for? I still didn't have my marketing campaign.
This sucked.
“Alta,” I was shaken out of my pity party by the voice of someone leaning into Melissa’s suite entrance. Jolting upright, I looked over to see Jack Tucker.
I’m sure I must have done something bad in another life, because the compounding crap-show today was becoming was monumental. Jack was one of the Tucker boys who liked to harassme using passive aggressive words and pretentious questioning because they thought I was too dense to realize. Really, I was simply too much of a chicken to confront them about it. Seeing Jack’s curly blond head and pressed suit looking for me was not what I needed to make this tearful feeling subside. It was quite the opposite.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to discreetly take deep breaths to keep the tears at bay, answering without looking at him, “Yes?”
“Have you checked the calendar?” he asked. I fought the urge to groan… or scream. I checked the calendar every day. He knew I checked the calendar every day. So, why he was asking me if I had checked the calendar, even though I quite religiouslychecked it every day, I had no idea.
To him I simply said, “Yes.”
“So you know there’s a meeting in half an hour?” he asked.
“Yes, Jack.”
“Oh,” he straightened up, his nose going into the air. “I just thought you didn’t know, because the copies we need for the meeting aren’t in the conference room yet. My mistake.”
Something in my temple ticked. A nerve, maybe. Or my self-control? Slowly, I let my barely congenial gaze rise to him and I smiled. I hate that I smiled, but I couldn’t help it. It was a reflex. “Did you get my email?”
