STEP BY STEP (16 page)

“Preston,” I said as I
knocked on his apartment door. I’d gone to his office after work that night,
but everything was already locked up. It wasn’t like him. “Are you home? Let me
in.”

I waited patiently until
suddenly the door handle rattled and the door flung open. Preston stood,
disheveled and slightly out of it, with a tumbler full of brown liquor in his
hand.

“Oh, my god,” I said
crinkling my face. “How long have you been drinking?”

He swayed a bit. I’d never
seen him like this before.

“I took the afternoon,” he
said as he tossed back a sip of the brown liquid and let it slide down his
throat.

“What is going on? And why
didn’t you call me earlier?” I said. “When you didn’t answer my texts, I
figured you were busy. I didn’t think you were at home getting wasted.”

“I lost three accounts
today,” he said matter of
factly
. He walked over to a
sofa and plopped down, taking another sip. “Three big, major accounts. Three
accounts that I worked really hard for.”

“Oh, no,” I said, clutching
my chest as I took a seat next to him. “I swear, Preston, I know nothing about
this.”

“They didn’t say where they were
going, but I have a hunch,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I said,
rubbing his back. “We’re going to make this right.”

“How?” he said with a
sarcastic huff. “I’m afraid the damage has already been done.”

“I’ll figure something out,”
I swore to him.

I knew we had an important
meeting Friday morning. The office had been abuzz all week, though no one would
say who it was. Only Sapphire and Carter knew, and they weren’t telling a soul.

Sapphire and Carter had spent
a lot of one-on-one time prepping for this, and landing this account was going
to fall squarely on Sapphire’s shoulders. Keeping this account was going to
fall on mine.

My heart thumped in my chest.
I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew I may as well have been throwing my
career in a giant trash bin, dousing it in gasoline, and then setting it all on
fire, but I didn’t care.

I’d never seen Preston so
down before, so weak. His business, everything he’d worked for, was crumbling
down and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

As I got ready for work that
morning, I slipped on a wrinkly old blouse, wrinkly linen pants, and scuffed
heels. I didn’t put on a hint of makeup, and I finger-combed my long, blonde
hair into a basic
pony tail
. No jewelry. No perfume.
Not an ounce of professionalism about me.

I could feel the stares the
second I walked into the conference room, and I could hear the gasps. They were
used to seeing Mirabelle Baker all polished and pretty and presentable. She was
always on, they’d say. Not today. Today, they were seeing a whole new me.
Someone they’d never seen before.

I pulled out my purse and
rifled through it until I found a stick of chewing gum, which I promptly shoved
in my mouth and began chomping loudly.

Two men and a woman walked
in, and I’d never seen them before, so I could only assume they were the people
we were supposed to impress that day.

“Mirabelle,” Sapphire
whispered in my hear the second she walked in
an
took
a seat next to me. “What the hell are you wearing? You look like you just
rolled out of bed.”

“Maybe that’s because I did?”
I said with a coy smile and a shrug.

“You knew we had this meeting
today,” she whispered. “Do not blow this.”

I shrugged again and laughed
as if I didn’t have a care in the world, and as I spun my chair around, I couldn’t
help but notice the clients staring at me with jaws dropped. I was sure amongst
the throngs of suits and ties and dress slacks sitting around me, I looked
garishly out of place.

“Mirabelle,” Carter said as
he stood in the doorway and motioned for me to come out to the hall.

As I headed towards him, Sapphire
followed

“What the hell are you
doing?” he asked, his eyes beady and angry. “You knew we had this meeting
today.”

Sapphire stood, staring at
me, with her arms crossed over her chest. “She’s lost her freaking mind.”

“Maybe this is the real me,”
I said, holding my head high. “This is who I really am. This is your
bought-and-paid-for contracted employee. Congratulations.”

“Go home and change,” Carter
said. “And come straight back here. Don’t waste a single minute.”

“Can’t,” I lied. “All my
clothes are at the cleaner’s.”

Carter’s face turned beet red
out of sheer frustration and his lips were pursed hard.

“Maybe you should just fire
me?” I suggested.

“Never,” he said. “Not until
I get my year’s worth out of you.”

“I’m not even that great at
advertising,” I lied. “Sapphire here is just jealous because I’m dating her ex.
She wants to take him down, and she’s using me.”

Carter laughed, and then he
laughed some more as he and Sapphire exchanged knowing glances. She edged
closer to him and traced her finger down the sleeve of his blue sport coat.

“She’s not trying to take him
down,” Carter scoffed. “She’s trying to help me build my company. She’s good at
what she does. It’s not my fault
ol
’
Woodfield
let her go.”

She nuzzled into his neck and
then smiled while looking straight at me. They were an item. They were totally
sleeping together, and I had no idea how I hadn’t seen it before. All week they
seemed to be together constantly. Long lunches. Late nights.
Inside
jokes.
It was there all along. She was doing to him what she’d done to Preston
– sleeping her way to the top. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Until
I remembered what a slimy snake he was.

“You’re not getting out of
your contract,” Sapphire said. “Go home and change. You’re only embarrassing
yourself.”

“Mirabelle, Sapphire wants to
see you in her office,” one of my co-workers, Alicia, said with a sheepish
grin, as if she knew something I didn’t know. That or she knew Sapphire was about
to serve me my head on a silver platter.

I sighed as I stood up from
my desk and headed to her office.

“What now,” I said as I
lingered in her doorway.

“Get in here and shut the
door,” she commanded.

I rolled my eyes and did what
my boss told me to do.

“That was a nice little stunt
you pulled there this morning,” she said, her eyes glowing with an intense
fire. “Very impressive.”

I crossed my arms. “What do
you need, Sapphire?”

“I’m going to go point for
point with you,” she hissed. “You make a move. I make a move.”

I rolled my eyes once more.
“Okay, so…?”

“I have a plan,” she said.
“And you’re trying to blow it.”

“What’s your little plan?” I
asked. “You already blew it with Preston. You’re not getting him back.”

“I just want to be a good
little employee and make my boss a very happy man,” she said. “Fuck Preston.
I’m over that boy.”

“Yeah. Sure,” I said, not
buying it.

“Which is why I need to teach
you a lesson,” she said. “Because of that little stunt you pulled earlier, you
made Carter question my intentions. My motives. I don’t like that. It makes me
very…angry.”

“I’m not apologizing if
that’s what you’re getting at,” I said.

“No, no,” she said, her lips
curling into a devious grin. “I had to teach you a little lesson. I made a few
phone calls. Found out you’re from Stone Mountain, Georgia. How sweet.”

Her sarcastic tone was
grating, like nails on a chalkboard.

“Spoke to someone who knows a
man by the name of Andrew Douglas. Turns out you dated him in high school?” she
said, hardly containing her excitement. “And it turns out he had a lot of dirt
on you!”

She laughed a victorious,
vindictive sort of laugh, and I wanted to throw up.
 
I knew exactly what she was getting at.

“The proof is on its way to Preston
right now,” she said. “Via courier. You can’t stop it. He’s going to know. He’s
going to know all about you and what you did.”

“You’re evil,” I scowled at
her. “Pure evil. I can’t believe you’d do that. It wasn’t your place, Sapphire.”

“Don’t act like you’re so
innocent in all of this, Mirabelle,” she said, holding her shoulders back and
lifting her head up. “I bet you won’t fuck with my plans ever again, will you?”

I ran out of her office in
tears, grabbed my purse out of my desk, and hailed a taxi to Preston’s office.
I had to be there when he saw it. I had to explain why I hadn’t told him about
my past.

“Preston,” I said,
breathlessly, as I barged into his office. A manila envelope
laid
,
ripped open, on his desk as he stood by the window with a single piece of paper
in his hand. “Preston, I’m so sorry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he
said slowly, turning to face me. His face said it all. He was hurt. Angry.
Disappointed.
A lot of things and none of them good.

“Because after what you told
me,” I started. “I didn’t know how you’d handle knowing this about me. I didn’t
want you not to like me because of this.”

He held his head low. “I
didn’t fall in love with you because of your past or our past. I fell in love
with you because you were smart. Genuine. Honest.”

“I’m still that girl.”

“I don’t know,” he said,
throwing the birth certificate on his desk and taking a swig of liquor from a
tumbler next to it. “I don’t know anymore.”

“I was sixteen,” I said,
clearing my throat. “Sixteen when I gave birth. I was fifteen when I got
pregnant.”

He wouldn’t look at me.

“My parents were so
disappointed in me,” I said, my voice strained. “I had my entire future ahead
of me. And then
I got knocked up by Andrew
. It was an
accident. We used condoms, but one must’ve broke.”

His face softened a tiny
amount, but he still couldn’t look at me.

“I loved that little boy so
much,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “I wanted him to have the most
amazing life he could possibly have. I wanted him to be loved, to have
opportunities.”

Preston looked at me.

“I hand-picked his parents, Preston,”
I said. “He was never in foster care. We have an open adoption. I see him once
a year. I’ll always be a part of his life. He’s got an amazing life right now
and it’s all because I refused to let him be raised by a 16 year old mother.”

I walked over towards Preston
and took his hand in mine.

“I had to make the right
decision for me,” I whispered. “There’s not one cut-and-dry answer for
everyone, but that was the way it had to be for me. And for him.”

I leaned into him and kissed his
cheek.

“I am not your mother,” I
reminded him. “I know this must open old wounds for you, but please don’t
compare me to her. I loved my baby. I love him more than anything in this
world, and I gave him a great life because of that.”

“I understand that,” he said,
his body tense. “I just wish you would’ve been transparent with me from the
beginning. This is not about the adoption. This is about being honest with me.”

“It’s not like I was never
going to tell you,” I said. “You poured your heart out to me about how you had
abandonment issues. I wasn’t going to follow that with, ‘Oh, by the way, I gave
up my baby for adoption when I was sixteen’.”

“Mirabelle,” he said with a
clenched jaw. “Please go. I just need some time alone
right
now.”

“But you’re being ridiculous
right now,” I argued. “You’re making this into a bigger deal than it is.”

“Am I?” he asked, his eyes
looking defeated.

He was a man with a past. I
knew that when I agreed to date him. I knew he had a history, scars,
issues
. But I underestimated just how damaged he was, and I
overestimated just how well I knew him.

I said nothing further. I
simply turned and walked out of his office. He needed some space. He needed a
cooling off period, and I was going to give it to him. I was sure he’d come
around eventually.

One whole
week.
One whole week
passed without so much as a text from Preston. I’d really done him in good. I’d
underestimated the extent to which my omission had hurt him.

After my emails, texts, and
phone calls going unanswered, I decided to slip over to his office on my lunch
break one Friday.