"I hadn't realized that you were doing market research for Svedka as well. You might advise them to get rid of that robotic woman on their commercials. To put it lightly, she creeps me out."
Her dark brown eyes were still hazy with sleep and she rubbed each of them in turn as she took in the mess around her. He half smiled, but Rachael's cheeks started to redden as she spluttered, "Oh, well, it wasn't on company time and nobody was here so—"
"No, no, you know I love when my executives drink alone in their office. It's very Mad Men of you," he chuckled, but for some reason, Rachael had grown immune to humor.
"I'm really sorry," her voice was husky, on the verge of tears.
He braced himself. Tears weren't really an area of expertise for him. The molecular structure of them, their biological function, sure. That was all well and good. But when they started pouring out of somebody? That was less than desirable. By far.
"Hey, you know I don't care about that stuff. Everyone has to take the edge off sometimes." He took a deep breath and settled onto her couch, pushing aside a blanket that was thrown haphazardly across the sofa. A lumpy pillow sat discarded on the coffee table in front of him, and he picked it up and placed it in his lap. "Rough night?" He asked, doing everything in his power to squash the deafening silence as she stared at him.
"No, uh, not really."
He gestured to the mass of bottles; "These must have done their job then, huh?"
She expelled a hollow laugh. That was something, at least. Anything other than the maddening noiselessness.
"So, you just like sleeping at your desk?" Every sentence felt like prodding a hibernating bear. Except instead of attacking him with her ferocity, she would explode into an ocean of tears. Somehow, he felt like he would have preferred the claws.
"It helps my posture," she sniffled. Oh, no. His stomach flipped, recognizing the call of emotional cthulhu—female sniffling.
"You know, you don't have to talk about it. Why don't I just help you straighten this place up, huh?" Raising from the sofa, he gathered the magazines from the floor and set them on the coffee table in a neat stack before scooping up a handful of tiny liquor bottles and dumping them into the trash. "Where did you even get these?"
"I keep them in my desk for emergencies."
"Bad meeting pick-me-ups?"
"No, more, um, phone-call-from-my-mother, chat-with-my-fiancé situations." She hadn't bothered moving from the desk. Instead, she spun around in her office chair like a kid at a playground. Midway through her tilt-o-whirl, Garret finished collecting all the trash and settled himself back onto the sofa, and she stopped abruptly, her curls hiding her face momentarily as they were caught in the inertia.
"See, all cleaned up. You're probably feeling better already. Let's get you some coffee and—" He started for the door, but the sound of her voice stopped him in his tracks.
"Listen, Garret, I'm going to have to give you my two weeks." She sniffled again, but didn't give any more information.
So much for getting his day off to a good start.
"What? Why?" He turned to face her.
It was the most ridiculous thing he could think of. Nobody worked harder than Rachael did—pulling in extra hours almost every day, coming in sick, working over the weekend. She was the most dedicated employee he could have ever hoped for, and now she was going to leave at the drop of a hat?
She tapped a pen on her desk, and then exhaled as she kicked her small, bare feet up onto her work surface. "It doesn't really matter. The point is that I have to go. So, you know, I really wish you the best and…" She made a gasping sound, springing for a tissue and blotting at her cheeks before he could see the evidence of her break down.
His mind was screaming at him to abort. Raise the draw bridges and get the hell out of dodge, but he couldn't leave her there alone, looking so sad and broken. And he especially couldn't bear to see her resignation. He settled back onto the couch and rested his elbows on his knees, flipping through charts in his mind of how exactly to tackle this particular scenario.
For some reason, though, he could only think of elaborate, Cosby-Show-esque plans to get her to stay. Things like setting up fake businesses to show her how terrible it would be to work elsewhere, or making all of the secretaries not respond to her when she walked by so she could see what things would be like without her.
And none of that seemed rational. Or sane.
So he sprang into action plan B.
"How about right now I'm not your boss. Right now I'm your friend, and I want to know what's going on. Also, as your boss, I need to know if you need to take the day to work things out before you do anything rash.” Then, rushing to correct himself, he added, “But, as I said, right now I'm not your boss." That probably could have gone smoother.