Swap Out(10)
She screamed I had no right to disappear with her truck on company time, and I bellowed back that all I was doing was my damn job and if she didn’t like it, then she could find someone else. She threw me out of her office and I smirked and bowed, slamming the door shut behind me and the rest of our crew cleared a path like I was a leper. Except a few of them were discreetly fist pumping and whispering their accolades of, “Yeah! You tell her, Luca.”
I plopped down on a couch in the store front, my hands laced behind my head and feet crossed on the armrest as I whistled “I’m A Little Teapot.” But it became infinitely harder to continue when I caught sight of what I had left in my wake. Because Zoe usually keeps the blinds of her office door window half-cracked, but from the angle I was at, I could see everything. She was sitting at her desk, her elbow propped on the wood and her chin resting in her hand as she looked over a calendar, but every so often, she was wiping at her cheeks.
I stayed there for another minute, just watching her and feeling like a prick because once again, I knew she was feeling like crap and I wasn’t willing to give her an inch of slack. I took a deep breath, then got up and loudly whined that I was bored. I went back to work, and no one said a word to me about it because they damn well know not to. Except one of them did come into the warehouse to tell me Zoe was leaving on some unknown errand, and I’m not gonna lie, it stung a little. But I let it go and had everything loaded up for the afternoon stages by the time she got back, although I’m not sure she even noticed because she didn’t even look at me. Instead, she was happy to relay all of her instructions through Kevin: a nineteen-year-old, steroid-addled, marshmallow-for-a-brain Grade A dipshit.
Four and a half hours of furniture moving, hardware exchanging and emergency rug swapping later, we were back at the store. And no sooner was I finished backing the box truck up to the warehouse than Kevin appeared, telling me Zoe wanted to see me in her office. Awesome. Just the way I wanted to finish my Friday. By getting fired.
I tried to keep my frustration in check when I walked in there, then shut the door behind me before casually sitting in the wingback across from her tall leatherback chair. She crossed her arms as she glared at me, and I kept my jaw locked shut while instead of Zoe ripping into me—something she normally has no problem doing—she suddenly sat forward, took a business card out of the display and wrote something on the back. Which turned out to be an address.
“Be there at ten o’clock tonight.”
I took the card she thrust at me, then I left. I went home, but I had way too much energy to just sit around and twiddle my thumbs so I went to a nearby trail and hiked for two hours, trying to clear my head. Realized too late I had been there longer than I thought and rushed home, took the fastest shower known to man and then hauled ass to the address on the back of the business card.
And now here I am, 10:22 and staring at Zoe’s car parked in the driveway of a chic little one-story in a neighborhood with probably a bitch of an HOA. I have no idea what’s waiting for me inside that house, but I’d bet my best climbing gear it’s not a smile and a lap dance. If I’m lucky, all she needs is a favor, like helping to move something heavy or maybe to handle the negotiations with a contractor if she’s remodeling. Could explain why she was being so weird in her office, like she doesn’t want to admit that she has no one else to ask. But honestly? I doubt it’s anything that simple.
I groan and pull my keys out of the ignition, smoothing my palm over the dashboard.
“If I die in there, you were a good car,” I say, then get out.
The street is silent and when I shut the door, it’s so loud it makes me twitch. I swallow, unable to shake the feeling I should be looking over my shoulder for snipers. It’s not a feeling I ever wanted to know again. But I make my way up her front walk, my skin tingling from the cool night air and I keep going until I’m looking at a door painted the color of blood, and my heartbeat slams into high gear.
I raise my hand, then change my mind and reach for the doorbell. But before I press it I can hear the sound in my mind like a preview: the optimistic tones delighting you to the presence of welcome company, and it just feels wrong. Instead I chicken out and knock my knuckles twice on her door, then hold my breath and wait.
Two seconds that feel like twenty, and then it opens, my boss nothing like her normal self as she stares me down with her hair in a high ponytail, wearing a long-sleeved V-neck shirt and a pair of jeans. I didn’t even know she owned jeans.
But apparently she does, along with a house and a whole bunch of furniture at least two grades better than what she uses in her business. And I know this because she moves aside and hesitantly, I step over her threshold.