“I just bought you a ticket,” Ava said. “Your flight leaves at five tomorrow evening. It was the earliest one I could find.”
“You got me a plane ticket?” I asked, my voice rising.
“Yes,” she said. “You need to do this. Please, Amanda. Pack a bag and take that flight. Trust me.”
I agreed, but I was still feeling unsure. I could handle anything when it came to the complications and messes at work, but this… this was something I didn’t know if I could handle.
31
Tom
I was in a weird mood when I sat down for the video conference meeting that morning. People often talked about waking up on the wrong side of the bed, but this was more like waking up on the wrong side of the room. My whole day felt off. No matter how much coffee I poured down my throat, it didn’t seem to lift the fog, either. Before the meeting started, I decided that getting a little food in me might fix the problem, and if not, I’d take a long bath or something and see if that reset me.
Yet the room service breakfast had done nothing except make me long for better food in general, and as I sat down for the meeting, I was starting to get cranky. Whatever was causing me to feel this way made me unnaturally upset at the speed of my laptop, and I shouted at it in vain when it took too long to open the window. Perhaps nine in the morning was too early to have whiskey, but I was very close to resorting to liquor to take the edge off if I didn’t get it under control.
Then, things were made exponentially worse when the meeting began. Amanda wasn’t there. Not only was she not there, her window didn’t even exist. She wasn’t on the call at all. I suffered through about half of it, hoping she would pop on late or something, and when she didn’t, I resigned myself to the fact that she just wasn’t going to be there. Miserable and bored, I made it through the rest of the meeting, and when it was finally over, I breathed a sigh of relief. Landon stayed on until after everyone else left, and then it was just me and him.
“Well, I think that went well,” Landon said.
“Yeah, fine. Where’s Amanda?”
“What?” Landon asked, surprised.
“I just noticed she wasn’t there,” I said, trying to cover my tracks.
“Oh, yeah, I don’t know, actually. I thought you might shed some light on that,” Landon said.
“I don’t know, either,” I grumbled. Landon insisted on talking about the call for a little longer, but I got off as soon as I could. I had other things on my mind.
I was worried about her. She wasn’t the type of person who just wouldn’t show up to a meeting without telling someone what was going on. She would have told someone. She would have told me.
Pulling open my phone, I went through my messages, just in case she had texted me and I hadn’t noticed. It was foolish. I had been checking my texts for some kind of response from her for days. Predictably, there was none there. That left the company messaging program and my emails. The messaging program had nothing new from her, and she hadn’t posted in any of the group chats for days either.
That left the email. I opened it up on my laptop, skimming the most recent ones before searching for her name. Once I got her name in the search bar, a list of emails from her came through, mostly itineraries and rundowns of meetings and conference calls. But the most recent one stuck out. The subject simply said “Transfer.”
I opened it up, and my heart sank to my stomach. Amanda had put in for a change of position to another area of the company. A million thoughts ran through my mind, not the least of which was how hurt I was. Her asking to change positions in the company meant that she no longer felt comfortable around me, which was hard enough, but it also meant that whatever we had was in her past. She was moving on, to the point of making it a point that she wouldn’t have to see me anymore.
Perhaps, though, it would be better that way. I would no longer be her direct boss. She wouldn’t have to worry about our relationship, as it were, because there was no longer any power position for me to hold over her. She would be free to date me if she wanted to, since there were no rules about people dating that worked in different departments.
But then I remembered how she pushed me away. Even that email was a way of pushing me away. She didn’t want to confront me face-to-face, and the language was short and direct. She wanted to transfer to another area of the company, but not because she wanted to date me. She didn’t want to see me at all anymore.
I closed my laptop and sat there in silence for a few moments. What had started off as a weird day was only getting worse. Now, I was going to have to get used to the fact that there was no future with Amanda, not even the glimmer of hope I had been holding out. She was done, and she was moving on. All I had left was my work and the bar.
Speaking of the bar, I hadn’t heard from any of my brothers yet that morning, either. Figuring a drink might help out, assuming Mason had already stocked the bar like he said he was going to, I decided to head that way. Besides, a little physical labor might keep me from yelling at any other inanimate objects for the day. At least I could work out my aggression by hammering something.
When I arrived at the bar, it became readily apparent why my brothers hadn’t messaged me. They were on the warpath, and the bar was looking fantastic. The outside had already gotten a fresh coat of paint and a temporary sign hung above the door. Upon getting in, I noticed the new paint wasn’t limited to the outside, either. The whole bar smelled like wood polish and new coats of finisher. Chairs were already set out in the areas that we’d discussed putting tables, though the tables themselves weren’t in yet apparently. Booths were up along the walls, and the biggest surprise, a small stage in one corner with some basic lighting above it and giant speakers. I walked up to the bar where Ava was, and she looked up to see me, breaking out into a smile.
“Oh, hey, Tom! Didn’t expect you until later today,” she said.
“Hey, Ava. Where’s Robert? I asked.
“He’s with Susan today. Your mom is on cloud nine right now.”
“I bet. So where is everybody?”
“Most of them left to take a lunch break, but Mason is in the back organizing the office, and Matt should be back any minute now with some tables,” she said.
“We have tables?”
“Yeah, he found some at a thrift store. They look vintage but aren’t beat up or anything, and he got all excited because they had tons of them in the warehouse there,” she said. “So, what do you think?”
“It looks great so far. I was kind of hoping we would open sooner rather than later, but I wasn’t quite expecting this kind of success,” I said.
“Well, we had a little help with the painters outside, and the crew that helped us move in the furniture and appliances. The kitchen is just about ready to serve, and the guy who pressurizes the lines for the kegs said we are ready to go for the bar,” she said.
“And what about that?” I asked, pointing to the stage with the lights.
“Well, you know, karaoke is very popular,” she said, grinning and suddenly wiping something invisible off the bar. I saw through it and rolled my eyes.
“Oh, God,” I said.