It was odd to hear her father, usually an optimistic man, say something so severe. But she knew, as she looked into his eyes, that it was the truth.
“We’re not going to let it come to that,” she said. “I’ll start questioning my employees today.”
“Be careful,” he advised.
“You’d better cancel your afternoon meeting with GenSpace,” she told her father.
“I’ll push it back once again,” her father muttered. “Blast it all.” He was shaking his head as he exited her office.
Once he was gone, Bridget placed her head in her hands and finally let herself cry. The tears that she’d been holding back slid down her cheeks, and her shoulders heaved up and down. Though she’d been downplaying her reaction for her father—trying to be the strong one – inside, she felt betrayed and confused. She loved her staff. The realization that one of them was trying to blackmail her father hurt her to the core.
Her father’s words rang through her mind. Who took it? Who would be so cruel?
5
The Beast
Sebastian was still woozy from the bus ride as he stepped into Glitter Cup. The ride had been awful—someone had been eating food with a strong, pungent smell - an unpleasant mix between turmeric and vinegar—and he still felt nauseated.
He kept his head down as he walked into the café area. He didn’t want to make eye contact with his coworkers. Why should he? He couldn’t remember their names. It’s just a week, he reminded himself as he opened the hinged countertop so that he was behind the café bar.
“Hey, Sebastian! Bridget’s in the back, in her office,” he heard one of them—was it Amanda? Or Adelle? Something like that—say. “Better check in with her and see where she wants you to—”
He passed into the back room before she finished talking. He walked straight up to Bridget’s office and knocked three times on her office door.
When she opened, he saw that her eyes were red and puffy. “What is it?” she asked flatly.
Her face was heart shaped, and her eyes large and ringed with a fringe of lashes that were still damp with tears. She had brown wavy hair that was pulled back in a ponytail today, just as it had been yesterday. He found that he longed to see it down, and that startled him. She’s pretty, he realized. He’d been too preoccupied with the horrors of actually reporting to work yesterday to notice.
He pulled himself from this sudden realization, cleared his throat, and then spoke. “Someone—what’s her name? Adelaide—she suggested that I check in with you, so...” he let his voice trail off.
She wiped her eye.
He wondered why she’d been crying, but he wasn’t curious enough to ask. Besides, what if she told him? Then he’d have to actually listen to her answer. It all sounded rather uncomfortable. “If this is a bad time, I’ll just go figure it out myself,” he said gruffly. “It’s not rocket science.”
“No, no, it’s not a bad time...” she said, giving her eye another wipe. She sniffed, then looked past him, as if checking that he hadn’t been followed. Then she beckoned him in.
“Actually, Sebastian, I’d like to talk to you,” she said. “Can you come in?”
He stepped inside, and she closed the door behind him. The space was absurdly small. He could hardly believe it was considered an office. It felt even more claustrophobic to Sebastian than the bus had. It was stuffy, and made him feel like he had stepped into a coffin. How did she stand it?
A few photos were pinned to a bulletin board above her desk. He noticed a frame with a rainbow-striped piece of cardboard with the word “family” printed on it in large capital letters. The frame surrounded a photo of a big group shot of people at a long table, all wearing ridiculous paper hats and holding up drinks.
“That was last year,” Bridget said, apparently seeing him eye the photo. “Sean’s birthday. We all went across the street to Big Bobby’s.” She reached for a tissue and used it to dab her eyes of any remaining salty residue. “Have you been?” She sat down in her chair.
He shook his head. Now he recognized Sean, one of the baristas he’d worked with the day before, in the shot. Everyone in the picture had big grins on, though Sebastian couldn’t see why. And why did the frame say “family?” These people weren’t family, they were coworkers.
It struck him as sort of lame that the guy Sean went out to eat with his coworkers on his birthday, anyway. Didn’t he have other friends?
“Oh, you’re missing out,” Bridget said.
It took him a minute to figure out what she was talking about.
“Bob serves up a good burger,” she said. Her eyes were very kind. Her voice was gentle.
The thought of eating at some greasy dive of a burger joint made him grimace. Now, a steak prepared by his private chef and served in the captain’s cabin of his yacht—that was an entirely different thing. That actually sounded good.
He thought about his father’s rules. He was to buy groceries with his tip wages, which had amounted to a meager seventeen dollars all told the day before. How was he supposed to survive on seventeen dollars a day?
Bridget went on. “You’ve really got to try it. We try to go out as a staff once a week or so, usually on Friday nights. It helps us work as a team when we’re here at the café if we spend some time together outside of work, too. You’re welcome to join us one of these days... oh, and they have an awesome Thursday night special of fish tacos, too. They’re to die for.”
He highly doubted that. “No thanks,” he said.
He caught her studying him. He reached up for the strands of hair that the barber had maliciously butchered on his head. It was such an awful cut. It made him cringe to look in a mirror. He wondered what Bridget, so beautiful and well put together herself, thought of his appearance. Most likely, she was disgusted.
She’s only being nice because I’m her employee, he thought. That was clear, and he didn’t blame her.
Again, she went on. “No problem,” she said. “It’s not a requirement or anything, just something we do for fun. Maybe once you’ve been here for a little while, you’ll feel more comfortable...” She looked down at her desk. There was a paper there. It looked like a short, typed letter.
She shifted it around a few times. She was nervous about something, it seemed. “I have a sort of odd request for you,” she said.
He waited.
She looked up, as if waiting for him to say something. He set his jaw and waited for her to go on.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re new here, and I hate to put you in this position right off the bat. If I could think of another way to approach this, I would...”
“Why don’t you get to the point?” he asked gruffly. He didn’t like the way she was looking at his hair and the scar on his cheek when she spoke. He felt uncomfortable in the ugly sweatshirt. He just wanted to get out of that little room, so that he could stop feeling so much shame.
“Right,” she said. She looked down at the paper on her desk and spoke quickly. “My father is in trouble. He’s an inventor, and someone stole a design he just came up with. It was someone who works here—in the café—I’m almost sure of it. You weren’t here on the morning it was stolen, so I know it wasn’t you.... which means I can trust you... I hope.”