Time pushed along when I heard the elevators open amongst the quiet of everyone focusing on their own tasks. Looking up, I saw Khaos walking towards me with Grimm at his side. Both were holding onto coffee cups, while Khaos clearly dominated the conversation. I couldn’t see Grimm having much to add, since he wasn’t a talkative person to begin with.
Sitting up straighter in the chair, I flicked my hair over my shoulder and pretended to focus on the pencils I had to twist into the small sharpener. Khaos had me do this on purpose, and I wasn’t blind to the torture.
Grimm gave me a fleeting glance as Khaos tossed an unwrapped Starburst my direction and shouted, “Catch!” as it hit me in the chest. Fishing it out of my thin black top where it was threatening to fall down the center of my cleavage, I purposely made it obvious for Grimm, since he had no intention of even facing me today. “Finished your pencil job.”
Khaos set down his coffee on the desk, only to lean down to line up the trash can to the edge of the desk before pushing all my hard work into the trash can. “Great, now that is done. I need you to go start my car for me.”
Pulling his keys out of his back pocket, he tossed them to me, making me scramble to catch them in my hands. “Are you serious? Could you pretend to use them at least?”
“You’re prettier when you don’t talk, sweetheart. You should know your strengths, and as one of your bosses, I feel obligated to give you an early review. Now please go start my car for me.”
Standing up, looking right at the person avoiding eye contact, I got more and more angry. He avoided the office, then only showed up to rub in his choice to have me work for someone else in my face. I stood up, letting the keys swing off the long leather key chain with off-white written all over it.
Walking right up to Grimm, I felt my spine straighten and my feelings tuck under my surface so far that he could be confused for once.
I looked at him and growled, “Are you kidding me? You had me working that psycho’s desk because you didn’t feel like facing me after you fingered me?”
Grimm didn’t react at all. He was solid, cold, frozen with no feelings, just a muted expression. It made the anger already crawling up my spine feel like it was about to drag me to hell and back if I let it.
Without much consideration, I found my hand slap across his cheek with my mouth so tight my cheek muscles hurt as I walked away to the elevators. I wanted to turn back to see his face, but I didn’t dare.
Khaos couldn’t not add insult to injury when his fist pushed up to his lips, and he shouted, “Get ‘em, Rex!”
All my anger, emotions, all my best laid plans went up in flames, and I was biting back tears from this awful day.
When things feel out of control, I spiral. I spiral into a dark part of my mind that’s no longer bright and clean. I spiral so hard I damage things around me; that’s why taking people’s advice on modeling in California sounded like a great idea. It was supposed to be an escape hatch from my life back home that I had no control over, where spiraling was pretty much all I knew.
I had reinvented myself here. I changed my wardrobe, found control that I grasped onto so hard the spiraling felt like centuries ago. I also found happiness I didn’t know I could exist in.
I turned things around. My wild ways were tamed by strict routines and a firm grasp on controlling every part of my surroundings.
Now, control had been ripped out of my perfectly manicured nails, and I was being punished on top of it.
I walked by Jus at the welcome desk with her boots on the desk. Trying to hold all of it in, I heard her concerned voice, “Abi, you okay?” She was too aware of her surroundings, of me, all the time. It was how I truly perfected my mask being stuck in place.
Having trouble keeping it together? Get yourself some accountable friends.
Ignoring her, I headed into the elevator and down to the garage, where I assumed Khaos car was, but I didn’t know what he even drove. I could assume it was one of the expensive cars, and in the sea of standard cars people could afford, only four were out of place.
Walking around the parking garage, I kept pressing the find button on the key fob, but I couldn’t hear any cars chirping or lights flickering. Getting more frustrated by the second, I was caught off guard by Grimm’s dark presence stalking me like a shadow in the night. I kept my eyes high, on the cars, instead of taking inventory of my damage I slapped him with.
His car door sounded with a sleek pop as it flipped open, and he stood there smirking at me. “He skateboards to work.”
Nothing about me or what happened.
Did he have selective amnesia? Did he think if we ignore it, it’ll make me never want it to happen again? Was he saving me from himself?
As each question formed in my mind, a small amount of anger was planted in its place when there was no answer.
We were both adults, and somehow Grimm possessed the ability to make me feel like a teenager again. I felt naive and embarrassed that I hadn’t tried harder to stop shit from happening. None of this would have happened if I had just written back to Oscar and gotten my fix, or even if I had just made my vibrator a priority.
The stupidity of what I had said and done didn’t set in until after Grimm teased me with his torture by forcing me to work for fucking Khaos.
He is my boss. Maybe if I say it some golden amount of times, it’ll sink in.
Instead Grimm’s lips felt like the best kind of brainwash.
Watching Grimm speed away was all I needed to refocus on Khaos and his endless tricks. He didn’t even drive here; no wonder I couldn’t find his damn car.
Storming back into the office and past the black painted door, I slammed my hand down on his desk with the keys under my palm. “Heard you skateboarded to work.”
Kicking his feet up on the desk, looking at me like he had seen me naked, wasn’t stopping me from wanting to punch him in the face for the antics. “As I do every day. Guess you aren’t very perceptive, huh? How does that work? You were fine being Vic’s bitch, literally, not anti-feminist, and you take Grimm’s bullshit. Is it subject to guys you’re into?”
My fists balled up by my side, and with only a desk between us, I was shaking from the anger’s adrenaline. I wanted to explode and damage it all. He stood up, rounding his desk, and handed me a baseball bat. “You’re so stiff you could be considered a dead body. Break something. Break it all.”
“Wh… what?” My voice was shaky and raspy under the pressure cooker he put me in, mixed with the anger and desire to break it all.
Wedging the bat’s end in my hand, after he unwrinkled my fist from behind me, he whispered, “I’m Khaos, babe. Bad behavior is my specialty.”
Lifting the bat up above the glass desk, I gave into the spiraling I knew was poison in my veins. All it took was one drop, and I would be consumed in minutes. Punching the bat down, I watched his whole glass desk shatter without much real force. It had been fragile and ready to break, just like me right now.
Trying to regain my breath and slow my heaving chest, I dropped the bat so I couldn’t do more damage. Controlled damage… I think I was falling in love with the idea as Khaos handed it to me.
He was clapping behind me with a grin from ear to ear. “Thank god we got through that. Can you call everyone in my phone and see who’s DTC?”