“Maybe after tax time, something will open up for a person of your experience. And”—she paused, her icy gaze meeting his—“I spoke to your firm, and they didn’t give you the most rousing recommendation.”
His face flamed. “If you call Harvey Traub, he’ll vouch for me.”
“I’ve heard everything I needed to from your direct supervisor, Scott Breyer,” she said. “But all’s not lost.” She pushed a few papers across the desk to him. “I do have some temporary positions you can interview for to tide you over. It’s not what you hoped for, but it will keep you working.”
He glanced at the papers and wanted to throw up. Chain tax offices. How did this happen to him? He was a CPA, for Christ’s sake, and graduated from business school with honors. Last week he was dealing with multimillion-dollar financial transactions.…
“I can’t take any of these. It would hurt my résumé, not help it. I’m sure if you looked harder, you’d find—”
“Nothing. Look, Blake.” Her brisk, dismissive tone brooked no disagreement. “This isn’t the same market from a decade ago. College students are living at home and taking jobs in big-box stores. I know you’re aware that what used to be the Big 8 accounting firms and then the Big 6 is now the Big 4. Maybe if you move out of state, it might be easier.” She raised a brow.
His heart sank. “No—my sister and nephew live here. They’re all the family I have. I don’t want to move.”
“Well.” She stood, indicating she’d spent enough time with him. “In that case, I strongly urge you to consider one of these positions, at least for now. And if I come across anything else, I’ll let you know.”
And with that, she walked out, giving him no choice but to leave the office. He now sat in Starbucks, wondering what the hell he was going to do with his life. His phone vibrated, and he saw from the screen—it was his sister, Michelle. The last person he wanted to speak with, but he couldn’t ignore her call.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. What’s up with you?” Her bubbly voice filled his ear, and he winced. Another person to hide from. But Michelle would never judge him. They’d been close all their lives.
“Do you have any free time?”
“What’re you, nuts? With a twelve-year-old? I mean, Henry’s in school now. Why?” Her voice sharpened, her sister antenna activated. “What’s wrong?”
“Can I come over and talk to you? Like now? I could be there in less than forty-five minutes if the trains don’t lose their shit.”
“Yeah, of course, but aren’t you at work? What’s going on?”
Neither were questions he was willing to answer over the phone. “I’ll see you soon.” He hung up on her in midsentence, still asking him questions. He gathered his cup and dumped it into the garbage before he left the coffee shop, then headed down Seventh Avenue to the subway. The train came right away, and he had to stand, holding on to the pole. Despite the pitch and sway of the ride, it gave him time to think.
The severance would take him past tax time when maybe things might settle down and he could start his search again. He lived pretty frugally for the most part, and had some savings but hesitated to touch any of it, always fearing a time like this might happen. Over the years he’d never gone on expensive vacations, preferring to relax at home and catch up on books and movies. Finding someone like Jeremy, whom he thought was the party type but turned out to be a homebody much like himself, proved surprising.
But then everything about Jeremy surprised him; from his kind heart to the quick, sharp business sense, Blake had to constantly stop and remind himself that Jeremy Strauss was more than the sum of his very good-looking parts. Too many nights found Blake lying awake with Jeremy sleeping cuddled next to him, wondering if their relationship was illusory, despite Jeremy’s whispered words of love and desire. Why would a man like Jeremy want Boring Blake?
The train jerked, bringing him back to his reality. He was getting whiplash from all the emotions buffeting him. Jobless with no real prospects in sight. What the hell was he thinking—going to visit his sister? When they were children, she was the master at ferreting out information from him if she thought he was hiding something from her. The minute he’d sit down, she’d zero in on his hesitancy, and like his ten-year-old self, he’d stammer, and before he knew what was happening, he’d tell her he’d been fired.
The subway car doors opened. “Excuse me, sorry,” he muttered as he pushed past the other commuters standing and holding on to the poles. The doors closed, leaving him on the cold platform. Blake stood a moment, rocking on the balls of his feet, then ran up the staircase and then down the one on the other side to take the train back into the city.
Lucky for him, the stations now had Wi-Fi, so he pulled out his cell phone to call Michelle.
“Hey, listen, I won’t be able to make it after all. I’m really sorry.”
“Dude. What’s going on? First you want to come in the middle of the day, which you never have, now you say you can’t make it?”
“Nothing,” he said, managing to keep his voice steady instead of giving in to the fear smothering him. “It got slow and I thought I could come, but then my boss called me in and I couldn’t. Simple as that.” The lie flowed off his tongue, and after he hung up, promising to stop by with Jeremy over the weekend, Blake exhaled in a rush.
The lies flowed naturally. Great. Now he knew he had the potential to become a tremendous liar. The train back to the city rumbled into the station, and he found a seat in the corner and slumped onto it. How did his life go from stable to shit in the blink of an eye? He stared unseeing out the windows as the blur of subway stations passed by.
Once back in his apartment, Blake logged on to his computer and checked his emails. Offers to connect clogged his email, and anticipation lifted his spirits only to have them crash once again when he read the emails. They were all for positions in insurance sales or telemarketing. Nothing remotely related to his qualifications.
“Fuck.” He slammed the laptop shut and began to pace the living room. What was he going to do? His eyes landed on the papers the headhunter had given him that morning. “She has to be wrong. She didn’t know what she was talking about.”
With a renewed sense of purpose, Blake once again sat in front of the laptop and searched headhunters. One person didn’t have all the answers. His mother used to say, “If you never try, you’ll never know.” As he did whenever upset or lonely, Blake played her last voice mail, listening to her tell him she loved him. It usually worked, but now his father’s harsh, gruff voice calling him a failure drowned her out.
I miss you so much. I’m trying not to be the disappointment he said I’d be, but it’s so damn difficult.
Setting his jaw in a hard line, Blake pulled a pad close and jotted down phone numbers, then picked up his phone and called the first of seven firms. A job waited out there for him; of that Blake was certain.
