“Embarrassed?” he said, sitting up, his hands braced on his knees as if he could pounce at any moment. “It’s not about being embarrassed. I’m notembarrassedby my work. Any of it.” There was a touch of defensiveness in his voice and also hubris, and I saw the first sign of the affected person he’d sworn he had been near to becoming. Yeah, not a real stretch to imagine him at full blown artistic prick.
“It’s about feeling violated. Having someone go through my private work. Someone who I’m seeing. Yeah, violated. Like…”
At the word “violation” my throat got tight and I felt a tingling at the back of my neck. If he brought up an analogy like his house had been broken into, I’d let it slide. But anything else, anything more—
“Like I’d been ra—”
“Stop,” I said, jumping out of my chair and holding my hand up. All thought of letting Billy Montrose lead in whatever dance we were doing flew out of my mind, and pure, raw emotion—most of it anger—fueled me as I pointed at him. “Do not say it. You have not been raped. You have not been violated in a physical way. Someone you’re…seeing looked at your work, which you would have preferred to be private until you were ready to share.”
He started to rise, but either the look on my face, or his own emotions, kept him on the couch.
“You are not harmed, you have not lost anything. You were not…violated.” My voice was strong and pure and just a tad bit violent, but I didn’t care. Later I was sure I would regret telling him off. I would tell myself that making this point wasn’t worth losing Montrose—or a good-paying job—over. But right now…right now I knew I had to make my case.
I took a deep breath, signaling the end of my tirade, but I didn’t look away, didn’t back down. I should have been scared shitless that I’d ruined everything. But honestly? It was the most…fearless I’d felt in five years.
His eyes narrowed at me and I realized that either he was going to come back at me hard, or worse, he was going to figure out something about me that I didn’t want him to know.
That I didn’t want anybody at Bribury to figure out. Something I wanted buried back in Queens and not to be a part of the new me.
I snatched my backpack from the floor, now thankful that I’d packed it earlier, and could just grab it, my coat, and go.
Montrose started to rise but I gave him a hand out to stop and he did, though he watched me as I took my coat from the coatrack, disentangling one of my sleeves from his.
“I like this job, and would like to keep it. But I understand if it’s now too uncomfortable for you. If you’d like to get someone else, I’ll understand. Just send me an email before tomorrow afternoon, so I won’t come in.”
“Syd,” he said from behind me, but I had everything I needed now and just shook the back of my head at him and walked out the door.
I walked quickly down the hallway, sliding my coat on as I did. Half of me wanted him to follow me, to shout for me to stop. The other half dreaded the thought that he would.
I felt naked, like I’d become someone that I couldn’t be, someone who would not fit into this world of the elite.
Someone I’d worked so hard to abandon.
I got to the main door of Snyder and walked outside. The snow was falling and I was glad because it blurred my vision as I turned to look at Montrose’s office window.
But even through the falling flakes, and, okay, yes, maybe some falling tears, I saw the movement of the blinds as Montrose pulled them back.
And then let them fall back into place.
Chapter16
The next day,I checked my email from my cubicle at the admin building when I finished up my shift.
Nothing from Montrose.
It was the second week of January and my long hours at the admin building were over, the new front end system working well, with only a couple of glitches. Everybody at work today was celebrating and backslapping and the consultants were getting ready to move on to their next assignment. I would return to just a couple of hours late in the afternoon a few days a week.
The guy who had asked me out for New Year’s Eve stopped by my cubicle and said goodbye and I wished him luck at his next stop.
I decided to have a long dinner alone at the caf and get my studying done there before heading to Montrose’s office.
Having only had one day of classes so far, there wasn’t much to do, but I got the reading done, not wanting to fall behind. I had worked like a dog to get in here, there was no way I was going to get bounced for poor grades. Still, it was work, and though I did enjoy it, it didn’t come as effortlessly to me as it did to Jane, who seemed never to crack a book and still got great grades for the first semester. (Though I’d had to ask her several times before she put forth that information.)
I checked my text and email on the walk over to Snyder from the caf, not wanting to walk in only to have Montrose say, “Didn’t you get the message? Your ass is out of here.”
Not that he’d say it like that. He was a writer, after all.
No message from him. To my relief (and maybe a bit of disappointment) his office window was dark, my strategy of stalling paying off. I knocked on his office door, just in case, before letting myself in.
