“Oh my God,” I grovel. “We don’t have enough revenue this quarter for me to offer you a raise, but I will pay for the Starbucks run for the next month at least.”
“I like a venti PSL with extra whip,” she says.
I snort. “It’s not even PSL season.”
“You would put conditions on my loyalty? Next time, you can answer your own damn phone.”
She’s kidding, but I’m so screwed. I should probably call him back and apologize, but with every minute that passes, it gets harder and harder.
The decision is made for me when the phone rings and it’s a prospective client with a million questions. I talk to him for over an hour then have to leave immediately for a sales call at a small manufacturer near the train tracks. By the time I’m done there, it’s already midafternoon.
I should do the right thing. Nash has been a good client, and even if he can be a jerk, he’s never unreasonable. I’ll apologize, maybe offer to let Ramona handle his account from now on, and hopefully clear the air.
Except when I call, his number goes to voicemail. And I can’t really leave a “sorry for being a pervy weirdo on a Friday morning” message, so I hang up and catch the streetcar back to the office.
I’ll call him on Monday.
2
Nash
Ihave to stop scheduling meetings on Fridays. Especially Friday afternoons. But we’re getting ready for the family film weekend and I want to go over the schedule with Doug, the programming director, one more time. After that, I have an interview withReel Magazine, which is only marginally painful, and then two hours with the accountant because Canada Revenue Agency seems to think our nonprofit status means we must be hiding money in our desk drawers. Or maybe it’s because we’re all queer. I’ve spent the past two weeks compiling every receipt and every spreadsheet. I will drown the CRA in paperwork and make them regret ever questioning our bookkeeping.
The point is, by the time I shut my laptop down, I’m exhausted and wondering why I ever thought Friday meetings were a good idea. Except I look at my schedule for next week and see next Friday is as full as today. And the Friday after that. And after that.
My phone rings. My cell phone. The new one I got yesterday. Not the desk phone that has stayed annoyingly silent since—
Right. Phone is ringing. It’s Dominic.
“Hey, I’m finishing up,” I say.
“Take your time,” he says.
“I’ll be there by six.” Maybe six-thirty. Twenty minutes to get back to my apartment and pick up the car. The highway will be a nightmare for traffic by then, but once I’m north of the city, I can run the toll road until I get to Markham, to our house where—
I stop. To Markham, to Dominic’s house. Not mine anymore. Someday, the little twist of pain will be a memory. Someday, I’ll stop slipping up.
“So, would it be okay?” Dominic says.
“Would what be okay?”
He sighs, and the pain in my chest goes to dread, because he makes that sound when he’s annoyed and doesn’t want to say it. He made that sound a lot in the last two years of our marriage.
In this case, it means he asked me something and I was too busy missing my old custom kitchen with the walk-in pantry to hear him.
“I’m sorry,” I say, as he sighs again. “Can you repeat that?”
“My mom called.” He says it like it’s no big deal, but now I’m not sure I want to hear him after all.
“And?” I ask stiffly.
“And Miranda’s bringing the kids up to the cottage for the weekend.”
I close my eyes. I know what I missed. “And you want to take the boys up too.”
“You could come,” he says, like he’s only just thought of the idea, but if I know anything about Dominic, he’s been working on this speech for hours. “It worked okay the last time.”
It...was not okay. In fact, it was awkward as hell. Miranda, Dominic’s sister, didn’t speak to me once, and Dominic’s mom would hardly look at me. Apparently once the ink is dry on the divorce papers, you stop existing to your former in-laws. At the end of the night, when I went to sleep in the stuffy bedroom the kids called “the Harry Potter room” because it was essentially built under the stairs, I heard Jacob ask Dominic, “Why isn’t Daddy sleeping with you?” and nearly broke down.
