Take it, p.12
Take It, page 12
Chapter Eighteen
The two burly security guards—both nice men I know and have been friendly with, but who now are as mute as the statues of Easter Island—escort me and my cardboard box of personal effects out of BioSim's employee entrance. I am ready for an emotional downpour. Both men help me through the door, then close and secure it behind me without a single word of regret, encouragement, or well-wishing.
Fumbling for my keyless remote, I feel the first welling of tears. When I finish putting my box of belongings in the cargo area of my car, I scurry to the driver door, my vision blurring from wet eyes. I slide into the driver's seat, and close the door. How could I have been so stupid? I've lost my job over a man I had sex with. Damned good sex, yes, but he'd said nothing, absolutely nothing, about wanting it to last beyond the end of this project, and certainly nothing concrete about his feelings for me, good or bad. I'd told him up front I was fine with a sexual affair, no strings attached. And now? Now, without even realizing when it happened, the thought of things being over is devastating. Combining that with my complete mortification over those photographs and the loss of my job, I feel like shrapnel—blown to bits.
I sit for a moment bawling my eyes out, wallowing in self-pity. It is all Harrison’s fault, isn't it? He is trying to push a drug that isn't ready. Doesn't work, probably will even hasten peoples' deaths if they rely on it. He pushed me to break out of my shell and be wild with him. Why? How did that benefit him? Did he think if we stalled long enough, fear of losing my job may get me to rubberstamp everybody else's approval? Was that his motive? Was that how it had passed the previous studies? Sex and blackmail? Is Harrison simply using me as a means to an unsavory end?
“No,” I say out loud as if forcing myself to remember the feelings I have for Harrison. He still may not know it is a bad drug. Maybe he is as caught up in me as I am in him and we are both distracted and blinded by love and passion. He may not have been just using me. He may actually feel something for me. I know what it’s like to run from these feelings, the intensity of it may have been too much for him.
Don’t I owe it to him to help put the brakes on this rocket-to-hell disaster and let him know the shit storm is coming? The truth will surface soon about his drug. The man assigned to replace me will find exactly what I did. Blame it on my broken soul right now but I’m willing to look past my last encounter with Harrison and convince myself that he’s the person I need to see right now, not the guy who called me a cab and shut me out. That was one thing, one time. Everything leading up to it should count too. The nights we spent in each other’s arms talking endlessly about life and arguing politics, always punctuated by laughter meant something. I love his laugh, his touch, his humor and his beliefs. People survive these types of things. Love conquers all, and other garbage like that.
As I shriek out of the parking lot there is so much to think about. Do I believe Harrison cares about me? Does Harrison love me? How will he take the news that his drug is garbage? Or that we’ve been found out and I’ve been fired because of the photographs someone snapped of us. Luckily, Route 93 isn't bad for once, nor the highway after the Bourne Bridge. No sign of the state police lurking around either. Although I haven't been drinking, I know I totally left the legal speed limit choking behind me.
Unfortunately, my speed cut way back on my times for mustering up the right conversation for Harrison. My thoughts are still chaotic and confused as I turn my car into Harrison's crushed-shell driveway. If Harrison comes to the door—I can see his car is here—I have no idea what I will say to him, much less how to help the situation.
He opens his oak door on the first bump of his brass anchor doorknocker and I’m so relieved to be near him again.
"Heard you coming. I thought for a minute you had no brakes and I'd be watching you zoom out of my back wall into the sea in a minute. Not that I'm not glad to see you, Jenny, but this is not the best time. I’ve got my hands full with work.”
It takes me a minute to realize that there are dark bags under his red-rimmed eyes, his skin looks pale and clammy. He looks wrung-out. It’s clear he’s been drinking, and I smell tobacco, rather a lot of it by his stink. I've never seen him smoke. Somewhere in his home I picture a clamshell ashtray brimming with half-smoked butts.
"Harrison, are you all right?"
"Yeah," he says, daring me to question his obvious lie. "Just tired. Working too many hours. Not enough play," he jests, flashing me a wink miles from the truth. "You okay?"
"I got fired," I blurt, before flinging myself at his chest. Luckily, he gives me just the drug I crave, his brawny arms wrapping me in his soothing, protective embrace.
"Bastard. I never liked that Mel character. Still, Jenny," he offers, plucking me out of his comforting arms and holding me where he can stare into my tear-blinded eyes with his exhausted ones, "it may be for the better."
"How? I don’t have as much money as you do. I need that job, Harrison."
"No, you don't. It needs you. BioSim never deserved you, Jenny. Now you move on, find employment with a firm that'll appreciate all your hard work and talent."
"Oh, and around what corner of your bedroom do I find this miracle job, Harrison?" I snipe before I can stop myself. “When people find out why I was fired I’ll never find work again. Thanks to you.”
"What? You blame me?"
"If we hadn't been sleeping together—"
"Really? It's all my fault?" he asks as his cell phone rings.
“Do you even care about me?” I squeak out in the most pathetic voice.
The cell rings again. He ignores it again, but looks at it on the arm of his couch behind him. "Really, Jenny haven't you at least figured that out?" Surrendering to an irresistible pull, he picks up his phone and looks at it. To his credit, he doesn't acknowledge the caller.
"Look, Jenny, I know last night I wasn’t very clear with you. It probably seemed like I was pushing you away. I’m under a lot of stress right now. I can’t explain all of it to you. Let me just say—"
The cell rings again. Still clutched in his hand, Harrison looks for a second as though he wants to hurl it against the wall, but in the end, he looks at me with his exhausted, puppy-dog eyes, and silently asks if I mind him taking the one call.
Gathering it is important, at least more important than anything pertaining to me, I silently nod my consent. Wanting to offer him some privacy and not wanting to dissolve into more tears in front of him, I leave the room and begin to wander around his cottage. Is he just about to profess his feelings for me, or is he about to explain that all is fair in business? That what we were doing means something to him, or that it has been nothing more than a transaction. His ambiguous answer leaves me with too little to go on.
Although I've been here briefly one time before, I've never really looked at the place. I wander from room to room, scrutinizing everything like a contestant in a scavenger hunt. Of course I end up in his bedroom. I've been here before, but I never noticed anything but Harrison. Now I notice it's very male. Wedgewood blue walls with prints and paintings of sailing ships. An old steamer trunk festooned with family photos on one upturned end. Pictures of him in high school—look at that long hair—a couple photos with older people and another boy and girl. Parents? Brother and sister, or just friends? It makes me realize maybe I don’t know as much about him as I thought. Maybe our deep conversations were more superficial than I thought.
One or two photos are of him in a diver's wetsuit. There is the photo he showed me in his car of his trip he suddenly took to Hawaii. The problem is this photo has dust all over the frame as though the photograph had been on his mantle for months. I scrutinize it a little further to make sure it’s the same photo he showed me in the car. He’d been trying to pass that off as proof that he’d been in Hawaii. But now I can see it’s actually an old photo. I ignore the biting sensation that maybe he never went to Hawaii that week. Maybe he thought flashing me an old picture would be enough to make me question my anger.
On to his bureau is a stack of freshly laundered shirts, undershirts, and boxer briefs. I pick up a pair and caress them, letting my nostrils seek his intoxicating musk. I'm desperate—a woman teetering on the edge of the abyss.
More photos and prints decorate the wall. Pictures of a dog. Sports awards and trophies. Everything I see here, everything Harrison just told me, ignites a spark in me. I want to believe he cares for me. I want this to work out, even if my job is a casualty, I have hope for us.
Then I see it. The only reason I missed it the first time is because I only had eyes for Harrison. I was too focused on the man shedding his clothes, lying next to me in the bed as he gently thrust himself inside me.
It's an old style computer workstation. Flat screen monitor, newish tower, wireless keyboard and mouse, but it's vintage stuff compared to the iPad I've seen him carry around.
Driven by the swirling mess of emotions pulsing inside me, I move the mouse and the screen comes to life. I assume there will be some password protection and I’ll have to go on looking at something else in the room. But there isn’t. On the screen is his email with a message from an encrypted address and there are seventeen images attached. The body of the email says only two words “It’s done.” I can’t help but click on one of the photos, my anxiety and curiosity raging out of control. I stand transfixed to the image on his screen. A familiar, horrible image—of me. The exact image I saw strewn across Mel Jones's desk back at BioSim. I stand rigidly still for a second, a stunned pillar of angry stone, blazing inside with molten magma about to erupt. How could he? Harrison knows I've been fired. He sent the damned pictures himself.
I force myself to look at the pictures. I open each attachment and really look at them. Seeing what I was wearing when they were taken and where. Many I recognize at once; more than a few, sadly, bring back good memories, now forever soured.
Many shots show Harrison was there so he couldn’t have taken the pictures. His hand or a glimpse of his face or back is in every photo.
My heart skips a beat, hopeful, but then plummets into darkness. Silly, naive idiot. There are countless mini-cams available, with wireless remotes and timers. If not those, he may have hired someone to take the shots. But why? What does he get out of this? Is it some kind of kinky turn-on for him? Are the pictures some sort of sick trophy of the woman he's bagged so easily, to be shared with hard-drinking friends around a campfire? Or the Internet? Blackmail? Why? I slam my hand down on the keyboard trying to close out the pictures and the email, but I inadvertently delete it. Good, I think to myself. Fuck him. I don’t want him having the pictures anyway. He can go to hell.
Like a pain-blinded mouse squeaking and fleeing the tearing talons of a night marauding owl, I fly from Harrison's bedroom, plow through his home, and scramble out to my car, only dimly aware Harrison is still talking on the phone.
A forest of fumbling fingers, I bang and bump my way into my car, stab my keys into the ignition as I jerk my sleeping four-cylinder to life.
I plow out of the driveway, oblivious to whether I've taken out Harrison's mailbox because I can't see it through my tears. I survive the first eighth of a mile of twisting Cape Cod road unscathed before I realize it's not my tears blinding me, but fog. Cape Cod, thicker than cement cottony fog. And here I am, fleeing the truth, flying really, easily doing fifty-five on roads that are marginally safe on a sunny day at twenty-five. Seatbelt? Shit. That annoying dinging in my ears—that's what that is? For the first time ever, I've forgotten to put it on. Isn’t that my problem? For the first time ever I stopped protecting myself and have paid dearly for my choices.
I slow down. Not way down, but down. Thirty. Or maybe it’s, forty. I fumble with my seatbelt, sure I can watch the road, and click it shut one-handed. I look up. Fog. Thick. Impenetrable. Blinding. My cell phone, on the seat next to me, rings. I ignore it. Is it Harrison? I continue to ignore it. I notice a yellowish glow coming in from the left, barely penetrating the fuzzy, rolling fog. Someone's texting me; I can see the message being born as it appears on the screen. I hear a sound, glance up, just as I slam into something rock hard and unforgiving. There is the screeching of metal tearing, and worse still, human screams. Mine?
My car is flipping over, slamming me against the sides, ceiling, and glass. My loose cell phone slams into my cheek, slashing it open. I feel something heavy and jagged break loose and join me in the tumble as my car pretends to be a gymnast. Something strikes me hard; I feel white-hot pain, and then mercifully, nothing.
Follow the rest of the story in Take it (Book 2)
Coming Soon!!
Take it Book 2 & 3 will be available November 2014
DJ Stone, Take It
