Page 140 of PS: I Hate You
“What are you doing?” Tula’s voice is sharper than I’m used to, and only that tone is what gets me to turn my head. My friend wears a scowl as she eyes my screen.
“It’s just my email,” I explain, not sure what has her so pissed off.
“It’s yourworkemail. It’s late and you were telling us some heavy stuff, Maddie.”
I shrug. “Work doesn’t ever really stop for me.”
“It does if you have a proper work-life balance.”
Doesn’t she know I don’t like my life right now? I’d rather give it as little time on the scale as possible.
“I’m just checking some things.”
“You need to take a day off. Hell, you need to take a week. A month even,” she presses.
“Impossible. No one else can do what I do.”
She scoffs. “Come on, Maddie. Yes, they can. They don’t need you.”
They don’t need you.Her words scorch through me, igniting my temper.
“Actually, yes, they do. Literally no one else in the company does my job. No one else knows how to. Not even my boss. When certainthings go wrong, I’m the only one who can fix them. So yes, they doneedme!”
The apartment rings with the echoing aftermath of my heated outburst, and I cringe when I realize that I’d just yelled at Tula.
Tula circles the couch and carefully picks up my laptop before setting it aside so she can settle herself on the table in front of me.
“Honey,” she speaks carefully, as if I’m a bomb with a touch trigger. “Why doesn’t anyone else know how to do your job?”
“Because they don’t need to,” I snap.Why am I still snapping?Tula isn’t arguing with me. She’s just asking questions. But I just laid out my childhood of pain and now it feels like she’s digging her sharp acrylics into a tender spot at the center of me. “I get it done. The workload only requires one person and that’s me.”
“Still, they could train someone else—”
“Why? Why would they do that? Why wouldIdo that? Train my replacement? Make it easier for them to fire me if they felt like it? I’m not the CEO, but I’mnecessary. I hold important parts of the company together and everyone knows that. They know I’m necessary. If they need me, then they can’t leave me!” I choke after that last sentence, the panic steeling my breath and my fingers scrambling against the couch cushions, on the verge of reaching for my inhaler.
Jeremy perches at my side, rubbing a soothing hand over my back.
Tula’s eyes widen with every statement, and her perfectly shaped brows rise until they meet her hairline. “Leave you?”
I try to suppress a cringe. “I meant fire me. Of course a whole company doesn’tleavea person.”
But that’s what it would feel like. If The Redford Team handed me my notice, it would be one more abandonment in my life.
I’m not letting that happen again.
“Oh, Maddie,” Tula whispers, sounding so heartbroken I can’t meet her gaze. She settles on my free side, the cushion dipping withher weight until I’m leaning my shoulder against hers, Jeremy’s hand still on my back.
I close my eyes and breathe, focusing on calming my spiked heart rate.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” I say eventually, wondering how long until they both get up and leave. Wondering how much damage I’ve done and if this is the beginning of the end.
“You know we’re forever, right?” Jeremy whispers before pressing a gentle kiss against my hair.
I gasp a little and squeeze my eyes shut tighter. But Tula speaks next.
“You, me, and Jeremy. Forever.” Her fingers squeeze mine. “You’d have to do some fucked-up shit just for me to evenconsidernot talking to you again. I’m talking ‘sleep with my boyfriend, murder my dog’ level shit.”
I huff out a stunned laugh. “You don’t have a boyfriend. Or a dog.”