Page 10 of The Fool
“Who am I, Miss Summers?” he asks in an arrogant tone of voice. His jaw is ticking away all the while he glares at me with unforgiving eyes. His usual emerald, green irises have turned a violent shade darker and have me quivering. This is the sort of thing I should go to HR about like Ben has nagged me to do countless times before. If it wasn’t for the fact Cameron Carter has been so good to me, and how much I want to work for this company, perhaps I would. Or perhaps if I had a backbone, I might. My backbone was stolen from me a long time ago,, back when the world I thought I knew came crashing down all around me.
“Er…Nathaniel Carter?”
Damn it, I don’t know what he wants me to answer with, but I can already guess that whatever I say, it will be wrong.
“And who is that?”
He leans in close, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Then the smell of his masculine aftershave attacks my nostrils and I begin to feel nauseated.
“My boss?” I barely manage to voice.
“That’s right, I’m your boss so when you decide to try and contradict me again, just remember that!”
He keeps his glare on me until I have to look away first, and with my cheeks heating under the embarrassment of being spoken down to like a child in front of a whole office full of my colleagues. The same people I have to face every day, feeling and looking like a complete imbecile.
“I apologize, Mr Carter,” I murmur, looking down at the floor with unwarranted shame. But I’m not fucking sorry, this was his mistake, all of it.
My apology goes unanswered. Instead, Nathaniel storms out of the office muttering obscenities under his breath, probably loud enough for everyone else to hear but me. A few of the employees on the other side of the glass watch him pace off before looking at me with pity in their eyes. This is so demeaning, to the point where I want to run home and hide under the duvet.
I wipe a sweaty palm over my face and clench my lips together tightly in anger. Someone mouths “Are you ok?” to me, but all I can manage is a shy nod and my usual fake smile.
Pretending to look as though I care very little about my boss shouting me down in the middle of the afternoon, I tentatively sit in my chair and turn the computer toward me, only so no one can see my face. Once I am safely hidden, I finally let the tears fall silently down my cheeks, lifting my hand every now and then to wipe them away. Their presence only frustrates me further; I always cry when I’m angry. God, I wish I could go psycho bitch on him, just like old me would have done. Perhaps I should go downtown this weekend and buy a voodoo doll with extra pins and miniature clamps for his testicles.
_____
Nate
Standing on Mom and Dad’s front porch feels more nostalgic than usual. We’re summoned here at least once or twice a month, a get-together of the family Carter, but I usually feel quite pleased to see my folks. Mom will have made a dinner that tastes like real, homecooked food, and Dad will pat me on the back for making it yet another week in proper work, usually with a teasing comment about my brother being the CEO. I’ll laugh it off with a self-derogatory comment to pretend he hasn’t pissed me off, and we’ll settle into sipping back expensive liquor. Cameron will ask Lily if she’s seen some childhood piece of crap so he can take her upstairs and bang her in his old room, which some may say is a kink of his. And Helena…? Well, Helena might be there physically, but mentally, she checked out of this house when she married Evan. I wish I could get her to open up, but I’m not even sure she is capable of doing so.
However, this time isn’t going to be like that; this time, I’m going to be given shit for being an asshole to Beatrice earlier on. And I’ll admit, I was an asshole. The girl brings out the worst in me, but I know her type well. The quiet type, the I’m-better-than-you type. Believe me, I wasn’t always this frosty toward her. When I was first introduced, I was charming, polite, and friendly; the girl gave me nothing but silence. Not like Helena silence, a silence that said I wasn’t worthy of being where I was, that I was living off my brother’s coattails.
“And this is Beatrice Summers, your new Personal Assistant,” Cam announces, acting every bit the smug CEO, so much so, I have to bite my lip to stifle my laughter. I turn to face the timid-looking girl in front of me and offer her my hand.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Na-“
“Nathaniel Carter,” she says for me, eyeing my hand like it’s infected, then steps back and offers the briefest of smiles before breathing out a long, steady stream of air. “I’m sorry, I’ve got chili on my hands from lunch; I’d hate to get it on you.”
“Oh, sure, ok,” I reply, putting my hands up in defeat, but keep smiling to try and put her at ease.
“Right, well, I’ll leave you two to get better acquainted,” Cameron says with a theatrical clap of his hands. “I’ve got a zoom meeting in about…” he pauses, and checks his Rolex before finishing, “…eight minutes. Catch you later, brother.”
He marches out of the office, leaving Beatrice and me to feel awkward; something you could never accuse me of being with a woman. It’s unnerving but probably for the best seeing as she’s my PA.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she utters quietly, not even bothering to look me in the eye.
“Oh, really? What have you heard?” I ask, beginning to get a weird vibe from her, enough to make me act standoffish.
“J-just that you like to…er…that is to say…you like to party?” she asks with a wince, like the idea of partying is something to feel ashamed of.
“I see,” I murmur, trying to make sense of what she is trying to suggest here.
“And now you have come to work for your brother, how lovely,” she says with what sounds like condescension. It would seem she cannot even bear to voice what I suspect too; I am here because of him, not my own merits.
“Well, we all have to grow up some time,” I tell her with a fake smile, the one I often use when trying to schmooze potential clients.
“I suppose,” she says with a sad tone to her voice, then looks down at her fidgeting fingers, thus avoiding my gaze altogether. She coughs to clear her throat before stepping back and looking at me with a professional stance. “I’ll start on your calendar; do you need anything else?”
“A coffee, perhaps?”