Grumpy Best Friend

“Maybe she’s right,” Jude said.

I turned, surprised, and stared at her. She looked back, head tilted. “What are you talking about?” I asked, incredulous. “You were here. You saw the brick.”

“I know,” she said. “And I saw the chains the doors, and I saw him try to scare us with his goons. But what if that’s all he’s going to do? Annoying, stupid pranks?”

“Come on,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re overcompensating now.”

“I am not,” she said angrily, then seemed to gather herself. “And if I am, is that so wrong? We need to do something, and our options are limited. Do you plan on backing down?”

“No,” I said.

“I don’t either. I plan on seeing this through.” Her eyes seemed to glitter with an inner rage and that sent a spark down my spine. I loved seeing her like this—angry and unwilling to take any bullshit. That was the Jude I loved most of all. “The situation with Zeke is unfortunate, but our hands are tied.”

“Lady Fluke suggested we hire a security team,” I said. “Although you already made the case against that.”

Her lips flattened and she drummed her fingers on the table. “For now, let’s keep going. If Zeke escalates, we’ll hire someone to help.”

“Where’s the line?” I asked, spreading my hands almost in desperation. I could see how this might go—we keep ignoring it, pretending like it’s no big deal, and Zeke gets worse and worse until he finally crosses the line, but by then it’s way too late. It was a slippery slope, and the longer Jude pushed back hiring security, the less likely it was to ever happen.

“I don’t know what the line is,” she admitted. “But we’re trying to get this expansion up off the ground, and our hands are tied behind our backs. I’m willing to wait, at least for a while.” She flipped open her laptop and did some quick typing. “Look, I have a bunch of emails, and a few interviews to get through today. Can we talk more about this later?”

“Sure,” I said, staring at her, and she didn’t look back. I wondered what she was thinking, how she could flip her switch like that and go from being terrified yesterday, to being prepared to entertain the idea that Zeke was full of shit today. It seemed entirely irrational—but then again, I knew the amount of pressure she felt, and how badly she wanted to get this right.

I blamed Lady Fluke. She was the only person I could blame, and I was too angry to do much more than grab my things and leave the office. I’d stop by at the factory, then go back to my own company for the day and check in there, even though I knew I wasn’t needed—Neal had things under control and would easily keep things going over there.

I needed some space to think. I had to convince both Fluke and Jude that this was an enormous problem. I’d settle for hiring security, if that was what it took, but that wouldn’t happen without Jude’s approval, and I really didn’t want to undermine her.

She was right: my hands were tied, and I had to find a way around it.

12

Jude

The chairs were the first to arrive.

I felt silly and giddy as the movers carried them up in big boxes, ripped them out, and rolled them into the corner of the room. The chairs gathered there like skittish zebras, in gray and black, huddled for protection. I dragged one into my office and sat where my desk would go, my legs dangling off the seat, and watched the contractors bring more furniture up: desks, cubicle dividers, bookshelves, filing cabinets, and a hundred other little office things I hadn’t even known they’d need. The conference room table was in the conference room, and the place was beginning to feel like what it would soon become: an actual office.

Ever since I was a little girl and I understood that my family was poor and my mother was a drunk and my father was dead, I assumed my life would be shit. It was simple fact: my life would always be hard, and the dream of money and comfort and joy and a nice middle-class family would never be mine. My mother passed out on the couch after drinking too much, and later, when I got older, after taking too many pills. My mother cursed at me when she got home from work, and that was on a good night. The bad nights, she’d nod off like a zombie.

I raised myself. I patched clothes when they got holes and organized meals. I set up play dates and snatched rides to Girl Scout meetings and soccer games. Mom took me sometimes, when she remembered and she was sober enough, sometimes even when she wasn’t. But mostly she worked a few different jobs, and I was left to figure it out for myself.