Page 7 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)

Chapter Four

ALTA

I would not cry. I would not cry. I would not cry .

Truthfully, I was about one more underhanded comment away from bursting into tears. And maybe even worse, if one more well-meaning sympathetic passerby gave me another thumbs up or look of encouragement, I might combust into flames.

Two days. It had been two days since I made an absolute fool of myself in front of the marketing team and became not only the pushover of the office but also the bumbling idiot. Two days since I’d let that dream die.

But maybe that was the worst part of it all.

I hadn’t let it die. Even though there were murmurs every time I passed people in the halls and swift redirecting of eyes as if everyone was staring at me, even though I had been severely put down by Grace the other day, even though I could easily have a career independent of this place if I wanted to.

Even though all those things were true, my dream to show my family what I could do at our company had not yet died.

Which is what made this failure so painful.

Why couldn’t I just stand up for myself with others like I did with Harper? Why did I let everyone look at me sideways and get away with saying anything they wanted about me? Why couldn’t I just get mad when I was upset? Why was I such a pushover?

I thought about how Harper had called me a princess, or worse when he said I was a saint. It wasn’t outright insulting, but the implication that I was too good or sheltered to be taken seriously was what had stung.

It stung especially bad coming from him.

Everyone else thought I was so nice. So sweet. So… predictable. But for better or worse, whether I meant to or not, he saw a different side of me. Yet he still thought me frail and saintly like the others did.

Being with him at Ink and Mar was the only place I felt comfortable enough to be that side of myself. The self who could lash out and be not so good all the time and still be accepted, instead of treated like there was something wrong with me.

But if he just thought of me as Saint Alta like everybody else, where did that leave me now? He certainly didn’t seem like he thought I was saintly when I’d stupidly let it slip that I wasn’t a virgin His heated gaze said quite the opposite.

I groaned.

What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking, that was the thing! Because for some reason I let the indignation and the need to prove I wasn’t some Saint outweighed the good sense to not spew my sexual business out for everyone to hear.

I just couldn’t catch a break.

And there was no rest for the not so wicked, since I was now back at work.

Back at my little glass desk located in the reception area of Melissa’s office suite.

I hated this spot. The only reason I wasn’t with the rest of the cubicles was because I was a Fernandez.

I should be out there with everybody else.

No, I should be somewhere in the community rooms with the first year interns, because lord knows I didn’t do anything of value around here.

Had I ever done anything of value? Had I ever once done anything that didn’t have to do with supporting someone else? No, I didn’t think so, and maybe in the end that’s all I was ever meant to be.

Support. Assistance. A sweet little accessory to make everything feel nice.

“Al?” I looked up from the planner I was staring at and was met with an ocean of stormy black.

Melissa and my brother Ox shared the same featurization, both taking their black hair, lean frames, and taller builds from our late grandmother.

A woman we never got to meet but owed a lot to.

Abuela Rita was apparently the entire reason Abuelo decided to make his own way in the world.

Coming out East after immigrating from Mexico instead of going West like most of the other migrants.

And Abuela Rita was who Melissa was the spitting image of.

Now, Lis stood there looking down at me with the weirdest expression on her face. Her eyebrows pinched tight, while her arms crossed loosely over her waist. Her mouth was turned down in a frown.

This was weird.

She didn’t usually come by to talk to me at work.

She never had the time. And lately, without our younger sister Ceci or our sister-in-law, Clementine to serve as a buffer, we didn’t really spend much time together one-on-one.

So why was she approaching me now, looking at me like something was wrong?

“Is everything okay, Lis?” I asked, my default always making sure everything was okay .

“Everything’s fine. You just—you look tired,” she said. Something about the sympathy in her voice brought heat to my skin.

I looked tired? Me? Had she looked in a mirror recently?

Lately, every time I laid eyes on my sister she looked thinner or her eyes looked more sunken in.

Every time I saw her she looked exhausted, and what was her response to me voicing my concerns about it?

“Some of us have to work, Alta. Not all of us get to play on our phones and make copies all day.”

Sure, it had been a while since she said anything like that, but I still remembered it coming from her mouth. Her. Of all people, the one I looked up to the most.

For some reason, seeing that concerned look on her face made me so irrationally angry that suddenly the only thing I wanted to do was cry.

The fact made me even angrier because, why couldn’t I just scream? Why couldn’t I just call her a bad name and flip a chair and storm out? Why did I always have to take the weaker route?

What was wrong with me ?

Lis bore witness to the storm of emotions raging inside me and what did she do?

My cold, near emotionless sister softened.

Her face almost never changed, but you could always see everything in her eyes and right then her eyes were taunting me.

Saying ‘poor defenseless Alta’, ‘poor sensitive Alta’, ‘poor naive Alta.’ Right now those soft eyes were mocking me.

“Maybe you should go home, Al. Get some rest,” she said.

My jaw suddenly got hard. Nothing hurt more than those placating words coming from her. I tried to keep my cool, not wanting to fight with her. “I’m fine but thank you.”

“Do you want to get lunch with me, then?” she tried. She never wanted to get lunch. Whenever I asked her, she was always too busy and suddenly now she wanted to get lunch? It didn’t add up. No, it stunk of ‘take care of poor little Alta.’

I hated it .

“I’m okay, Lis. I know you’re busy,” I said simply.

She swallowed, her arms wrapping around herself tighter like she was getting frustrated. But she persevered, always so good at being headstrong. “Do you want to get lunch with Ceci instead? I don’t have to be there, I just think maybe you?—”

“You just think maybe what, Lis? That I don’t have any work to do? That I’m not busy?” I asked, my patience snapping out of nowhere. My voice was suddenly shaky and watery. “Some of us have work to do, Melissa, so I would really appreciate it if you would let me do mine.”

I tried not to look at her again, attempting to burn a hole in my open notebook with my eyes. But when it became apparent that she was just staring at me, I blinked up and I watched her.

She ran her eyes over my face once, twice, three times before she visibly swallowed. Wrapping herself in an even tighter hug, she nodded.

“Okay,” is all she said before she stepped away and returned to her office.

My hands shook as I ran them over my face.

Thank God they came up dry because that feeling of wanting to cry had graduated to needing to cry.

Harper was wrong about me being a saint, because what I had just done to Melissa was mean .

And for the life of me, even though I felt bad about it, I couldn’t stop feeling worse about everything else happening in my life.

And that just made me feel selfish. I was now two things I hadn’t been two days ago.

A selfish liar. And what for? I still didn't have my marketing campaign.

This sucked.

“Alta,” I was shaken out of my pity party by the voice of someone leaning into Melissa’s suite entrance. Jolting upright, I looked over to see Jack Tucker.

I’m sure I must have done something bad in another life, because the compounding crap-show today was becoming was monumental.

Jack was one of the Tucker boys who liked to harass me using passive aggressive words and pretentious questioning because they thought I was too dense to realize.

Really, I was simply too much of a chicken to confront them about it.

Seeing Jack’s curly blond head and pressed suit looking for me was not what I needed to make this tearful feeling subside. It was quite the opposite.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to discreetly take deep breaths to keep the tears at bay, answering without looking at him, “Yes?”

“Have you checked the calendar?” he asked. I fought the urge to groan… or scream. I checked the calendar every day. He knew I checked the calendar every day. So, why he was asking me if I had checked the calendar, even though I quite religiously checked it every day , I had no idea.

To him I simply said, “Yes.”

“So you know there’s a meeting in half an hour?” he asked.

“Yes, Jack.”

“Oh,” he straightened up, his nose going into the air. “I just thought you didn’t know, because the copies we need for the meeting aren’t in the conference room yet. My mistake.”

Something in my temple ticked. A nerve, maybe. Or my self-control? Slowly, I let my barely congenial gaze rise to him and I smiled. I hate that I smiled, but I couldn’t help it. It was a reflex. “Did you get my email?”

“I get a lot of emails,” was his immediate response.

“No worries, this one was sent on Monday at nine AM.” I offered. He curled his lips inward. Obviously, he had ignored it. “It outlined how I would no longer be handling supporting tasks due to my own project initiatives.”

His face went flat as he looked at me. “Yeah, I heard about that. I thought it was a prank.”

This time my eye twitched. “No, I don’t usually prank on work emails, Jack. ”

“No, but apparently you lie.” The voice that particular remark belonged to had my chest coiling up and my veins freezing over.

Grace, who had taken it upon herself to pay routine visits to my office ever since the whole campaign pitching debacle, had just arrived for her daily torture.

“Ms. Fernandez, is this becoming a habit of yours?”

“What?” I asked, voice smaller than it had been with Jack.

“Blatantly disregarding your responsibilities.”

Frowning, I looked at her. Bun, stilettos, gray power suit today. The sight intimidated me, causing me along with my voice, to wither. “I’m not disregarding anything. I put up a notice far in advance that I could no longer perform support tasks as often as before.”

“And why is that?” she asked, hands going to her hips. “And please don’t tell me it’s because of that silly little art project you have with those mom-and-pop shops. I thought we discussed this already.”

“I—”

“You have a responsibility here, or have you forgotten that already since the last time we spoke?”

“No, but I?—”

“You need to get back to work and stop messing around with everyone’s time.

” Grace gave me one of those looks that cut me to the bone.

Why was she always so mean? Why wouldn’t she just let me talk?

Let me explain? I fought to keep my tears from spilling, but Grace noticed them even as they were unshed.

A ghost of a smile so small I thought maybe I’d imagined it crossed her face.

“We are not here to play, Alta. This is a real business and some of us have real jobs to do. We would appreciate it if you did yours.”

My face stung as I raised it to the ceiling to keep from spilling my feelings all over the place.

“I’m not playing around, Grace,” I said through my teeth .

“Then what are you doing? Because it’s certainly not your job,” she crossed her arms.

“I’m working on a project.”

“ Who’s project? I haven’t heard a thing about this conveniently secretive campaign.”

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. What was I going to say? My project? My second attempt at going out on my own after the first failed miserably? My own little “science project” or whatever else people had mockingly called it over the last few days?

My own little failure . That’s what it truly was.

I closed my mouth. My breath shook as my swallow went down slow and rocky.

I was going to cry. My face burned, my nose burned, my ears and my eyes and my scalp all burned.

I was red hot with shame and defeat and humiliation, and I had to think of something to say.

I had to, or else it would all burst free.

But when I opened my mouth again, a sound I wasn’t expecting filled my ears.

“Can I ask what’s going on here?” The deep, familiar tone of my brother’s voice rang around the room. I cursed internally.

Everyone else recognized it and instantly reacted accordingly. Jack scampered off to wherever he was actually supposed to be, and Grace whirled around to face her boss.

Me, I stayed facing my desk. I was about to cry. If he saw it, everyone in here would get his wrath and then I would just be that girl who had her big brother take up for her. I was not about to be a snitch on top of apparently being the office punching bag. So I stayed turned away from my brother.

Quick as a whip, he zeroed in on me. “Al?”

It was still early. Too early for my appointment with the tattoo shop, but I had to make a strategic decision. Stay here and become a crybaby on top of all the other things I was at the office, or simply leave?

Reaching out, I blindly scooped up whatever was in front of me and turned the opposite direction so no one could see my face. Then I began to hustle my way out.

“Sorry, Ox! I have to run. I won’t be back today, so much to do, so little time! Bye!” I said.

“Okay. See you tomorrow,” he said. I heard the hesitance in his voice, but by the time he spoke his next words, it was gone. Replaced by clipped confidence as he directed his inquiry toward his actual employee. “Grace. Fill me in.”

I dashed away, not even sticking around to hear how I was leaving Grace to clean up the mess I made.