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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

After such an earth-shattering experience with Kim over the weekend, the next Monday was, unfortunately, awkward, even more than I could have imagined.

Kim didn't text me to ask me if I wanted a coffee, something she'd done every Monday morning since I started. When she came into the office, she didn't begin her day with the usual pleasantries and pep talk that usually took an hour of her day at minimum, she just barreled into her office without a word. This was odd, concerningly odd.

I tried to not worry about it. Everyone has off days, I’d just gotten over having weeks of them, but my dumb brain wandered toward the idea that Kim had been scared off by all the things she’d done with Emma and me over the past couple of weeks. I mean, yeah, there was abundant evidence that she enjoyed all of it, enthusiastically so, but it was easy to forget that the kind of lifestyle Emma and me…and all the other women in our crazy little group…was not normal by anyone’s standards, probably not even ours.

Of course, being normal sucks, but some people like it. And right now, I was worried that Kim wanted to retu rn to normal and the consequences that would have on Emma, me, and even Kim herself.

Did you notice Kim today?

I texted Emma, then turned my chair around to look across the open expanse of the office to get her reaction. I don’t know why I expected my autistic girlfriend to have a cartoonish reaction to the text, but I just needed someone to share in my anxiety, as selfish as that was.

Emma, of course, didn’t react beyond glancing up at me before typing quickly on her phone.

No

Helpful and to the point as always, Em.

Yes, that’s literally my personality

I’m just worried about her, babe. She’s never like this. Could she be mad at us?

She could, but I always think people are mad at me most of the time, so this is pretty normal for me.

I looked back up and gave Emma a pleading expression to make sure she knew I was being serious about this.

Do you want to talk?

I do, Em. I’m super worried.

Let’s go to the car

“I didn’t noti ce anything different, Vi. She’s had days like this where she comes to the office and doesn’t fuck with the social stuff,” Emma said, putting her hand on my thigh to reassure me.

“It just…feels different. We did all of that stuff with her, some of it was intense even for me.”

“She never said anything negative about it. I mean, she didn’t exactly lack enthusiasm when she fucked you really, really hard.”

I sighed and looked forward, the only thing greeting me there being the smooth grey concrete of the parking garage. “I…I know, but, people change their minds. They have changes of heart. This is…I think we did too much to her, too quickly.”

“She made her choices, Vi. She wanted to do it all.”

“And now she might have had second thoughts.”

And with that spectre of second thoughts looming over me, my heart sunk even further when I felt my phone buzzing and saw Kim’s name in the Caller ID. Kim never called, nobody under 60 ever called out of the blue, unless things were truly awful and urgent.

Taking a deep breath and trying to recalibrate, I swiped the screen to answer the call.

“Umm…hi…Kim.”

“Vi?” I could hear the panic and pain in Kim’s voice, and it scared the shit out of me. Kim was one of the most emotionally stable people I knew, so I knew that whatever got her to this state was utterly serious and dire. Even worse, I was pretty sure I had caused it.

“Kim, what’s up? You’re upset…I’m…I’m sorry.” I said.

Emma didn’t react much to the overflow of emotions coming from both sides of the phone, but that calmed me a little in a weird way.

“Sorry? Vi…are you and Emma in the office right now? I don’t see you at your desks.”

“We are…um…yes, we just were having a talk.”

“Can you…ple ase come to my office? I need to talk with you two right now, because I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.”

“Oh, god, Kim, yes, we’ll be up as soon as we can, and…umm, we’ll answer any questions you want.”

Kim hung up and the phone felt like a lead ingot in my hand.

“Emma, we need to fix this,” I said, feeling sick and like I had just thrown away a friendship I had just rekindled, not to mention betrayed the woman who gave me a job when I was at my lowest.

—

We walked into Kim’s office, and the scene was worse than I imagined. The well-kept and organized Kim wasn’t here any longer, replaced by a woman looking strung out beyond reason, papers scattered in seemingly hundreds of random piles, the cute coat she usually wore over her even cuter dress discarded on the floor. This was bad, exponentially more levels of bad than I’d ever seen before.

“Umm…hey…” I said, wanting to alert Kim to our presence but not wanting to poke the bear a moment before we had to.

“Vi, Emma…oh my god, you guys…I…I need you two.” Kim typed some things in on her laptop and picked up a few more sheets of paper, analyzing them for who knows what.

I pulled back one of the chairs and sat down across from Kim, with Emma doing the same.

“Kim, if this is about the sex stuff, we’re so?—“

“What?” Kim looked at me as if sex was a concept she’d never even heard of, let alone participated in. “Oh, god, no, that…that’s not this.”

“So you’re not…super mad at me and Emma for dragging you into things really quickly?”

Kim held her hand up to stop me. “Vi…the sex stuff was wonderful, I love it, it’s literally the furthest thing from my mind and I’m not mad at either of you.”

I breathed my fi rst deep breath of the entire day as some of the tension within me unfurled.

“Are you two familiar with the concept of a hostile takeover?” Kim said.

I started, “I mean, I think?—“

“—It’s where investors buy the company out from under the ownership after conspiring to acquire fifty-one percent of its shares. Why are we discussing this?” Emma looked nervous and antsy.

“I thought…god fucking damnit, they had to have…they must have gotten to the London and Berlin investors simultaneously, because they knew if they snatched them up overnight…and all at once.”

“Kim…please kindly fucking tell us what is happening.” Emma said.

“Well…” Kim crumpled the paper in her hand and tossed it across the desk in disgust. “…there’s no way around it, as of today’s market opening, which will happen in about ten minutes, AthenaTech will become a fully owned subsidiary of Harrison-Greenwell-McShane-Nakamura Holdings. And I will no longer be the CEO, or…employed by AthenaTech at all. It’s done. The startup is over.”