Dating You / Hating You
Page 19

Tonight I am going to stress-eat a box of cookies like the world has never seen.
• • •
We’re dismissed shortly after, given a stack of papers, and told where to report for more information. It’s likely everyone in this room had a packed schedule filled with actual work—I know I did—but that’s all been changed into a schedule of determining whether we get to continue doing that actual work. Now we all wait while the people in charge try to figure out what the hell is going on.
Carter is already speaking privately with Lisa; I move straight to Daryl.
“Where’s Amelia?” she says, and I realize—that’s right. I haven’t seen her.
“I don’t know.” I search the room again. Amelia has worked in HR longer than either Daryl or I have been here. They wouldn’t let her go. Would they? “Wait,” I say, remembering. “On my way in, Jake said she was already here.”
“I’m texting her.” Daryl’s fingers fly over her phone. “She wouldn’t just not tell us—” She pauses and I see exactly where her train of thought is going.
“If she knew, she wouldn’t have been able to tell us,” I say, and Daryl’s shoulders sag.
“What a mess.” She toys with the elastic at the end of her braid, eyes scanning the room. “I’ll be right back. Eric’s over there and I am going to see if he knows anything. I doubt it, but his uncle is the damn boss, after all.”
She moves to leave and then stops, turning back to whisper, “Unless this means Brad is out?”
“Oh my God. Is that . . .” I look around us before leaning in. “Is that even possible?” I am unable to hide the tiny spark of hope that creeps into my voice.
“I mean, why not? I wouldn’t have guessed any of this in a million years. I’d say all bets are off. Back in a sec.”
As soon as she’s gone, Carter pulls me aside. My pulse accelerates again.
“What the hell is happening?” His hand lingers around my upper arm, grip tight, and for a couple of psychotic seconds, this entire thing seems oddly comical.
“No idea,” I say. “I’d been on a call all morning and then couldn’t get into the elevators. As you saw from my less-than-subtle entrance, I just got here. My friend Amelia works in HR and we’re trying to see if she knows anything, but . . . I doubt she’d be able to say.”
“This is nuts. Merging means downsizing.”
“I know.” I feel fairly secure in my position here at P&D, but in this moment, even with all the wins in my résumé, the opening score to Field Day blares like a trumpet in the back of my mind.
The air conditioning in the lobby seems to be set to ultra-mega-freezing and I shiver, crossing my arms over my chest, trying to stay warm.
“I’d give you my jacket if we weren’t suddenly in the weirdest dating-coworker situation in the history of time,” he says—and God, I hadn’t even considered that.
Our phones vibrate at the same moment.
“Well, look at that. I have an email from Price & Dickle,” he says.
“Same.”
“Is it too early for a drink?”
• • •
With a new keycard in hand, I head upstairs to my office, only to be greeted by an eerie silence.
Gone is the cacophony of printers and voices answering phones. Instead, calls are left to voicemail, because what would the people answering them say anyway?
We’ve all been told to come back tomorrow for the transition—the CTM folks who weren’t laid off were denied all access to their files and computers—but those of us from P&D with offices in the building came upstairs. What the hell else would we do?
Despite Carter’s very sound instincts, it really is way too early to start drinking. Not that anybody seems to be doing any actual work: Turns out, P&D employees are locked out of our computers, too. Everyone is gathered in clumps at different desks, talking in hushed whispers and looking around, on edge.
And who can blame them? Questions hang like thought bubbles suspended above heads, and the people who should be around to answer them are nowhere in sight. Who has a job today? Who will still have one tomorrow?
I think back on some of the larger acquisitions I’ve read about over the years. The worst kind of merge is one where it happens quickly, before management can hammer out all the details and create a clear plan for combining departments and dealing with overlap. But here, I’ve been noticing oddities for a couple of weeks, which I hope means that it’s been in the works for a while and there’s a plan in place.
I look around, and there are a lot of long faces in the common areas. Most agencies are bottom-heavy, with tons of support staff, because so much of what gets done involves phone calls, emails, shuffling papers, and coordinating schedules. This new, combined agency is going to be doubly bottom-heavy, and the staff out here—barely out of their starving student days—knows it. I suppose they were all meant to go home for the day, but being here lends some sense of control, some hope they can influence decisions. Besides, who wants to be the one caught away from their desk when those kinds of decisions are being made?
I head down the hall without speaking to anyone, torn between banging on Brad’s door to get answers and crawling under my desk. Lucky for him, he’s nowhere to be found: his office is dark, desk empty.
In the blissful silence of my own office, I decide to keep the lights off, collapsing into my chair for the first time today. A part of me wonders if I can manage to hide here until it’s time to go home, maybe even come in tomorrow to find this has all been one giant practical joke.
Not likely. Through my interior windows I see Daryl’s blond head as she weaves her way through the tables toward me, with Amelia—thank God—right behind.
“Hiding out? Good thinking,” Daryl says, peeking through the crack in the door before closing it behind them. She groans, dropping onto my small office sofa with one leg curled underneath her. “Eric was a bust. He doesn’t know anything, either. His greatest curiosity was whether the vending machine was still plugged in so he could get some chili cheese Fritos. Spoiler alert: he could.”
Amelia moves to sit at her side, closing her eyes as she settles back against the cushions. She looks exhausted.
“You doing okay?” I ask her.
Wincing, she admits, “I wish I had more to tell you guys. A few of us got phone calls at around ten last night, saying we needed to get in as early as possible this morning. I got in at five. I didn’t tell you guys because blah blah confidentiality.”
Kicking her shoes off, she stretches her legs out in front of her. “Anyway, I don’t know a whole lot more than you. Apparently P&D has been looking at CTM for some time but the partners didn’t want to sell. They must’ve changed their minds. I assume it was kept hush-hush because of what happened at Fairmount, when the top agents got wind and everyone jumped ship before the deal could be finalized.” She lifts her chin to me. “Maybe you were onto something after all, Nancy Drew.”
“So, if we’re here we still have jobs?” I ask, my head spinning. “Do they have any of that figured out yet?”
She shakes her head. “I’m sure they do, but I haven’t seen the department org charts yet. Tomorrow is when all the details are supposed to drop.”