CHAPTER FIVE
ROBYN
I fell asleep Saturday night in Aaron’s arms and woke up there Sunday morning. After we shared a hearty breakfast together he had a meeting to get to. He dropped me at home on his way and I spent all day Sunday with a goofy smile on my face. I worked on small projects around the house and every so often I would catch myself staring off into space, remembering how magical the night before had been.
The smile bled through to the next day because I also woke up on Monday morning with it still painted there. I went to work that morning looking like I slept with a coat hanger in my mouth and it had gotten stretched out into a permanent smile.
“Good morning, Hayley,” I said, when I saw my pretty young friend at her cubicle.
“Good morning Robyn. How was your weekend?”
“It was fabulous,” I told her, honestly. “I’m so glad you asked because it was so great I had to tell someone or I was going to bust. How was yours?” She smiled brightly, looking almost as happy as I was.
“Mine was the same,” she said. “I’m glad you asked too. You’re actually the person I’d like to talk to about it.”
“Maybe we can have lunch and you can tell me all about it,” I told her.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me about yours,” she said.
“It’s a date then. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria at noon.” I wanted to tell someone how amazing Aaron was. I wanted to brag on him for taking me to a club dancing and taking me to see Wicked and learning how to do things that I know he has no interest in at all, just for me. I headed into my office and sat down at my desk. While I waited for the computer to load I called my bank and checked to make sure my paycheck had been deposited into my personal account and checked my balance. After I did that, I turned back to the computer. I transferred five hundred dollars out of my account and into one of the business accounts that I had “borrowed” the seventy-five thousand dollars from. That’s how I was thinking of it now. I’d forced myself to stop thinking of it as stealing. That was self-preserva
tion, I know. But I was losing my mind over it and I’d had to do something.
I felt so much better after making my first “payment.” At five hundred dollars every two weeks I’d be long dead before I paid it off completely, but I was going to give it my best shot. I got to work then and around ten Gary came into the office again, only this time he was sporting a huge smile.
“Hi Robyn, how was your weekend?” he asked.
“Amazing,” I told him. I was still smiling. “It was a lot of fun, actually. I was sorry to have to come back here when it was over. How was yours?”
He sat down in the chair on the other side of my desk and said, “Even more amazing,” with a big grin on his face.
“Really? I noticed that Hayley looked really happy when I came in this morning. Did you have anything to do with that?”
Gary laughed and said, “I don’t usually kiss and tell, but yes! I mean nothing like… we just…”
I laughed, “You went out?”
“Yes, we had dinner and we went to a comedy show. It was the most fun that I’ve had in years, Robyn. I did what you said. I tried hard to concentrate on my good qualities… I think it worked. She seemed like she had a really good time too. We took a walk in the park on the way home and she let me kiss her. It was even better than I imagined it would be. She said she would like to go out with me again. More than like to, she said she’d be really happy about it.”
“I’m so glad,” I said, sincerely. Gary’s a good guy. He deserves to be happy. I was just not the girl to do that for him.
He stood up and said, “I just wanted to thank you.”
“Aw, it was all you, Gary,” I told him. “You don’t have anything to thank me for.”
“Yeah, I do. If it wasn’t for you taking the time to talk to me and tell me nice things about myself… Well, I probably would have screwed things up with Hayley. You’ve boosted my confidence many times. So, thank you. You’re awesome.”
“You’re welcome,” I told him. “So are you.”
Gary left and I worked until about eleven-forty five. We had a new ad campaign coming soon for television. Winters had only done radio so far, so we’ll see how it goes. I had been online watching commercial after commercial for other companies trying to decide what people might find funny or interesting about them. Those were the ones that people remembered, the fun ones. I was seeing double from watching so many of them by lunch time. Maybe if Hayley is not too busy, she could watch a few more for me after lunch. I shut things down and got ready for lunch then. I grabbed my bag and went to meet Hayley. She wasn’t at her cubicle when I went by, so I assumed that she was already waiting for me downstairs. When I got to the cafeteria I looked around but I didn’t see her. I saw Gary in line and I went over and said, “Hey, I was supposed to have lunch with Hayley. Have you seen her?”
“Not since this morning. It was weird. She got called upstairs to the executive offices. She never came back.”
“Hmm, that is weird. I’m her supervisor, you would think if there was a problem they would have gone through me.”
“You don’t think she’s in trouble do you?”
“No, I can’t imagine what it could be for. She’s been the best paid intern we’ve had around here since I started.”
“Yeah, maybe it was a personal issue. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well or something…”
“That’s probably it,” I said. “I’ll call her later.”
“Me too,” he said.
I did call Hayley that evening, but she didn’t answer. I left her a message and told her I wanted to make sure everything was okay. I asked her to call me back. I didn’t hear back from her that night and the next day when I got to work, she wasn’t there either. I ran into Gary in the hallway and he said, “Hey Robyn. Did you talk to Hayley?”
“No, I left her a message. Did you get ahold of her?”