* * *I head back to my office in a slight daze. I lost something — to Eli, no less — and I don’t actually mind that much. Don’t get me wrong. I still wish I’d won. I’d still love to be twenty grand richer right now.
But I am, at best, fairly disappointed, and that’s all. Eli deserves it. He folded cranes. He saved a cake. He made good food for impossible people, and he did it all without making a big of it.
When I wake my computer up, the lake cottage’s listing is still up on my browser.
That gets a twist in the stomach. A twinge of regret, a brief lump in my throat, a brief bout of intense desire. I hate my trailer. I hate it. I hate that it’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, I hate that it’s where my mom died, I hate that it keeps costing me money even though it’s barely worth anything.
More than anything I hate that it’s a trailer in a trailer park and that, despite everything, I haven’t managed to get out of there.
I close the window and take a deep breath. I’ll get there. I’ve been steadily saving for ages now. I’m close to a down payment, even without the prize money. If this house goes off the market there will be other houses, and life goes on.
Just as I fire up Excel, my phone rings.
“Violet,” Montgomery’s voice says. “Could I see you in my office?”
“Of course,” I say, my heart skipping a beat. Maybe there’s some sort of secondary prize. Maybe I’m getting a pay bump or a promotion.
“Sit,” he says when I knock on the door, his face grave.
I do. My stomach suddenly clenches. My lips feel cold.
This is not a good office visit.
Montgomery sits. He clicks something with his mouse, not making eye contact.
Then without a word, he turns the monitor to face me.
I’m on it.
I’m sitting on the floor, against a couch, my skin totally washed out by the flash. I’m laughing, leaning back.
I’m naked. Visible from the waist up, my nipples hard and brownish pink.
I’m clearly in the wedding barn.
I think I’m going to throw up.
Montgomery calmly turns the monitor back around. I have both my hands over my mouth. I’m shaking, shivering, suddenly cold and hot at the same time.
“I got that from an anonymous email account Saturday night,” he says, folding his hands on the desk. “And I don’t mind admitting that until I did, I considered you and Elijah neck-and-neck for the award. I even gave serious thought to giving you each ten thousand dollars.”
I just shake my head, hands still clamped over my mouth. He saw me naked. Montgomery, my boss, saw me topless.
I close my eyes. I can’t look at him.
“Violet, I want you to understand that the only reason I’m not firing you for blatant impropriety on Bramblebush grounds is that you’ve got a long history of excellent work here,” he drones on.
I force myself to nod. There’s bile rising in my throat. I feel like someone put whiskey in my veins, every pump of my heart burning worse than the one before it.
“I won’t tolerate something like this again,” he says. “And frankly, Violet, I’m shocked at you. I half-expect idiots like Zane or Kevin to do this, but you?”
I don’t answer him. I just breathe because that’s all I can manage.
“Violet?” Montgomery asks.
I swallow hard, grit my teeth, try to pull myself together. I sit up straight, though I keep my eyes closed because I absolutely cannot look into the face of my boss who just saw me naked.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I —”
My stomach heaves, tightens.
I run. I run out of his office and to the bathroom, where I throw open a stall door and barely make it in time. I throw up until I’m dry heaving. I flush the toilet again and again, tears streaming down my face, and when I’m sure I’m done I sit on the toilet, still clothed, and lean my head against the side of the stall.
My whole body is shaking. I sit there for a long time. People come and go into the other stalls, and I don’t leave.
It feels like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.
I should never have let him take that picture.
I should have known that people don’t change. I should have seen, somehow, that instead of mellowing out Eli’s only gotten colder, more ruthless, more willing to fuck people over to get what he wants. I should have learned my lesson when we were kids, but I didn’t.
Instead I slept with him and for fuck’s sake, I let myself like him and here I am, now, crying in a bathroom stall while there’s a picture of my tits on my boss’s hard drive.