Creep - Jennifer Hillier [62]
Trevor eased his twig-thin frame into the office. His salmon shirt clashed with his coral tie, the combination too bright for Morris’s dry eyes. The man’s bony fingers clutched a thick manila folder.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I need your signature on these documents for the Glasgow account—”
“Leave the file with me.”
“Thanks.” Trevor placed the folder on the edge of Morris’s desk, then hesitated.
“Anything else?”
The younger man shifted his weight. “Just, uh, wondering how you’re doing.”
Morris grunted and leaned back in his chair. Cracking his knuckles, he glared at his account manager, suddenly unable to think of a single reason why he’d hired the twerp in the first place. “Well, let’s see. How do I look, Trevor?”
The younger man swallowed and backed away. “It’s just . . . I met your fiancée at last year’s Christmas party and she was so lovely, very down-to-earth. I honestly can’t believe—”
“For God’s sake, Trevor, she’s not dead. She dumped me.” Morris could see the spittle flying from his lips as he spoke. He kept his fingers firmly on the armrests of his chair so he wouldn’t spring up and detach Trevor’s pretty little head from his twiggy little body. “Thanks for your condolences, but if I’m not talking about it, why are you?”
Trevor opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
Morris stared him down. “Shut the door on your way out.”
The account manager scurried out without another word.
Morris got up and locked his office door, then sat back down, not sure what to do next. He stared at the football that always sat on his desk, preserved in Lucite. Game ball from his last college game with the Longhorns. He wished it weren’t boxed up in plastic—he wanted to hold it, squeeze it, smell the leather. Football used to be such a great outlet. He missed it almost as much as he missed Sheila.
Suddenly he felt her eyes on him. He turned back to the framed photo of the two of them. Restraining himself from hurling it against the wall, he instead shoved it into his top drawer, facedown.
It seemed like a real good time for the Red.
Unlocking his bottom cabinet, he poured a shot into the empty coffee mug. It went down like fire. He poured another, glancing at the clock. It was ten thirty in the morning. He poured one more.
It was gonna be a long day.
Feeling marginally better, at least for the meantime, he locked the bottle back up and turned to his computer. Mellowed from the booze, his password came back to him and he finally logged on.
Morris’s e-mail program informed him that he had twenty-one new e-mails, not terrible for a Tuesday morning and a day off from work. Darcy was good about screening his messages. He scrolled through them quickly. There weren’t any e-mails from Sheila. He hadn’t expected any, but he was disappointed anyway.
An e-mail buried in the middle of the list caught his eye and he scrolled back up. It was from Brenda Walcott, a woman in Human Resources. The subject line read: Tom Young.
Oh, yeah. Tom Young. He’d forgotten all about his son Randall’s old friend. They’d had dinner after the interview. Had that really only been a few weeks ago? It felt as if a decade had passed. Morris’s eyebrows furrowed as he read Brenda’s message.
Subject: Tom Young
Morris,
I got your e-mail last week about Tom Young applying for position #M-39003. I have not yet received his formal application. Just a reminder that the position closes Tuesday and interviews are next week if he’s still interested.
Brenda
p.s. Sorry about your wedding.
Morris felt his face flush. Well, fuck, if the news had made it all the way to HR eight floors down, then clearly the entire company knew that he had been stood up at the altar. Humiliating.
He pushed away the mental picture of his colleagues whispering behind his back and forced himself to concentrate. At least now he had something to distract