A Bad Bit Nice (2 page)

Em drove around the city, fuming and looking at buildings but not really seeing them, until she found herself in front of the warehouse again. She saw the sign out front: “River Driver Records” it read. A picture of a man atop a log accompanied the lettering of the sign.

She grinned. She loved that song. Interesting.

It was still early yet, so Em decided to explore the neighborhood a bit. She had grown up north of Atlanta, but not in the city proper, and anyway, the city itself was changing so rapidly that she always found something new to see.

Em cruised around the neighborhoods until the warehouse district turned residential. And that’s when she saw the house: the most wonderful, fantastic Victorian house on a large, heavily wooded lot. She drove by very slowly, finally coming to a halt in front.

She sighed. Tripp would never go for a place like this. He was all about new, new, new! This place had character. He would say it was a dump.

She reluctantly drove away. Maybe she would ask Ashley how much a house like that would run.

When her phone rang, she pulled over to answer it. She didn’t recognize the number at all.

“Ermengarde Davidson,” she answered.

“Ms. Davidson, hello! I’m glad I caught you. Do you have a moment to speak with me?”

*****

Mick sat outside on the porch of the converted Victorian that he called home, enjoying a celebratory cigar and whiskey and watching the burnt orange Karmann Ghia creep along the road and finally stop.
Hm. You don’t see that many of those on the road anymore.

Mick shrugged. Today had been a good day. This morning, he had secured a contract for a home studio that would set him up for the rest of the year, and when he arrived home, the electricians had completed all the work at his own studio. The sign had even been delivered and installed early. His dreams of River Driver Records were all coming together.

The biggest accomplishment of all was of a more personal nature: he had actually gone 12 hours without the wedding band. Of course, he wore it now—but the fact is, he hadn’t worn it for almost a whole day, the first day that he hadn’t in over 20 years.

“Oi, Mickey,” he heard Rory call.

“On the porch, b’y,” Mick answered.

“I saw the studio has a sign now,” Rory said, beaming. “It looks outstanding, Mickey.”

“Wait until you see the inside, Rory. You’ll want your own space.”

Rory sat down heavily. Mick offered his best friend a cigar, but Rory waved it off.

“I don’t know how you can smoke those things,” he said, making a face.

Mick shrugged. “A man’s got to have a vice, Rory. You’ve got women, I have tobacco.” Rory chuckled and shook his head.
Oh, you’re the picture of debauchery, Mickey.

“So, how’re things, Rory? Have you solved your personnel problems yet?”

Rory scrubbed a hand over his face. “No, I haven’t. You aren’t going to believe it, but I actually hired a recruiter to vet résumé
s
for me.” Mick made a shocked face and then grinned at his control-freak friend. “I know! It just about killed me but I just don’t have time to wade through the shite. She’s supposed to have some candidates for me in a few days.”

“What about that one woman?” Mick asked.

“I’m not sure she’s really looking for another job, which is unfortunate, because I have a feeling she’d be perfect,” Rory said. “So, how’d the other thing go?”

“I got the contract. I’ll be flying back and forth to Vancouver for the next three to four months,” Mick grinned. “It’s all coming together, Rory.”

Rory cocked his head at his friend. “What about the
other
other thing?”

Mick sighed. “I didn’t wear it at all today.”

“But you’ve got it on now.”

“Yeah, but just until I go to bed. I’ve not been wearing it at night for the past few weeks.”

“Okay, Mickey. Now that you’ve got the contract and the studio, you need to get your personal life sorted. Having these two businesses is going to make you a very dull boy. You need to have some fun and not be a bitter workaholic.”

“Kind of like you, Rory?” Mick said. Rory worked more than any sane person should.

“I have a social life, Mickey. I go out and blow off steam. You should as well.”

He knew that Rory’s social life generally consisted of semi-anonymous hookups with 20-something-year-old girls. Yeah, that was so not happening with Mick
.

“I blow off steam….”

Rory laughed long and hard. “Oh, you’re a wild man all right, with your cigar on your porch of your 100-year-old house.”

“This is a 130-year-old house, thank you very much. Oh, and the upstairs family is selling. They don’t want to deal with a rental anymore. I’m tempted to buy it, but I’ve got enough on my plate already. Do you know anyone that’s interested in a Victorian apartment?”

“I could move in,” Rory said.

Mick choked on his drink. “What?”

Rory cackled. “Can you see me here?” he asked, shaking his head. “Oh, lardy!”

“You’re my best friend in the world, Rory, but I’d move out if you moved upstairs.”

“Trust me, Mickey, the feeling’s mutual. Hopefully a nice, but not too nice, lady will move in.” Rory wiggled his eyebrows and Mick laughed.

“Oh, Jaysus, Rory. Leave it off, b’y.”

*****

Ashley Richards looked at her friend with absolute disgust. She couldn’t believe Em was waffling about accepting the interview.

“So, let me see if I understand what you’re saying, Em: you hate your job, you hate the work environment, and you feel unappreciated and unacknowledged, but you’re not going to accept the interview with the company you’ve been talking about for the past week because you’re a chicken. Right?”

“Um, yes?” Em answered. Boy, not taking the interview sounded really dumb when Ashley put it that way.

Ashley huffed. “Em, you have lost your goddamn mind if you don’t do this. What have you got to lose? If you decide it’s not for you, you don’t have to accept a job if they offer it to you. And didn’t
they
actually call
you
? That’s a big deal.”

“Well, yes. But you don’t know what a fool I made of myself with the principal of Tara Security Systems, Ashley. I totally started babbling.”

“You always babble when you get nervous. Hell, you babble when you’re
not
nervous,” Ashley laughed.

“In Gaelic?”

Ashley paused. “Okay, maybe it was worse than it usually is, but Em, I am so going to kick your ass if you don’t go to this interview. And I can totally catch you, because you’re not very fast,” she grinned. “You have to do this, sweetie.”

“I do, don’t I?” Em chewed her lip. “It’s kind of a start-up, though; what if it fails?”

“So what if it fails? You’ll get another job, but more importantly, you’ll be out of the Holbrook Firm and away from Tripp.”

Ashley had never been a fan of Tripp Holbrook and had never been shy about making that fact known. When pushed, Ashley admitted that there wasn’t anything in particular that made her not like Tripp; it was just his inherent Tripp-ness.

“Em, you have been propping up Tripp for years. He doesn’t value you, personally or professionally. Everyone knows that if you hadn’t been covering for him on that last project, the Holbrook Firm’s reputation would have gone down in flames. How many times has he presented something to the partners as his own idea when it was actually yours? And I’m not even going to start on the way he treats you outside of the office. You need a break from Tripp. Like a permanent break. Forever.”

Em sighed. She knew Ashley was right. Hell, they had the exact conversation, but reversed, when Ashley was miserable with her former real estate firm and that horrible boyfriend, Richard.

“Okay, one thing at a time, Ash. I’ll do the interview. It’s a start, right?”

Em sat staring at the offer letter in her hand. It was real. It was really, really real.

She hadn’t truly believed it when the recruiter called yesterday with the verbal offer, and when she said that a written offer letter would arrive shortly, boy, she didn’t exaggerate: the letter came by courier within 20 minutes of their conversation.

Better yet, the offer included a 90-day lead time to wrap everything up at her current job so she didn’t leave anybody in a lurch. The substantial bump in pay, plus a nice signing bonus, plus quarterly bonus, only sweetened the deal. It was perfect. No more crawling under desks to find out that some partner had “accidentally” unplugged his computer and no more cleaning up viruses from work computers infected by downloading porn from contaminated sites.

Em thought back to her interview with the charismatic Irishman. He had truly seemed to value her ideas. He asked interesting questions during the interview, and she thought he answered her own questions candidly.

Em sent Ashley a quick text: “Got the dream job.” Seconds later, her phone rang.

“Woo! Now you can get a new place and a new boyfriend!” Ashley gushed.

Em snorted.

“That converted Victorian is for sale, you know, Em,” Ashley said nonchalantly. “You know, the one that you drool over whenever we pass it? I think it’s a sign.” Ashley knew very well that her best friend saw portents everywhere.

“Really?” Em said, trying very hard not to sound interested. “Oh, Ashley, it’s too big. What would I do with a place that big?”

“It’s just the top floor that’s for sale; the bottom floor sold about five years ago. The upper apartment was a rental and the owners don’t want to deal with it anymore. And guess who the agent handling the property is?” Ashley sounded very pleased with herself.

“Ash, that’s great! Congratulations!”

“We can go see it tomorrow.”

“Ashley, we’ve talked about this. I am
not
buying a house, at least not yet. Tripp and I are looking around for a condo, probably at the Belle Avalon development.”

Ashley scoffed at Em. “My doubts about you actually buying a house with that asshat aside, you’re not a condo type of girl. You’re a converted Victorian type of girl, and you know it. And besides, I thought you wanted your own place?”

“Well, now that I’m not going to be working with Tripp every day, maybe things will get better between us.” Em cringed as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She sure hoped things improved, but they couldn’t get much worse. She sighed. “I guess it couldn’t hurt to look, could it?”

“Yay! You’re going to love it!”

*****

“What do you mean, you got another job? What about our team? What am I going to do?” Tripp Holbrook both sounded and looked like a petulant child.

“You stick out that lip much more, you’re going to step on it,” Em said.

Tripp rolled his eyes. “God, I hate it when you get all folksy.”

Em glared at him. “Tripp, you know I’ve wanted to move in another direction for quite some time. This is a perfect opportunity to do so. Besides, I’m not starting for a good three months so I’ve plenty of time to wrap things up and get you up to speed. Suck it up, buttercup. You’ll be fine.”

“Wait, you’ve already accepted the job? What did Dad say about it?” Tripp sounded frantic.

“Your father was pleased. He actually knows the fellow that I’ll be working with. He thinks it’s a great opportunity.” Em resisted the urge to stomp her foot and add a snotty “So there!”

Tripp clenched his jaw. “Since you’ve got this fancy new job, I suppose you’re going to want to move into a fancy new house and get a fancy new boyfriend.”

“Actually, I don’t want to move into a fancy new house, I want to move into a fancy
old
house. I don’t want to move into a soulless condo or some suburban McMansion. There’s this converted Victorian that I’d like to take a look at. And as far as ‘fancy new boyfriends’ go, you, Tripp, are plenty fancy. Heaven save me from any man that’s fancier than you.” Em shuddered.

This was the same argument that they had been having for the past five years or so and it was getting very tiresome. Maybe it
was
time for a clean break. At 42, Em had never lived by herself; she’d always had roommates or boyfriends.

Tripp rolled his eyes. “We don’t need a big place, Em, and certainly not as big as a Victorian.”

“But it’s just the top floor. It’s been divided into apartments. You should see the yard, Tripp. The house sits on a big wooded lot; it’s nice and private and has lots of character.”

“You mean it’s a dump that’s surrounded by lots of trees, Em. You think you can live without central air conditioning and lots of electrical outlets for your computers and stereo equipment? I doubt it. And besides, it’s not like we need to have a yard for children.”

And there it was.

“That’s not fair, Tripp,” Em said quietly. “That’s not fair at all.”

They stared angrily at each other until Em left the room. Em’s cat, Beauregard, hopped up on the kitchen cabinet and glared at Tripp.

“What the fuck are you looking at, cat?” Tripp pushed the cat off the counter and stormed out the door.

*****