Page 1 of Mr. Hall's Sunshine

Chapter 1

The office has abruptly gone silent with the first two booming footsteps after the elevator dings, signaling Mr. Hall’s arrival. It’s as if even our clients know not to call lest they interrupt the silence because not a single phone rings as we collectively hold our breaths. I swear, even the weather holds its breath as the sun retreats behind gray clouds on what had otherwise been a bright and sunny morning.

It’s now or never, I think to myself as Mr. Hall, the owner of the small accounting firm where I work, stomps past the block of ugly gray cubicles toward his darkened office behind my desk. I’m the only one not concealed by three cubicle walls, so I have nothing to duck behind like my coworkers do whenever he roams the floor, the lucky bastards.

Jessica, the only HR employee we have, is out on her honeymoon for the next two weeks, the lucky bitch, so I need Mr. Hall to sign off on my maternity leave. All he has to do is sign a few papers, which will only take a few seconds. Yet every previous attempt I’ve made to get him to do so has been met with a cutting eye and a sharp, “Not now.”

I’m the lone, brave (not really) soul who sits up straight and plasters on a strained smile to greet him as he approaches my desk like an angry bull. If his thin-lipped and narrow-eyed expression didn’t give away his shitty mood, his clothes certainly do.

His gray blazer is balled in a tight fist, his brown patterned tie is wrinkled and pulled loose around his throat as if he tried to rip it off in frustration, and his white button-down sleeves are shoved up his thick, veiny forearms instead of artfully rolled up as some men do by the end of a long workday. Then there’s the fact that his usually perfectly styled, thick, black hair is a tangled mess like he’s been repeatedly ripping at the strands.

So even though he looks ready to murder someone, I pull in a deep breath and open my mouth to greet him in a cheery, professional manner. I don’t get much further than a barely audible, “Good morning, Mr. Hall.” I cringe and clear my throat, knowing I need to speak with more confidence if I want to get his attention. “Mr. Hall, I just need a moment of your time,” I say as he looks straight over my copper-red head as if I’m not here. “Please, Mr. Hall, just a minute for you to sign—”

“Not now, Sunny,” he barks without looking at me as he barrels past my desk, swerving around my outstretched hand with the documents I try to hand him.

“Mr. Hall!” I shout with rising panic, knowing that once he closes himself off in his office, there’s no telling when he’ll come out again. I have an appointment with my gynecologist after lunch that I can’t miss, so I can’t wait around hoping to catch him before he leaves for the day, whenever that is, since he usually leaves well after everyone else has clocked out.

I groan as I brace my hands on my desk and push myself up to stand, which has become increasingly more difficult with each passing month. If I weren’t at the tail end of my pregnancy, I’d hustle down the hallway hot on the heels of his size thirteen, brown leather oxfords, but since I am, it’s more like a drunken waddle. It’s made all the worse by the three-inch-high, black, peep-toe pumps that I simply refuse to give up, even though they’re extremely impractical and make my waddle that much more pronounced. I have to take three careful baby steps for every one of his long strides, and just the short twenty feet down the hall to his door leaves me heaving for breath.

Shit, I really should have kept up with my prenatal exercise classes instead of slamming back root beer floats while rewatching episodes of my guilty pleasure Jersey Shore for the millionth time.

“Mr. Hall, please! Just thirty seconds is all I need,” I beg as I wave the papers in the air.

He rounds on me after unlocking and opening his office door, fury lining the edges of his face. His dark eyes are so narrowed that I wonder if he can even see me through the slits. I also wonder if that’s intentional or not.

“Fuck off, Sunny, before I fire your ass and give you permanent maternity leave,” he growls, snapping his clean-shaven jaw closed before slamming his office door right in my startled face just as I finally catch up to him.

That’s it! I. Have had. Enough!

Enough of his shitty, abysmally-less-than-professional attitude that’s only grown immeasurably worse the longer his divorce to his horrible almost-ex-wife, Mary, drags on. It’s not my fault he’s stressed about having to dole out cash hand over fist to his expensive lawyer every time Mary forces him back to negotiations. And it’s not my fault she’s threatening to take half his business and sell it. Yet I’m the one who has to deal with the fallout day in and day out.

Fuck. This. Shit.

I shove against his door so hard that it bounces off the wall and nearly slams in my face again. I shove it even harder this time, making the walls shake on impact, and quickly step into his stuffy office before it can hit me as it rebounds and closes with a crash.

“Fuck you, Mr. Hall, and fuck your permanent leave bullshit! You’re going to sign off on these right now,” I shout as I wave the now-crumpled papers in front of me. “I swear to God, if you don’t, then Mary will be the least of your problems!”

Fury mottles his tan face as he looms large and imposing behind his custom oak desk, ham-sized fists braced on the gleaming dark wood as a vein pulses up the side of his neck and down his forehead. It looks ready to pop as it bulges, and I’m momentarily distracted enough that I lose some of my anger, concern for his health starting to creep in.

Not that he deserves any of it.

“You’re fired, Sunny!” he shouts and bangs a fist on his desk, the sound thundering loud enough that I’m sure the whole office heard him. “And good goddamn riddance! Nothing but a headache since you were hired with your Mr. Hall this, Mr. Hall that because you can’t go a blessed second without biting at my heels and up my ass every second of every day.”

“Fuck you, you’re fired!” I scream, leaving my throat feeling raw. It’s an utterly ridiculous thing to say, and for a beat, his rage ebbs. He crooks his head to the side like a dog does when it’s adorably confused. “I’m your goddamn assistant. Of course, I’m always up your motherfucking ass, you overgrown, pop-eyed buffoon!”

Chapter 2

I’ve gone too far. Somehow, out of this whole absurd interaction, it’s that last nonsensical insult that’s crossed the line. He knows and I know it, and I cross my swollen fingers behind my back while I try to laugh it off.

“Ha, these crazy hormones. Mood swings and all that, making me say the whackiest shit that I totally, definitely, one hundred percent do not mean. You know how it is…” I trail off.

I curse myself and pinch the bridge of my nose when I remember that, no, he doesn’t know how it is, because Mary isn’t currently four months pregnant with his baby, but her paralegal’s baby…the paralegal who is even younger than I am and barely looks old enough to even be a paralegal. The one she told him he had nothing to worry about, of course, after so many late nights working on big projects.

I never did like her and the way she sighed in irritation every time I had to field one of her calls, and that was before Mr. Hall caught her cheating, and his contemptible attitude spiraled from there.

If possible, he grows even redder in the face as his rage comes back with a vengeance. He straightens to his full intimidating height. His fists curl and release at his sides, and he’s dangerously close to grinding his teeth down to nubs. My eyes go wide as the vein in his neck bulges impossibly thicker.

I’m not scared that he’s going to put his hands on me, though, as much as it looks like he wants to. For all his big, bad, scary bullshit, deep down, he’s a good man. Wayyyyyy deep down, but it’s still there, and I try to tap into it as I approach him like he’s a cornered animal…like a cornered buffoon, if you will.

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