Page 123 of Swim To Me

“I’ll be outside your building in ten minutes.”

“But, Grey—”

“Miss Clark?” I turn to find my boss peering at me from the doorway. “Can you please wrap up your phone call?”

“Of course.” My voice sounds warbled and watery even to my own ears. “Aura? I’ll-I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

“Is everything okay, Miss Clark?” asks the older woman once I turn my phone off. She doesn’t have a hair out of place and is dressed in a full pant suit even on a Saturday, completely put together, while I feel like my whole world is spinning out of my control.

I can’t speak, settling for an unconvincing nod instead.

“I’m glad to hear it. You know we don’t usually allow phone calls, but I thought with the most recent headline this morning, it maybe be something you might need to handle. Is everything handled, Miss Clark?”

Blood rushes loudly through my ears.

Fuck, fuck, fu—

I feel sick.

My boss knows. She’s seen his headline about me, about my relationship. What if my job is going to be impacted? God, I—

“Everything is handled,” I lie, not wanting to show how I really feel.

“She might think less of you,”my brain, unhelpfully, chirps.

In my mind’s eye I can see my imaginary mental downward spiral in front of me. It looks rather like a spiral staircase, and I stand at the top, one foot still planted to the solid floor, the other foot raised.

Am I going to step down and allow myself to spiral?

Or am I going to hold on tight and stand tall at the top?

I grip the edges of my phone tight, until it digs into the flesh of my palm.

Breathe, Delilah. It’s okay.

Stand tall.

I swallow down the nausea threatening to bubble up.

“Will this–will my relationship effect my job? It’s come as a bit of a shock to see myself in the paper, you see, and I—”

“Your personal relationships outside of the office do not affect your job, Miss Clark.”

“Good…” I let out an unsteady breath. “Thank you.”

I follow her back inside of board room number two, retaking my seat and grabbing the glass of water waiting beside my stack of papers. I gulp down a third of the glass, the liquid slipping down my throat and cooling my insides but doing nothing to stop the heat of my flamed cheeks as the rest of my colleagues watch me.

They’ve seen the article. They must have. They know.

Everybody does.

The rest of the meeting floats past me, none of it sinking in to my consciousness. My mind is elsewhere…

What does the article say exactly? How much of it will be the truth? Does Grey know? Did he know it was going to be printed? Why hasn’t he rang me? Or texted?

I don’t even realise the meeting is over until everyone around me starts to pack up and leave.

Standing, I pick up my handbag, down the rest of my water and power my phone back to life. I have a number of text messages from Aura, the most recent only a couple of minutes ago promising to be outside of my office in a few minutes so we could talk but nothing from Grey.

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