Page 91 of An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love
“Told you it would be good, didn’t I, Leonard?” Angela beams.
Gramps nods, his cheeks flushed with enjoyment.
“You better not leave Wally’s poop lying around,” I stage-whisper. “You’ll end up on Tabitha’s next slideshow.”
As we join the crowd trooping outside onto the grassy lawn, Gramps says, “You know, we could do a presentation about Wally! With some photos of him doing tricks—oh, and the photo of the original Waldo, too.”
“Excellent idea,” Angela says briskly. “People always love anything about dogs.”
“You could help me make it,” Gramps continues.
I make a noncommittal noise in response, my cheerful mood dissipating. I won’t be here for the next PowerPoint night, but Gramps doesn’t know that yet.
I hang back and tell them that I’m going to go for a walk on the beach. I watch Gramps and Angela continue on, the pale dusky sky arching overhead. I can’t avoid it forever; I have to tell Gramps that I’m leaving.
Chapter 31
I walk longer than I normally would, and deep down I know it’s because I’m waiting for Gramps to go to bed. If he’s asleep when I return to the condo, that will be one more night that I don’t have to tell him the truth.
When I get back upstairs, I hear snores rumbling from behind his bedroom door. It takes me a long time to fall asleep; I toss and turn, my mind going over every possible way that I can prolong my stay here, or at least put off telling Gramps for a bit longer. But there aren’t a lot of options, really. I can’t quit my job when I worked so hard to get it. I already used up most of my vacation time. I could take a leave of absence. But when I open my laptop at twoA.M.to check the leave-of-absence policy, I learn that I would be forfeiting my health insurance, and my job would not be guaranteed to be waiting for me upon my return. That’s too risky for me.
I finally fall asleep, promising myself that I’ll tell Gramps before the end of the week.
The next morning, I’m barely online long enough to check my calendar and respond to a couple of Slack messages when an ominous email lands in my inbox.
It’s from someone I’ve never heard of named Chelsea. My eyes jump down to her signature: She’s from the HR team. My firstthought is that it’s something generic that was sent to everyone—but from the first sentence, I can see that it’s not. It’s just for me.
Hello Mallory,
As we prepare for our employees to return to the office, we are gathering data about who may or may not have trouble complying with the policy. It has come to our attention that, although you have a home address and an assigned office in Seattle, your recent VPN logins have occurred from an IP address in the State of Florida. This flagged our attention, so we took a look and found that you have been logging in from Florida for several weeks now.
Your manager is CC’d on this email. She will schedule a time to discuss this with you. Please be aware that you are still assigned to a Seattle office and will be required to meet the in-office requirements starting next week. Also, please note that working from an unauthorized location can be grounds for termination.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Chelsea Hudgeons
HR Connections Team
This is my nightmare. It’s like I’m reliving what happened with my first remote job. How could I let it get to this point? I’m going to be fired…again.
I pace my bedroom, my hands shaking. The abruptness with which Kat schedules a one-on-one meeting only adds to my anxiety. I’m certain she’s going to fire me over Zoom. And then what?Then I won’t have to leave, a small voice in my brain says. But this tiny voice is quickly shut down by the louder voice, the one that’s always been there, shouting,I need this job. I somehow got this job after being fired from my last one. There’s no way I could pull off the same trick twice.
The good thing about Kat scheduling such a last-minute meeting is that I don’t have to dread it for long. The bad thing is that it’s as uncomfortable as I could have imagined. Kat’s tone is terse, disappointed, as she expresses her dismay that I could lie about something like this for so long. I desperately want to point out that I didn’t lie, I just didn’t explicitly tell her the truth. Instead, I opt for the pity angle, telling her all about Gramps and how he needed family support after Lottie’s death. I don’t know if she had been planning on firing me before, but my little sob story softens her a bit. She ends the meeting by saying that as long as I’m there in the office next week, and I don’t pull something like this again, it will all be water under the bridge.
So that’s it, then. I got away with it. But now it’s over. Now I am really, truly leaving Reina Beach. Because coming this close to losing my job has firmly squashed any dreams I had of staying here. The concept of staying here, unemployed, with no idea where my next paycheck will come from? It’s terrifying.
As soon as work wraps up, I meander into the living room, where Gramps is watching TV in the dark, Wally curled up on the couch beside him. I’m surprised to see it’s not the news, but a baseball game.
“Whatcha watching?” I ask, sitting in the armchair beside the couch.
“Rays game,” he replies.
“So…” I scan the game happening on TV, looking for a conversation topic, but all I can come up with is, “Are we winning?”
“Mm.” Gramps nods, his eyes glued to the screen.
“I didn’t know you were a baseball fan.”
