Big Bad Billionaires [Volume 1] Page 7

  Not for the first time since I’d met Emily, I walked home with a puzzled expression on my face after work; wondering how I could figure out what my next move should be and racking my brains for a solution to the breakdown in communication between Emily and I. Despite the fact that I was feeling slightly anxious about the whole thing I tried to relax as I thought about what was going on with Emily. I decided to approach it almost like some kind of epic quest as I tried to figure out a way back to her warm embrace. I couldn’t imagine that I had done something to offend her in some kind of way that she didn’t want to tell me about, as she’d always been very quick to tell me when I was doing something that was irritating her. I felt confident that I would eventually figure out what was going on with her and relaxed as I walked home in the late afternoon sun.

  Not for the first time since I’d met Emily, I started whistling as I thought about her on my way back home to my humble little apartment, not far from my dad’s electronic factory in Round Rock, Texas.

  I got home and took a shower to wash away some of the sweat and grime from another hard day’s work at the factory. The shower heads didn’t work that well and I was confined to another lukewarm shower, which left me feeling slightly annoyed and unsatisfied afterwards. I lay down on my couch and just closed my eyes to relax. This had become something of a habit for me during the weeks I’d now spent without even the basic luxuries of a TV and radio to keep me entertained. I found that I could see things more clearly when I thought about everything this way at the end of the day and this occasion was no different. I realized that something was up with Emily and that she, for whatever unknown reason, didn’t feel like she could talk to me about it.

  There was only one solution, no matter from how many different angles I looked at the problem. I would have to scrape up the courage to go and see Emily again at her apartment, despite the fact that my last visit there had been so disastrous.

  Sometimes it only takes ten seconds of incredible courage to make a miracle happen my mother always used to say to me and I now realized that I was going to have to follow my mother’s advice if I was to have any kind of hope of getting through the obstacles in my way. It had been a while since I’d thought about anything my mother had taught me through the years and I suddenly wondered if I’d been neglecting my relationship with my mother.

  I called my mom on the payphone outside the factory every now and then and she always assured me that she was constantly speaking to my dad to try and convince him to just let go of the silly idea of forcing me to prove myself. I truly appreciated the fact that she was sticking op for me at home, albeit with no signs of success, and I decided to make more of an effort to talk to my mom and take care of her if I was ever fortunate enough to make it back to my privileged place in the sun back home in Malibu.

  Ten seconds of incredible courage I whispered to myself and got up from the couch. How bad could it be? The worst thing that could happen was that Emily could chase me away and tell me never to come bother her and Justin ever again.

  I shut the front door of my apartment behind me at about 7 pm and started walking, very slowly, in the direction of Emily’s apartment two blocks away from my own. I knew that she wasn’t working overtime, as I’d managed to finesse that little piece of information out of her despite her general reluctance to talk to me at all on the assembly line, so I knew there was at least a good chance that she would be at home. I had no idea what I was going to say to her and hoped that I would be able to come up with something on the spot. I didn’t expect her to have anyone else there with her in her apartment, but it was at least possible that there could be some kind of nasty surprise waiting for me, such as an angry ex-husband or something. I slowly walked the rest of the way over to Emily’s apartment, chasing up ghosts in my mind as I went along.

  When I finally stood in front of her apartment my heart was beating like crazy in my chest and I felt excited and terrified at the same time. Whatever the reason for Emily’s strange avoidance of any communication with me had been, I was probably about to very shortly find out what it was.

  I knocked three times and Emily opened after a couple of seconds. She looked at me for the longest time without saying anything and then promptly burst into tears.

  “No, please don’t cry,” I said and took her in my arms, “Whatever is wrong we will find a way to work it all out.”

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to do it but I had no choice and now you’re going to hate me forever!” Emily sobbed. She was making absolutely no sense so I walked her inside and closed the door of her apartment behind us.

  “What are you talking about? I asked and gently wiped away her tears with my fingers.

  “The TV and PlayStation you bought for Justin…I had to sell it to pay the rent!” Emily sobbed and her whole body shook as she cried uncontrollably in my arms.

  It was like a shot of cold water in my face. I felt quite upset about the fact that Emily had sold the TV and PlayStation and thought little Justin probably felt the same way about it. The only thing I felt grateful about was that I finally knew what had been troubling Emily.

  “If you had to do it then you had to do it,” I said and kissed her on her forehead. I tried my best to keep my emotions in check, but an almost irrational anger was building up inside me.

  “So you don’t hate me?” she asked and looked up at me through her tears.

  “Not at all,” I lied, “although Justin probably has a slightly different view of the whole thing.”

  “You can say that again, Emily replied and started crying again, “I don’t know if he’s ever going to speak to me again.”

  “He will get over it and it’s good practice for him…it won’t be the last time in his life that he’s disappointed by a pretty girl like you,” I said.

  “That’s a horrible thing to say!” Emily said and looked up at me through her tears.

  “Now sit down for a second and I will get you a glass of water,” I said and led Emily over to the couch in her living room. Justin was sitting in the lounge, staring out the window at nothing in particular. He looked up and greeted me but didn’t say anything else and I could see that he was very upset. That’s when I really lost it and my anger took control of me as I saw how badly Justin was taking the whole thing of his mother selling the gifts I’d bought him. I walked over to the kitchen and felt like I could just shout at Emily in frustration of doing what she did without even discussing it with me.

  When I came back from the kitchen Justin wasn’t there anymore and I could hear the door of his bedroom closing as he went off to go and sulk some more about the loss of his TV and PlayStation.

  Now you know what it feels like when they take all of your favorite toys away in one fell swoop little buddy I thought to myself and remembered the sense of anger and loss I’d experienced when my dad took away my Porsche and credit cards. Despite Emily’s tears and the fact that she was clearly quite distressed about the whole thing I was now very angry. It wasn’t just the fact that she’d gone and sold the gifts that I’d worked so hard for, it was also the fact that she’d tried to hide from me what she’d done and the fact that she apparently didn’t give a shit about the way it had affected Justin. Her inconsiderate actions felt like a slap in my face and it had broken her own son’s heart in the process.

  “Can you please stop crying now? I said in an irritated tone of voice.

  “I knew it, you’re angry with me!” Emily cried and the tears started flowing freely again.

  “Well not that it seems to matter to you, but I worked two weeks overtime to buy those gifts and you don’t even seem to care that you’ve gotten rid of the only real toys Justin seems to have ever owned in his life!” I shouted and stomped around the living room like a wounded buffalo.

  Emily said nothing and just sat there crying. I realized that there was no point in staying there any longer as I was probably only going to get even angrier than I was already so I got up and stormed out of Emily’s ap
artment. I walked home in a rage and realized that I’d been keeping a lot of my frustration bottled up inside me about the poverty I’d been forced into by my dad’s stupid little fucking game of getting me to prove myself. I’d been pretending that it was all some kind of adventure or quest, while it really was nothing more than a continuous struggle for me.

  I got home and sat down on the couch just to get some kind of equilibrium back. I realized right away that I’d taken a lot of my personal frustrations out on Emily and that she didn’t really deserve it. I regretted my thoughtless actions right away and wished I could just give her a phone call to apologize to her, but then remembered that I didn’t even own a fucking cell phone.

  I lay down on my couch and tried to relax but it was as if my mind was in a spin and I could quite switch off. It took me almost a very long time before I felt calm again and when I looked over at the alarm clock on the table which was the only way for me to tell time after I’d sold my Rolex watch for $100, I saw that it was close to midnight already. I walked over to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. I thought that a beer would have been nice to help soothe my frayed nerves, but water was all I had in the house. I walked back to the living room and lay down on the couch without even taking off my clothes.

  I fell asleep right there on the tattered old couch, thinking I would apologize to Emily first thing in the morning when I saw her at the factory. I was working a later shift than usual and Emily would probably already be hard at work by the time I got to the factory; perhaps she would already be over the whole drama of the TV games and my terrible reaction when I found out at she’d sold it to pay the rent .

  I had the strangest dream after I fell asleep there in my living room. I dreamed that Emily was sitting in a little rowboat with Justin and I was standing on the shore, watching their ship as the waves came crashing over it. I tried to get in the water to swim over and help them, but Grant Belmont was standing right behind me and he kept pulling me back by my shirt as I tried to reach forward.

  I woke up in a cold sweat and wondered what the hell the dream could possibly mean. Perhaps it meant absolutely nothing at all, but I still thought that I would have to do something real soon to try and help Emily and Justin out financially so that she wouldn’t be so stressed out about paying the rent…and the day was fast approaching that someone was going to have to do something about Grant Belmont so he would just stop bullying everyone on the factory floor.

  EMILY

  As angry and heartbroken as I felt about Nathan’s words I had to admit that he was right about one thing; I had broken Justin’s heart by selling his PlayStation and TV and there was no real way for me to make up for it.

  I wondered if I’d done the right thing…was there perhaps another way I could have gone about it without having to sell off the only real toys Justin had ever had in his short little life? What if I’d opened up to Nathan about my financial difficulties and asked him to take Justin and I in under his roof…would he have done it or would that have been one step of commitment too far for him? No matter how many times I tried to run all of the various possibilities through my mind I got no real answers and realized that I was simply going to have to live with the consequences of what I’d done.

  On top of everything else my car was starting to give me more and more trouble and I realized that I would have to get the money from somewhere to have it serviced before it stopped running for good.

  I fell asleep right there on the couch and woke up late the next morning, about half an hour before I had to be at work. I’d never gotten around to setting my alarm clock the previous evening and now it was a race against the clock to make it to work on time. I felt so guilty about selling Justin’s stuff that I spent the little time I had left before work to make him a proper breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast.

  When I finally got outside and climbed in behind the steering wheel of my little car and turned the key in the ignition there was absolutely no response from the engine. I tried gain, to no avail.

  “Oh God please no, what else can go wrong today?” I muttered under my breath and got out of my car to start walking to work. It was at least a 20 minute walk and I just hoped that old Jerry would be able to cover for me like he always did.

  “Grant wants to see you in his office,” Jerry said when I finally arrived at the factory and tried to clock in. He looked very concerned and I could just tell that Grant had somehow gotten wind of the fact that I was late.

  “Close the door behind you and don’t sit down,” the ill-mannered swine said after I’d knocked and entered his office. He looked even more like arat than usual, as he’d tried to put some kind of gel in his hair and it just looked absolutely awful.

  “I want you to hand in all of your work clothes and sign out for the last time,” he said as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

  “Why?” was all I could say while my heart started pounding right through my chest.

  “Because you’re fired, that’s why,” Grant said. He had a hideously satisfied expression on his face and just held his hand up when I tried to protest.

  “Please save me the sad stories, you’re more than 20 minutes late and you know our policies.”

  I walked out of Grant Belmont’s office in a daze and felt like I was living through some kind of nightmare.

  “I’m so sorry Emily, I tried my best to stop him,” Jerry said and I could see that some of the other factory workers were close to tears when they realized that I’d just been fired.

  “It’s okay Jerry, I know it’s not your fault,” I said and handed him my work overalls. I didn’t even register anything else that Jerry was trying to say to me and glanced around the factory floor one last time before leaving it for the last time as an ex-employee of Edward Electronics.

  When I finally got home I just sat down on a chair in the kitchen in absolute shock and wondered what I was going to do next. It suddenly seemed like such a waste that I’d sold Justin’s TV and PlayStation as we would soon be without an apartment anyway, despite all of my efforts to get money together to maintain our lease.

  “Are you okay mommy?” Justin asked and put his arms round me. It finally all became too much for me and I burst out crying while my courageous little boy tried his best to console me.

  “It’s okay mommy, I’m not angry about the TV games anymore,” he said and that made me feel even worse.

  “You’re such a wonderful son and I love you so very much,” I said and sent up a silent prayer towards heaven that some kind of door would eventually open up for Justin and I so that we could just finally have a normal life.

  “I love you too mommy.”

  I thought of all the time we’d spent in the little apartment and how difficult it had been just to survive most months. Even though these had been very hard times this was still the only home we knew and now even this place was about to be taken away from us. We could just hang around indefinitely and hope for some kind of miracle, but time had taught me that miracles were few and far in between for a single mother working a dead end job.

  There really was no choice. I would have to scrape together what little cash I had left and put some gas in the car and drive off with Justin to my parents in Arkansas. I knew that this would probably put a strain on them, as my dad would be going to hospital soon with the money I’d sent for his emergency operation, but it was either that or Justin and I would end up living in our car. As I was thinking along these lines it struck me that my car might not even start up for the trip to my parents. It sometimes gave me trouble when it was cold in the morning and then it would be fine again once it got warmer…I just hoped it would start and made a mental note to have it serviced sometime very soon.

  “How would you feel like going on a little trip with mommy?” I asked through my tears and Justin looked so excited when I said it that I forgot about all of the challenges ahead and the fact that I’d been fired for just a second.

  “Yippee! A real holid
ay!” Justin shouted and despite the fact that I was crying I smiled at his childlike faith. Perhaps it was time for me to stop worrying so much and to simply believe that things would all somehow work out in the end.

  I got out two bags for Justine and I to pack our clothes and most important possessions in and took a final look around the little apartment before closing the front door behind us. I left the key in the window and realized I couldn’t give a damn if someone found it there and broke into the place. All of Justine and my belongings had fitted into the two bags I had packed and all of the furniture and other things left in the flat was the property of my slimy landlord who never made an effort to come around and fix everything that needed fixing so I didn’t really care what happened to his stuff inside the flat.

  Justin looked so happy that I also managed a smile as we walked outside together. I opened the boot and put our bags inside and then got into my car to see if it would start.