Nicole Helm - All I Want

His didn’t quite have that effect, though. His made her grin back.

He plopped the goat soap into her palm and she blinked for a second before remembering the routine. Wrap it up. Get yourself together, because you are not sixteen.

“Well, I certainly appreciate your business.”

“I can’t resist a good saleswoman.”

A little flush crept into her cheeks, totally against her will. Oh, he was too charming and he knew it. Somehow, it didn’t dilute her reaction at all. “Keep me in mind for all your soap and lotion needs.” She plucked a card from her table and handed it to him, trying not to cringe at how ridiculous that sounded.

“My...” He cocked his head, gaze running from her table back to her.

His dark eyes met hers, and one side of his mouth quirked up. “I don’t have a lot of soap and lotion needs, but I’ll still keep you in mind.”

He was flirting with her and it had...been a while. Her life was pretty isolated these days. Not so much by design, but necessity. Running a goat farm all by herself was hard work, and she didn’t know a lot of fellow thirtysomethings as interested in cloven-hoofed creatures as she was, aside from the occasional satanist.

He pocketed her card and took the bag of soaps. “I’ll see you around.”

“I’m here every Saturday.” Oh, brother. That was just lame. But he smiled and nodded, and she let herself stare as he walked away.

Really nice butt.

Designer jeans.

Couldn’t win them all. The fact of the matter was, cute and flirting or not, he was the type of guy she’d known all too well growing up. The nice clothes and expensive watch, that serious business resting face.

He was a type—a type she had no interest in.

Oh well. It didn’t hurt to look, especially when the chances of him returning were slim to none. When her phone chimed in her pocket, she stiffened. The text from her mother wasn’t unexpected, but it felt cruel. Mom surely considered it efficient, but the timing, the brevity...

The funeral will be Thursday.

Grandma was gone. Meg hadn’t been allowed to be in the hospital for fear she might “upset people.” Even though Grandma had been the only one to stand by her. Even though Grandma had set her up with the farm after Meg got out of rehab, and even though Grandma had supported her through every setback.

As though that hadn’t been bad enough, every offer of help with arrangements had also been rebuffed. Because it was what they wanted. No one in the Carmichael clan was thinking about what Grandma wanted. Would have wanted. All they could think about was appearances. What people might think.

It had been drilled in them for generations, Meg figured. This strident need to show only perfection and success.

To them, Meg would always be a failure. Always be imperfect.

Meg blinked away tears and forced her lips to curve upward as two women passed. “Good morning! Goat milk soap has many skin benefits. Can I offer you a brochure?”

Suck it up. Smile. Pretend nothing is wrong. Mom would be so proud.

CHAPTER TWO

“OBVIOUSLY WE’LL OFFER you a reference as this isn’t a reflection of your abilities.”

Charlie sat in the cushy chair of his new boss’s office, which had been his old boss’s office, but now...

He blinked, trying to make his thoughts follow a straight line. This wasn’t out of the blue. He’d known this possibility existed. But now it was here and he somehow couldn’t wrap his brain around it.

“We’d like you to stay on for a few weeks, ease us through the transition. You’d be compensated, naturally. Alisha here will go over your severance package once that’s done.” Mr. Collins nodded toward the human resources woman Charlie had never met because she’d come from this new company.

It didn’t matter who she was or what she went over, he was being let go from the position he’d worked his ass off for. He’d poured ten years of his life into this company and what did he have to show for it? A severance package?

“I’m sure you’ll land on your feet. You’re sharp. I’m sorry we couldn’t keep you, but you know how these things go.”

Mr. Collins held out his hand, the same dismissive gesture Charlie had extended to others in the past. But always for performance reasons. He’d never had to lay off a member of his team just because.

But Charlie had been businessman professional too long not to smile politely, take the offered hand and let Alisha usher him down the corridor to her office. An office that had belonged to Marissa, a mother of three, not that long ago.

This new woman’s office was spare and efficient, absent of a million hand-painted drawings with goofy magnets along the edge of the filing cabinet. No giant bowl of hard candy at the edge of her desk either.

Things like this had been happening for weeks, and he was shamed to realize how it’d failed to hit him until he was the one getting the ax. Change usually meant a person’s life was being upended. The changes that had been sweeping through the office hadn’t been voluntary or easy for most involved.

But he’d been too wrapped up in himself, in how much he deserved to stay, to notice how it was affecting people, and that shamed him too, deeply.

There was paperwork to fill out. Alisha spoke in gentle, patient tones, so he nearly felt like he was back in kindergarten, complete with her escorting him back to his office.

His office. His.

“You’ll want to start notifying your clients,” Alisha said in that elementary school teacher voice. “Before they hear from anyone else.”

Right. Work to do. Clients to notify so the company that was firing him—no, laying him off—didn’t lose any business. He would need to prepare everything to turn over to his replacement, whom he’d meet tomorrow. It didn’t matter that he’d been let go, there was still work to do.

For the afternoon, he worked as diligently as he had the previous ten years. Making sure clients understood nothing would change, readying files and binders. He efficiently and methodically worked to make his job something he could simply hand over to someone else.

It was a long day of continuous surrealism; none of it really sank in. Because he had a few weeks ahead of him, of training someone else to do his job. He had weeks of making sure things were “in order.”

So, at the end of the day, when he shut his laptop down, he thought this would feel the same too.

Instead he stared at the blank screen. His usual next step was to snap it shut, slide it into his briefcase, check his phone one last time for emails or messages and then walk out. Most Thursday nights he ate dinner with his parents. It wasn’t a day to stay late in the office, like he did every other night.

But the IT Department had asked him to leave the computer so they could prep it for his replacement. He didn’t know how to walk away from this extension of himself that was going to be handed off to someone else.

His replacement.

He looked around the office that had been his for almost two years. He wasn’t a knickknack kind of guy. There were some awards on the wall, a picture of the Wainwrights from Lainey’s first birthday on his desk next to his Stan Musial–signed baseball.

It would take him ten minutes tops to erase himself from this office, and he didn’t know what that said about him, or his job, or his life; he only knew it felt like it meant something—something not particularly good.

* * *

MEG PACED THE SIDEWALK outside the church trying very hard to breathe through the sobs that racked her body.

She couldn’t hear what was happening inside, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She didn’t want the prayers or priest’s words telling her Grandma was in a better place. What better place was there than here—at Meg’s side?