Road to Nowhere
by Meagan

Notes: I'm finding I like setting these people in the future. Especially ten years in the future. Probably because that's where I am now. This thing would *not* end the way I wanted it to, but it did finally end, so I'm considering myself lucky. And you know, many at-work problems would not happen if people did not sleep with coworkers/bosses/subordinates. Or with vendors or clients or...

That bitch.

Okay, so he's partly to blame, but it no longer comes as a surprise to find out he's cheating on me. We're not even supposed to be "dating" to begin with. Fraternizing within the department and all that. Not to mention that he's my *boss*. So I harbor no illusions that he's faithful or even cares about me. "Harbor no illusions." Pretty fancy talk for a twenty-three-year-old, huh? I guess that's what a college degree gets you these days. That and an intimate knowledge of caffeine contents of various beverages. Anyway, when we get back to the office, I'm sure everything between us will be just like it was before. That's how it always works. He's slime, but I'm used to it. I've stopped caring.

But her.

She was supposed to be my best friend. We were closer than sisters. See, sisters get on each others' nerves because they're *always* together, even when they don't want to be. But that never happened with us. Even though I'm five years younger than her, she always let me hang out with her and her friends when I visited, and she always hung out with my friends and me when she visited. I worshipped her, adored her, wanted to *be* her.

You're probably wondering what I'm rambling about. Sorry. Seething fury sometimes makes me a bit incoherent.

So my parents were out of town -- the state, really -- for the summer. Well, Mom was working in Alaska, and Dad was in Peru or Ecuador or Chile. Someplace in South America. I'm not sure what exactly they do -- hey, I moved out five years ago for college. I have my own life. They're grownups. Mom does some sort of computer work and Dad does some sort of oil thing. I think. He's been working in assorted other countries for a few years now. I remember visiting them one time for some reason. Mom had rented _True Lies_ -- that movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger is a top-secret government agent, but everyone thinks he's an accountant or something. Mom really liked that flick for some strange reason, and when we were watching it (me for the first time, her for the fourth or something like that), she asked me if I thought Dad could be working for the CIA. So I guess she doesn't know what he does, either.

Anyway, the point is, they were gone, so no one was using the cabin. They have a cabin. I guess I forgot to mention that. It's small but beautiful -- a log cabin. Dad went through a log cabin phase in the '80s, so he built one. We spent a lot of time during summers there. She and I would pick berries and feed whatever we didn't eat to the wildlife. She didn't care about the age difference.

Then puberty hit, and we stopped picking berries. She would bring stacks of fashion magazines and piles of makeup, and I would be schooled in the tricks of her trade -- looking beautiful. And I would tell her about my crushes, and she would explain how to make them fall head over heels for me. And she was always right. Everything she said worked. Every time.

So I thought, hey, why not invite her and her boyfriend to the cabin for the weekend? I could get away with taking a few extra days off. One of the perks of boffing the boss. He's always willing to bail on work for a few days, too. And his incredibly hectic social schedule was miraculously blank. For the first time in ages. She said her guy worked nights, so we needed to have a completely dark room -- no sunlight at all -- for him to sleep in during the day so his sleeping pattern didn't get messed up. No problem. There was an underground rec room, soundproofed as an added bonus. Mom and Dad had been irritated by two certain giggling girls and their fondness for loud music well into the night, so what had originally been intended as a fruit cellar became the cousins' exclusive domain.

I did wonder why she stayed with someone who worked nights. I mean, what kind of guy works night shifts? Factory workers, convenience store attendants, and security guards, that's what kind of guy. But then I saw him. All I could think of was a song one of my babysitters used to sing when she took us to the beach and saw football players that went to her school. "I Like 'Em Big and Stupid." The guy was *built*. Dressed in butter-soft glove leather pants and coat with a tight t-shirt underneath. And engineer boots. All black. Not the clothing of a security guard, unless you're talking about a bodyguard to the stars. And gorgeous. And he had amazing eyes. And she adored him. You could tell by the way she leaned against him. Some people very carefully arrange themselves against the objects of affection, as if demonstrating that *they* own the other person. I know I do that. But her posture was so casual that there was no way it could have been conscious or deliberate. I was happy for her. I remembered the agony and heartbreak she had gone through in high school with some guy. Finding him liplocked with his best friend, a girl they had both known forever. Then there was some sort of accident, and she almost died. She had sworn off guys after that. Sworn off love. She locked up her heart and refused to let anyone near her just in case it might happen again. But she had finally found someone that she let get to her.

And I was happy for them. Jealous -- he doesn't act like that towards me, and I know I don't feel that for him -- but happy. It gave me hope that someday I would find someone, too. Someone deserving of my soul.

Back to our story. We had been there a couple of days already. It was a beautiful afternoon. So I was bored. My dear cousin had vanished. I assumed she was with the man she gazed at with shining eyes. My whatever-he-is had disappeared. He does that a lot, though. Even when we're alone in his house, he has this tendency to just wander off and lock himself away from the world. It's like he has some sort of defense mechanism that prevents him from getting too close to someone, and it's physically hiding from everyone. Give him a few hours -- sometimes days -- to himself, and he'll be back to normal. No need to shut himself off emotionally for a while since he's like that all of the time. Another thing I've just gotten used to.

And I've gotten used to entertaining myself. Between life with him and the way life runs itself at the cabin, I had a regular ritual. Pack a snack, grab a book and camera, and find a pretty place to sit and read and watch the animals watch the human. They would get so curious that they would forget that they were supposed to be scared of people. I knew just the place, too. Our secret place, where she and I would go to get away from everyone. Very convenient when it was family reunion time. We could handle our own parents, but once the extended family got involved, things got insane. So we would hide in the clearing.

The trail was still there. Of course, my brother and his wife used the cabin a lot, and their kids were as energetic as you can get without exploding, so it came as no surprise that the well-worn paths we blazed were still there. I heard her gentle laugh. I smiled. So that guy of hers managed to break his normal sleeping patterns for a good old-fashioned afternoon quickie. I turned to leave them alone.

Then I heard him. My him, that is. "So you like that, huh?" Curious, I went back to the edge of the clearing. And I saw them.

Her, naked to the world. Him, head between her legs. What do you say in a situation like that? "Hey, how's it going?" "Get away from him, you skank?" "Need a third?" I ended up just slowly, silently turning away and returning to the cabin.

When I got back, I received a big surprise. Leather Boy was awake. Still in the basement, but the door was open, and music drifted up the stairs. Velvet Underground. Whatever.

"Hey, who's home?" His voice startled me. I'm not sure I had actually heard him say anything the entire weekend.

"Just me, the cousin."

"Come talk to me?" I sighed. He didn't deserve my bile. I had planned on just locking myself in the bathroom and crying for a couple of hours. And never speaking to her again. But he sounded lonely and bored. Maybe I could work in a little payback while I was at it.

So I went downstairs. Since it was underground, it was cooler than the rest of the cabin despite the air conditioning. It may have been a cabin, but my mom is very much a modern woman. She had to have electricity and indoor plumbing. Anyway, he was sitting in a chair. Just sitting there, staring into space. Then he saw me. Even without a mirror, I knew what I looked like. Face blotchy red and puffy, on the verge of tears, hands clenched so tightly that my fingernails were cutting my hands.

He just started talking, unprompted. "Did you know we all knew each other when they were in high school?" I shook my head. We never discussed life before we met. It was just nothing either of us wanted to remember. "They dated. He was her first love. She had gone out with tons of guys before, but he was the first one she actually cared about. Then the accident. Do you know about that?" I nodded. It struck me as odd that she was more or less doing the same thing, this time as a participant rather than an observer. "And that was the end. The friend and her boyfriend got back together, but your cousin never forgave him. After they graduated from high school, I moved to Los Angeles, and she went with me." This I remembered. It was quite the family scandal. A teenager running off with an older man. "And last year, she started letting her guard down with me. Sort of. We had been working together for nine years, and one day, it was like the cage around her had decided to suck me in, too."

I was stunned. Not about the whole nine-years-later thing. The fact that they knew each other. For some reason, it had just sunk in. "Did you know they..."

"Went off together this afternoon?" I nodded. "Yeah, she said she was going to talk to him. Resolve some outstanding issues."

Now I sighed. "Well, either they weren't resolving anything or else they were resolving *way* too much." I stopped. I didn't know this guy, but he seemed nice enough. Caring. Not deserving of the pain he would experience if I coldly informed him that my boyfriend (if he could be considered a boyfriend) was out there giving his girlfriend -- my let's-just-call-him-my-boyfriend's high school girlfriend -- head.

But he just settled back in the chair. "That's what I was afraid of."

So we just sat there, in silence after the cd stopped, until my cousin and the guy I sleep with returned. She didn't even have the decency to look guilty. She just had that freshly fucked glow thing going.

He did look guilty, much to my surprise. And he avoided her the rest of the weekend. And I avoided everyone.

~~~~

So that was this weekend. Today was the moment of truth. The first day back in our real lives. When I got to work this morning, I found a note in my mail box. "I'm sorry." That was it, but it was a hell of a lot more than I had expected.

Maybe he wasn't the sleaze I thought he was.

Or maybe he is. I went to his office, to talk to him about some infuriating yet routine problem with invoices. I found him staring at the wall. Finally, I got his attention, and he asked me to close his door and sit down. "I'd like you to transfer to another department." Just like that. He didn't even say "good morning." "I'll do whatever I can to make sure whatever job you get is equivalent to or better than your current one. I have some people who owe me a favor."

All I could do was blink. And say, "Okay." I could stay in the department, and everyone would be able to see that he and I, ahem, had some issues. Or I could go away quietly and preserve what little dignity I had left. So it's not like I had much of a choice.

~~~~

And that was a month ago. Things turned out okay. I found another job in another department in another building. Completely on my own. No one over here has even *heard* of him, so I don't have to hear the gossip in the breakroom. And, as an added bonus, I'm actually *good* at my new job.

So naturally, everything had to go wrong today. My car broke down on the way to work. I had the dubious honor of hearing the traffic reporters on the radio talk about it. The photocopier ate a report I had been copying for a meeting with some bigwigs. I got hit with food poisoning, so I barfed my way through the meeting. A meeting I was facilitating. Then my hard drive decided to reformat itself.

Then I checked my mail box. A medium-sized padded envelope. My name, carefully inscribed on the front. That was it. I opened it. A long velvet box, like a jeweler would use for a bracelet. And a card. "Congratulations on your new job." He wrote a little note inside. Well, maybe a bit longer than "little." I won't bore you with the details, so here's a quick summary: He acknowledged he was slime. He had asked me to go to another department because he thought I would have a better future in another group. That my talents were being wasted in his group. He was tired of being the person he had become and wanted to get back to his life before everything started falling apart. Before me, but he wanted me to get to know the old him since it wasn't really my fault everything went wrong. Apparently, he used to be different than how he is now, and that person would have never done what he did that weekend. He felt horrible about what had happened. He knew I knew. It was in my eyes when they got back.

I've never had anyone tell me that they could see *anything* in my eyes. Except guys using cheezy pickup lines. "You daddy must have been a thief because he stole the stars and put them in your eyes." Give me a break.

And the velvet box? Not a bracelet, the traditional present from a guy who *really* wants to get laid again, like I had expected. It was a pen. A Montblanc fountain pen. That did it. I always thought he never paid attention to anything, but he managed to notice my fascination with those things. The only time anyone else had noticed was when they borrowed a pen and had my cheap Sheaffer leak all over their hands and clothes.

So I guess that first impression after we got back was right. He's not the scum I thought. Maybe I can trust him after all.

But I'm still not sure if I *want* to trust him.

Then again, I don't want to end up like my cousin. Unresolved issues with an ex-boyfriend. With a great guy but still willing to have a fling with the aforementioned ex-boyfriend, yet unwilling to try to resolve any of the old problems with the ex. And hurting everyone in sight.

So I guess we'll see. There's a rumor going around that a certain well-connected manager is contemplating a sabbatical. An extended road trip to nowhere. I think he may need a navigator.