Love’s Gamble

Chapter 9

When Freema awoke the next morning, her head was once again pounding. It was an even more vigorous pounding sensation than the previous day, but she knew exactly why she was feeling this way. Unlike the previous morning, she woke up in pain but not unaware of what had happened the previous night, or the previous day for that matter.

After the disaster with Ken, she had gone back to work. She had gotten to work late and her boss had given her an earful, but she had stayed quiet and listened to him. She had not wanted to make it so that her boss would fire her, that was something that she just did not need at the moment. And so, she went to the desk where she worked and just sat there silently. She worked very little that day, but her boss was too preoccupied to realize. She ended up going through the motions for the rest of the day, and when the time came to leave all she could think of was how good it was going to be to get home and drink herself into a coma.

That was exactly what she did. She turned her phone off and put it far away; where her drunk self would not be able to access it in case she texted Ken in that state of inebriation and embarrassed herself, and then she poured herself drink after drink and fell asleep in that state.

And so, when she woke up this morning she knew exactly what had happened and why she was feeling this way. This was not something she was happy about, though. That just meant that the situation she was in was still real, it was still something that she had to deal with.

She looked at the clock. “Motherfu*k!” she exclaimed. It was almost eleven. She was even later for work today than she had been yesterday.

Swearing the whole time, she quickly brushed her teeth and changed into the clothes that she would be wearing for the third day in a row now. She knew that it was going to be difficult to deal with her boss today. She knew that it was going to push her to her very limits, but at the same time she knew that she was just going to have to sit there and take it. She did not have an option. She needed this job, and her boss knew it. He was going to give her a very hard time indeed, and she was just going to have to sit there and take it.

She got to work at half past eleven. Her boss looked at her from across the room. He had a venomous look on his face. He was clearly extremely pissed, even more so than usual. She wondered what had gotten his panties into such a wad. She was late, it was true, but he seemed to be having a bad day of his own. She groaned as he stomped up to her, the look of rage on his face evident.

“Why are you here?” he said.

“What?” asked Freema. “I work here.”

“Do you?” said Donovan. “Do you really? Because I am starting to feel like you just come in here to pass the time when you have nothing else to do. I certainly do not feel like you work here, especially since you only seem to come to work when you feel like it.”

Freema remained silent.

“You do realize that you have to get to work at nine, right?”

Freema nodded, still silent. She wanted to say a lot of things but she knew better than to say such things. If she let herself go even for a moment, it would end up causing a lot of problems. She would not be able to stop. If she started venting now, that would be it. She would never be able to stop herself and that would lead to her saying a number of things to her boss, none of which were very pleasant. So she remained quiet, difficult as it was to do so.

“You know what?” said Donovan. “I am starting to think you don’t need this job anymore. I am starting to think you don’t want to work for me. Maybe you have something better to do. A nicer job, perhaps. Maybe you should just go there instead of wasting my time here.”

Freema was silent but she knew that this was not going to cut it this time. Donovan knew that she needed this job, and he was enough of an asshole to make her beg for it. He was not going to let her off easy, not at all. He was going to force her to tell him that she needed to work here, that she needed him to allow her to stay on. He wanted to hear her say the words.

“Well?” said Donovan, angry that she was not begging him to let her stay on. “I think you do want me to fire you. Go ahead, then. Out the door.”

He pointed to the door and Freema looked at it. Suddenly, something in her shifted. All of a sudden, that door no longer seemed like the worst thing in the world. It started to seem a bit like freedom.

“Fine,” said Freema.

“What?” Donovan spluttered. “What do you mean fine?”

“Fine,” said Freema. “That’s what I mean. I am leaving. I am quitting this sh*tty job. You can find someone else to take your sh*tty pay.”

“Excuse me?” said Donovan. “I am your boss. You are to treat me with respect!”

“Not any more you fu*king cu*t,” said Freema. “All this time I have been working for you and I have never been late. Not even once. I have never gotten here any later than nine fifteen, and even then you have given me a hard time. It’s not difficult to see that I have been having a difficult couple of days. It’s not difficult to see that life has not been treating me well recently. But a fu*king idiot like you is too self absorbed to even think of something that someone else might be going through. No, you are too much of an asshole for that. So go fu*k yourself, Donovan. Go fu*k yourself.”

Donovan looked as though she had just slapped him across the face. He was not at all used to being spoken to like that, and it clearly enraged him. The best part of this was that there was nothing at all that he could do. She had just quit. She had taken all of his power away from him, and now all he could do was watch her walk out the door, powerless to stop her.