Earth Bound (25 page)

There was no misreading what she’d said here.

He suddenly realized why he’d come into the room, even though he knew she wasn’t there—he had to hear what she was saying, loud and clear.

He sat on the edge of the bed, put his head in his hands, and waited.

Although he knew damn well she wasn’t coming.

Charlie threw back her head and quaffed the bottle of beer in her hand. It was lukewarm and flat. She guzzled the last third anyway. She’d been lucky to find a store open to sell her some, but if ever a day required alcohol, this was it.

She tossed the empty bottle into the trash. It clattered on top of the others. She pulled another from the six-pack—she still had two more to go before she was out—and she popped the lid off. She used the bottle opener she’d started keeping in her purse around the time she’d begun meeting Parsons.

She’d pick up beers, or he would. It had been companionable. It had been a relationship, for all they’d both denied it.

He was in there, mourning that she’d given him up. She wanted to know how long he would wait.

Based on the fact he hadn’t yet emerged, she might be here for a while.

She was kneeling next to a window in a hotel room across the courtyard from where he was. After he’d left her alone in the computer department, cleaning all her plans, all her designs, off the board, she’d waited twenty minutes. Twenty frozen minutes while she’d fought back tears and burned with rage.

She wasn’t surprised by what he’d told her, not really. She’d known Hal was up to something. In retrospect, the signs had all been there. Hal didn’t believe in her; he sure as hell didn’t care about the mission. Dot and Beverly had been correct about him the very first day: He was a manager, and managers tended to believe corporations did better work.

She could almost imagine the scene when Hal and Stan had made the decision. It had probably been on a golf course somewhere. They’d worn loud checked pants and had fat cigars dangling from their mouths.

“Well, I was thinking we ought to undercut our own team, ignore all the hard work Charlie is doing,” Hal had undoubtedly said.

“Why not! We’ll buy you a golden ticket to industry and screw the girl in the process,” Stan had said back.

Then they’d have laughed about how efficiently they were ruining everything and take turns slapping each other on the back.

The beers were going to her head. She was getting silly and irrational.

She kept drinking.

What she didn’t know, what she couldn’t figure out, was Parsons’s role. He wouldn’t have been on the golf course. But when had he known? And why had he accepted it?

Had he known last night, when she poured herself out for him? Had he known as he took all the frustration she felt at her parents and released it? As he’d worked over every inch of her body and left pleasure behind?

So after her twenty frozen minutes, she’d made her way here. She located his car, but she’d kept driving around the motel until she arrived at the office.

“I want a room across from the guy who came in a few minutes ago,” she’d told the clerk.

The clerk had a pale face framed by stringy brown hair. In the little more than a year she’d been Parsons’s lover, she’d met him she didn’t know how many times. She’d gotten used to the clerk’s sneer, to the knowing gleam in his eye when she’d come in. Now was the first time she wanted to plug him in his little snot nose.

“Across from?” The request confused the clerk.

It didn’t make any sense to her either, but all she could say was that she had to know how much hope he had. She wanted to see the moment it ran out. Then maybe they’d be even.

“Yes,” she’d repeated. She slapped some money on the counter. She didn’t have to ask the rate. She knew it better than the clerk did, probably. “Give me the damn key.”

She’d driven to the alley, parked her car, and walked to room fifteen, carrying her beers and her purse.

He’d still been there, so she’d taken up a vigil across the way.

The lights in Parsons’s room were off. There wasn’t any flicker from the television. He didn’t smoke, so there wasn’t even the telltale orange glow from a cigarette. He’d left the blinds open, so she would have been able to see whatever was happening.

But all she could see was darkness.

She sat, her forehead against the glass, and waited.

A bit later, she finished the last of the beers and checked her watch. It was after midnight.

This was getting stupid. Maybe she should go over there and confront him.

He’d wanted her to, earlier in the evening. He’d been expecting it. Yelling was second nature to Parsons. First nature, some days. He would have been happier if she’d called him names, if she’d voiced all the ways he’d let her down.

That was precisely why she hadn’t.

She had given everything, everything, to this job. She wasn’t yielding another inch.

She heard a sound then, and she pushed herself up a spare few inches to watch.

He’d come out. He’d reached the last bit of his hope.

He walked out into the parking lot, which glowed sickly yellow from the street lamps, and stood for a moment next to his car. His shirt was pulled out of his trousers and unbuttoned, his tie in his hand.
 

And his face? Destroyed. His eyes were unfocused, and he was working his jaw like he’d been punched.

Looking at him now, like this? She felt nothing.

For an hour after he’d left, she sat there, empty and aching.

Parsons stared at the papers on his desk, seeing none of it.

His work was his refuge, his comfort—
and he could not do it.

Even after George had died, he’d been able to work. There was always something to do. Chores, schoolwork… something.

But now he could only sit and stare at everything he should be doing. It was as if Charlie had wiped his mind as clean as that board last night. And the rest of him as well.

A light knock at his open door had him looking up.

“Mr. Parsons?” Peg didn’t sound as timid as usual.

He blinked at her. Were his glasses smudged or his vision blurred? He couldn’t tell. “What is it?”
 

His voice sounded broken, but he was too tired to care.

“I brought you some tea.” She held up a dainty cup with flowers on it.

Tea
? His brain wouldn’t latch onto the word. “I don’t drink tea.”

He had lost Charlie, he couldn’t work, but he remembered that much about himself.

She bustled across the room. “No, but you seem… ill. I thought it might help.”

He took the cup from her because he wasn’t sure what else to do. The scent of honey and lemon rose from it and he was suddenly thrown back to childhood, to when he’d had whooping cough and his mother had made him tea just like this. Such an extravagance that had been for her sick boy—she could have given him plain tea.

Peg reached out and put a hand on his forehead, her palm cool against his skin. He was too surprised to stop her. “No fever,” she said. “But you look terrible. You should go home.”

He’d never taken a sick day in his life. And he didn’t think “broken heart” was on the list of medically acceptable reasons to leave work.

“I’m sure the tea will help,” he said. A wave of warmth and honey hit his nose again.

He took a breath, pulling that comforting sensation deep into his lungs. Maybe the tea
would
help. His mind felt clearer—he didn’t feel better, but he did feel as if the fog might have thinned. Maybe he could even get back to work.

Peg’s expression was uncertain. She probably looked at her kids the same way, trying to gauge how sick they were. “I fixed it special.” Her mouth twitched as if she might say more, but instead, she went for the door.

“Peg?” His voice was a little stronger there.

She turned back, a hand on the doorframe. “Yes?”

“Thank you. For the tea.”

She gave him a small smile. “Of course. It’s my pleasure.”

He took a sip, spice and sweetness and the tart hint of lemon filling his mouth. Peg was right—it was special.

Parsons picked up his pen and turned to the stack of paperwork waiting for him.

A few hours later, Parsons walked into Jensen’s office, feeling like he ought to be carrying his hat in his hand.

“What’s going on?” Jensen asked. “You look like hell.”

“Too little sleep. The usual.”

“You look worse than usual.”

Parsons must look close to death if he looked worse than usual. He tried to straighten his shoulders, to appear as if his world wasn’t leached of all color. “I wanted to discuss the contract for the guidance computer.”

Jensen pulled a face. “What’s to discuss? Hal assures me Maynard will do better than even our in-house team.” His exasperation turned to concern. “Why? Am I missing something here? Why are you so worried?”

I'm in love with Charlie Eason, and I have this delusion that she’ll come back to me if I return the project to her.

He’d realized that sometime last night, as he'd waited for her against all reason. As the ache within him bloomed fully into pain, grew petals of agony and thorns of yearning, he knew—he loved her.

It was the only answer that had made sense in the long, senseless hours last night. And why wouldn’t he love her passionately? She was brilliant, beyond competent… and she’d seen something in him. For a time.

But no more.

“I only have a bad feeling.” He had many, many bad feelings, but none that were really about Maynard’s reliability.

He was standing here in front of the ASD director arguing against his decision—and Parsons couldn’t say with certainty whether it was because he truly thought Maynard would do a bad job or because he wanted to give Charlie what she wanted.

Jensen laughed. “A feeling? You don’t have feelings. Look, I know that the rendezvous concept is your baby. Contracting this little bit out isn’t going to threaten your ownership of the idea. I know everything you’ve done. I remember.”

Stan didn’t understand. This wasn’t about him, not at all. “What about Dr. Eason’s efforts? She’s done some terrific work on this, above and beyond her assigned duties.”

Jensen shrugged. “She’ll find something new to do, then. Given Dr. Eason’s… position, I’m sure she’s used to disappointment by now.”

So that was to be their excuse:
She’s used to it, so we can keep overlooking her, underestimating her. We’ll never give her her due, since she doesn’t even expect it.

Parsons gritted his teeth, searching for his civility. He couldn’t lose his temper here. “I think that you’re wrong. I think she feels these disappointments as keenly as you or I would.”

The director studied him with a narrow gaze. “Why are you here discussing the disappointments of one junior member of the computing department?”

Parsons went rigid. But Jensen's expression was puzzled rather than suspicious, which meant he likely had no idea what had been between Charlie and Parsons.

According to Jensen, Parsons had no feelings. Not for her or anyone. Parsons wished he were so lucky.

“I don’t want to lose the people I've come to rely on because ASD is taking them for granted.”

Which was true, but also bullshit at the same time. He’d already lost her, at least in the way that counted most, but to have her leave ASD over this… The mission needed her almost as much as he did.

“I never would have thought you’d ever be in my office worrying over a team member’s feelings.”

Parsons never thought he would have, either. There was the work and there was the mission, and his feelings didn’t enter into that at all. Except with Charlie and with this project—work and her and himself were a hopeless knot in his chest, without even a dangling thread to start on.

“Maybe I’ve learned something about management,” he said finally.

Jensen looked at him for a long moment, a moment in which Parsons feared the other man saw past his flimsy concerns about “team members’ feelings.” After an agonizing pause, he said, “If she’s unhappy, she’ll need to take it up with Hal. She’s his concern, not yours.”

That was more true now than Jensen would ever know. Parsons cleared his throat. “Very well. I’ll take my computing concerns to him.”