Harvard hottie, p.14
Harvard Hottie, page 14
“He doesn’t?”
She shrugs. “Well, you know, he’s so rich and high class. You usually seem to prefer poor and smart.”
“Luke’s smart,” I say. “He’s really smart.”
“Maybe that’s how he eked by,” Jenna winks.
We’re ordering our second round of beers when I see a familiar face walk into the bar. It’s Rita Barnes, who used to be a programmer at our company before moving on to a different job. Way back when, Rita and I used to be good friends. We drifted apart after she left the firm, but I’m thrilled to see her.
“Rita!” I call out, standing up and waving my hand around to get her attention. “Rita! Over here!”
Rita lifts her beer and catches sight of me. When she turns, I realize that she looks tired and old. She has bags under her eyes that weren’t present years ago. “Ellie…” she says. “My God, is that you?”
I nod and gesture for Rita to join us. She obliges somewhat hesitantly, and she and Jenna exchange introductions. “What are you doing around here, Rita?” I ask.
Rita takes a long swig of her beer. “Job interview,” she says. She sighs. “It didn’t go that well.”
“The other job didn’t work out?” I ask, trying to sound sympathetic.
“It worked out fine at first,” Rita says. “Until the company got bought out last year. We all ended up losing our jobs. I’ve been out of work for the last six months.”
Jenna’s eyes widen. “Bought out? By who?”
I grip my beer glass and pray to God that she’s going say the name of some company I never heard of. Or any other company besides…
“Thayer Industries,” Rita says. She takes another swig of beer. “They’re the worst company in the country. That’s what they do, you know. They buy out companies, strip down the waste, and fire everyone.”
“Fire everyone?” Jenna’s face is white as a sheet. I can’t even imagine how I must look.
Rita nods. “They hire new college grads who will work for a quarter of the salary. They kept a few people around, but they had to take huge pay cuts. Basically, the company takes advantage of the fact that the economy sucks right now.”
“That’s… horrible,” I manage.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard of the guy who runs the company, Lucas Thayer,” Rita says. Yeah, may have heard the name a few times. “He’s a monster. He’s got a reputation in the business circles for being a heartless, ruthless bastard, and let me tell you, it’s totally true.”
“Oh?” I say.
“He has zero compassion,” Rita says. “There was a woman at our company who was a single mom with two kids and he figured out a way to say she was breaking her contract so that she didn’t get any severance pay. He’ll turn up the demands and the hours so that everyone quits. He provides health insurance because he has to, but he uses horrible policies with practically no coverage and gigantic deductibles.”
I want to cry out, Luke wouldn’t do that! But suddenly I’m not so sure. Maybe he would. You don’t get so rich by being nice. You get rich by being a heartless, ruthless bastard.
“I met Thayer once,” Rita says. “He has fantastic PR that keeps his name from getting run through the mud in papers and even on the Internet. He pays off Google, I heard. Anyway, the guy’s actually in a wheelchair—he’s a quadriplegic or something. Apparently he’s bitter and wants to destroy everyone else’s lives too.”
Jenna and I exchange looks. Finally, she says, “How do you know all this?”
“Well, it’s all rumors,” Rita says. “It’s hard to find on the Internet because like I said, he pays off the search engines. But when you search hard enough, it’s all there.” She frowns at us. “Why so interested?”
Jenna’s at a loss, so I quickly say, “A friend of ours is in a company that was bought by Thayer Industries.”
“Then your friend is on a time clock,” Rita says. “She should start looking for a new job right now.”
Great.
“Anyway…” Rita rises to her feet. “I really just stopped in for a quick drink. Didn’t mean to burden you with my troubles.”
“It was nice meeting you, Rita,” Jenna says, who looks very pale by now.
After Rita is out of sight, Jenna turns to me in panic. “Oh my God,” she says. “I’m going to get fired. I’m going to have to move back in with my parents.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” I say, trying to be reassuring. “Luke won’t fire you.”
“Well, obviously he won’t fire you,” Jenna says.
“He won’t fire you either,” I say firmly. “Trust me.”
Jenna and I finish our beers, but we’re both too nervous to talk much. I need to get home and figure out exactly what people are saying about Luke.
Chapter Nineteen
The first page of search results on Luke is all nice, complimentary stuff—articles about what a great business genius he is. But this time, I keep looking. And I’m led on a trail that finally reveals to me the rumors that Luke has been trying to hide from me all this time.
It’s hard to say what’s true and what’s not, but damn, there are some people out there who despise Luke Thayer. I mean, really, really hate him. “Heartless” is probably the kindest word that’s used to describe him.
There are a couple of stories I see that really stick with me:
My company was purchased by Thayer Industries last year. I was one of the company’s best employees, but that wasn’t enough to save my job. When I was laid off, I was six months pregnant and had just purchased a house. I tried to make an appointment with Lucas Thayer to see if I could keep my job, but he refused to see me. I finally got in to see him and he wouldn’t even listen to my case. He called security and had them violently drag me out, even though I was eight months pregnant at that point. I went into early labor as a result. I also lost my house.
I picture Luke throwing a pregnant woman out of his office and I feel sick. And it gets worse:
When Thayer Industries purchased my company two years ago, everything changed. We used to be a laid back firm where employees enjoyed coming to work. Everything changed after Thayer took over. At age 58, I was forced to put in huge amounts of overtime and was working nearly every weekend. I was told that if I was too old to keep up, I would lose my job. The result was that I ended up separated from my wife and had a heart attack. When I returned to work after my heart attack, I was told that since I was no longer able to do the work that was expected of me, I was being fired. I was replaced with a 22-year-old graduate from MIT who worked for a third of my salary. They finally got what they wanted. Lucas Thayer is a miserable, heartless man who is out to destroy anyone who keeps him from making an extra dollar.
Every web page I found had dozens of similar stories. I know what Luke said about rumors not being true, but it’s hard to believe that none of this is true. Especially after what Rita told me.
It’s very hard to read these things. I love Luke. Or at least, I thought I loved the person whom I thought he was. These stories don’t seem consistent with the person I’ve gotten to know over the last few months. Yet they do somehow seem consistent with the boy I met all those years ago in college.
If the things on the web are true, that means that the Luke I’ve fallen for isn’t real. It’s just an act that he’s put on to get me to fall in love with him. He realized that the guy he was back in college wasn’t what I wanted, so he’s decided to pretend to be someone different.
What frightens me most of all is that even though the Luke I knew in college was an arrogant jerk, he wasn’t evil. The man described on these websites is evil. He’s a heartless, bitter, money- and power-obsessed man, who’s universally hated by just about everyone.
Could that possibly describe Luke?
Well, either way, I know that I’m going to have to confront him about all this.
Chapter Twenty
The next night, I arrange to have dinner with Luke in Brookline. I want to be on my own turf, just in case I need to storm out. As usual, he whines for a minute about how Brookline is too inaccessible, but when I tell him he needs to suck it up, he doesn’t mention it again.
He meets me outside my building, waiting patiently in front of the flight of stairs to get to my front door. Funny how just the other day I was thinking that I should move soon to a place that Luke could get inside.
When I get outside, Luke seems very pleased to see me. He’s wearing his shirt and tie from work, but a more casual jacket on top of it because the weather’s gotten a bit nippy this week. His light hair is tousled from the wind and his cheeks have a little bit more color thanks to our recent outings. He looks, actually, incredibly cute. Yeah, his body isn’t fantastic or anything. But he’s still really hot.
“I missed you last night,” he says to me, wheeling closer to me. “The meeting was so freaking boring. You were all I could think about.”
“I missed you too,” I say, but my voice sounds a little choked.
“Where do you want to eat?” he asks me.
I’m hoping he’ll start whining that all the restaurants are too small and crowded, but he seems in a great mood and genuinely happy to be with me, so he quickly suggests a burger place up Harvard Street that usually has free tables. “Sounds good,” I say agreeably.
We start up Harvard Street and Luke seems a little pensive. “I really am sick of these meetings,” he says.
“Well, nobody tells you to work so hard,” I point out.
“You’re right,” he says. “Actually, to be honest, I’m thinking of cutting back a bit. Or… a lot.”
“Really?” I’m shocked. This is the first time Luke has implied anything like that.
“I’m exhausted, Ellie,” he says. “I kept going because I was good at it and it was really the only thing in my life, but… now there are other things I want to focus on.”
“Oh? Like what?” Like killing puppies?
“Like you,” Luke says, looking up at me.
I swallow hard and am glad we’ve come to the restaurant, so I get a reprieve from this conversation. We place our orders, get drinks, and take our seats near the back. I know what I have to say to Luke, but the words are sticking in my throat. When I look at him, I can’t believe the rumors could be true. I can’t. But it must be.
“Anyway,” Luke is saying, “I told Michelle that I’m absolutely not doing any more evening meetings unless—”
“Luke, are you planning to fire everyone at my company?”
Luke blinks. He leans back in his wheelchair. “What?”
“You heard me,” I say, my voice wavering only slightly. “Is that your plan? To fire everyone and replace us with kids who just graduated from college?”
“I’m not going to fire you, Ellie,” he says, his brow furrowed.
“But what about everyone else?” I press him.
He stares at me for a minute and rubs his forehead. Finally, he says, “Yeah, that’s the plan.”
At that moment, the waiter comes by with our burgers. The two cheese-covered slabs of meat sit in front of us, but I have no appetite and I doubt Luke does either.
“So,” he says, “you finally learned to search the Internet.”
“This isn’t a joke, Luke,” I say.
“No, it’s not,” he says. “And I told you before that when someone has a lot of power, people say vicious things about them. Things that aren’t necessarily true.”
“You just told me it was true!” I nearly cry.
“It’s not the entire truth,” he says. “I don’t fire anyone who doesn’t deserve to be fired. I have my people look at each individual and determine if they’re doing their job properly. If not, I let them go.”
“So you think nobody in my company is doing their job properly?” I shoot back. “They all deserve to be fired? Does that really make sense?”
“Ellie,” he says quietly, “are you aware that your company was struggling? In another year, it would have been belly-up. That’s how I bought it so cheap. Your bosses were thrilled to sell to me.”
“That’s not true,” I say, although I’m not entirely certain of that. I heard some rumors that the company was having trouble making ends meet.
“It’s absolutely true,” he says. “And the reason for that was that there’s rampant waste in your company and people who are not doing their jobs.”
“That’s not true,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say.
“For example,” he says. “Take your friend Jenna. You’re her boss. What exactly has Jenna contributed to the company recently? How has she made the company any money?”
I have a sinking feeling in my chest. “She debugged the Kingston software…”
“You mean the software that had to be recalled because it wasn’t working properly?”
Somehow I find myself thinking back to expository writing class in college. How Luke and I used to argue and somehow he’d always seem to get the better of me. But not this time. I won’t let him.
“What about that pregnant woman you fired who lost her house?” I point out.
“I didn’t know about the rule that pregnant women can get paid for not doing their jobs,” Luke says. “That woman hadn’t contributed anything of substance in a year. I logged two thousand games of solitaire on her computer. She actually had the nerve to complain when I blocked Facebook on the company computers. So yes, I fired her. And I know she’s written online that I drove her into preterm labor when I had security throw her out of my office, but she didn’t really leave me any choice when she burst in like a crazy woman, screaming threats at me.” He shakes his head. “She sued me too. Did she mention that? She sued me for wrongful termination and a bunch of other bullshit charges. And I won, because every reason I had for firing her was entirely justified.”
As usual, he has an excuse for everything. And of course, it sounds so logical and rational when he says it. “So it doesn’t bother you at all to see people with families lose their jobs?”
“I give them a chance to pull their weight.”
“But asking them to work nights and weekends?”
He frowns. “If they’d do their goddamn jobs during the day, they wouldn’t need to put in nights and weekends.”
I don’t know what else to say. I look over at our uneaten food, slowly growing cold.
“Ellie,” he sighs. “You have a fantastic work ethic. You must have realized that a lot of your team wasn’t pulling their weight. I bet you were just doing all their work and not thinking anything of it. But you have to understand that you can’t do the work of an entire department. It’s because of your friends that you’re so concerned about that you were going to be unemployed in a year when the company failed.”
I want to believe him. It would be so much easier to believe him. But there’s still one more thing that’s tugging at the back of my mind. “What about Rita Barnes?”
“Rita Barnes?”
“She worked at a company you took over about a year ago,” I say. “She was a great programmer with a good work ethic and you laid her off.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know who she is and I didn’t fire her personally. But if she was fired, there must have been a reason.”
I feel unsatisfied by his answer. I pick up a napkin from the table and start fiddling with it.
“What do you want me to say, Ellie?” he asks. His eyebrows are furrowed and he looks nervous.
“I don’t want to see anyone in my company fired,” I say.
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Okay.”
“Okay? Just like that?”
He shrugs. “I’ll bankroll the company. I’ll lose a few million dollars. It’s okay. It’s worth it.”
I’ve never heard anyone talk like that before. A few million dollars either way, no big deal.
“Are we okay then?” he asks.
I can tell he desperately wants me to say yes. And I want to say yes. I’ve been so happy with Luke the last few months. But I can’t get the things I read out of my head. I can’t stop thinking that there must be some truth in it.
“You don’t trust me anymore,” Luke observes. His voice is quiet, sad.
“I guess I don’t,” I admit.
“I was afraid this would happen someday,” he says. “I was just hoping it wouldn’t.”
Luke and I just sit there, not saying a word, not making any move to try to eat our cold burgers. I wish I could undo everything I read about him last night. Or at least, I wish it had never been written in the first place. But he’s right. I can’t trust anything he says anymore.
“I think I should go,” I say, rising to my feet.
Luke’s face fills with panic. “Ellie, no…”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I have to.”
“Tell me what to do,” he says. “Please, Ellie. Please tell me what I can do to make this right. I’ll do anything.”
For a second, I take his offer seriously. I try to think of something Luke could do that would change the way I’m feeling right now. But there isn’t anything. I don’t think I could trust him again. I don’t want to be with a man that other people think is a monster. I feel like everything Luke has ever told me has been a lie and you can’t be in a relationship when you feel that way about the other person.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, and just like that, it’s over.
Chapter Twenty-One
I’ve never cried over a boy before. I always thought of it as something that dumb angst-y teenage girls do. That’s something I never was. Even as a teenage girl, I was smart enough to know that boys weren’t the most important thing in the world. Of course, I didn’t get any dates in high school, so that helped.
True to form, I don’t cry over Luke. I do feel shitty over the whole thing, though. I find myself thinking about him a lot, picturing the look on his face when I walked out on him. And even though I don’t cry, I pick up the phone no less than a dozen times with the intention of calling him and telling him I made a terrible mistake.
