Chapter 82: Keeping Up Appearances
If anyone were to ask him how his weekend had gone, Derek’s answer would be something along the lines of "It was very productive. I attended a few functions, played some golf, and at the end of it I made quite a few useful connections, and they should all prove to be very beneficial in the future," And while he had done all of that, and had not told a single lie in the statement, he would have been lying by omission.
The truth was that Derek’s weekend had been awful, and all of the events that he had attended had been a way to get his mind off the situation with Emily. And that when he had gone to play golf, he had been in terribly bad form. More interested in attacking the grass than in actually hitting the ball.
The whole time all that he had been thinking about had been Emily. How she was? Where she was?
Was she at home, curled up in a ball, crying her eyes out? Not likely, she was probably out at a party somewhere telling strangers what an awful boss he had been and how much better her life was without him in it. Such thoughts’ had him attacking the green with more vigor.
And more than once over the weekend, Derek had fought the urge to just blow up Emily’s phone with calls.
"That would be stalking, Derek, you are already toeing the line with the stunt you pulled with her resignation letter. Do not make things worse," He would tell himself each time he caught himself looking at her phone number.
And when he had not been talking himself down from calling her, he had been talking himself down from getting into his car, driving to her apartment and just hitting the horn until she came out.
"No, Derek, we are not doing that, that is also stalker-ish," He’d had to remind himself countless times over the weekend. But in the end, he had made it. Though that probably had a lot to do with him clinging to her coat, the one she had given him to scream into the night the power plant crisis had begun. Derek had meant to give it back, truly, he had just wound up taking it home with him instead, and now it was all that he had left of Emily. Thanks to the coat, he had hung on through the weekend, somehow convincing himself that she would come back for it. But now it was finally Monday.
A dreary, depressing Monday with no Emily in sight. And she would never be in sight, because she had quit. Coat or no coat, she was not coming to work.