Scandal

Chapter 10-1

Chapter 10

“Holy God! How did my life get so damn complicated, Rose? Who did I do wrong in a past life to bring all this on me? It's karma—it has to be!”

All I heard was laughter on the other end, laughter that seemed to go on forever. “Rose? Rose . . . stop laughing!”

“God, I can't help it. You're too funny sometimes, Sasha. Especially the karma part.”

“Rose!”

“Okay, okay,” she said, still laughing, “You need to calm down. It’s really not the end of the world even though I know it certainly must seem that way.”

“Rose, you’re my friend, and I know you're supposed to say stuff like that to me, but it's utter bullshit. You know it, I know it, and the whole world knows it.”

“Melodramatic much?”

“No, I think I'm right on the money. Sol told me to stay home—basically until further notice. Does that sound positive to you? It sounds like an epic disaster to me. I'm going to lose my job. Roger made a special trip to the office, and that was hours ago, and yet I’ve still heard nothing from Sol. That's bad news.”

“No news is good news. That's what they say anyway.”

I couldn't help but laugh. Maybe I should just spend the whole day laughing because things certainly couldn't get any worse, right? I sighed deeply, “Rose, please. What am I going to do? Should I quit? Because really, I probably should. It's inevitable that I’ll be fired at this point.”

“Really? You're his stepdaughter, for crying out loud. Maybe it was just a bluff.”

“No, he made it perfectly clear it didn't matter that I was family, if you want to call us that. He said I would be done if I went ahead and got involved with Sol.”

“Yeah, but it may actually be okay. Sure, he threw out his threats, but now that it’s actually happened, he may just give up the whole thing. What's he going to do if Sol wants to continue things with you?”

“What do you mean if? Why wouldn't he want to?”

She was laughing again. Rose seemed to laugh at me regularly.

“That's not what I meant and you know it, so relax. In fact, you need to relax about the whole thing. At least wait until you’ve heard from Sol before having a complete mental breakdown.”

“That’s solid advice, thank you.”

“No problem, just do as I say. Find out what he says and then make a decision on whether or not you quit. That is, if you even have a job left to quit. What you don't seem to understand, Sasha, is that all these decisions could end up being made for you. So there’s no point in freaking out and stressing yourself over it. You may have to just deal with whatever comes your way. Open a bottle of wine and chill.”

My phone started beeping, and I looked at it.

“Oh my god! It's Sol calling. I have to let you go. We'll talk later.”

“Okay, bye. And good luck.”

I clicked off on that call and took Sol's.

“Hi, I've been going nuts on this end, wondering what's been going on.”

“Sorry, it's been a mess on my end, too. Can I come over, and we'll talk?”

“Sure.” I clicked off the line and felt a little off. He wanted to talk, but he hadn't sounded overly cheery. Maybe it was bad news. I didn't think I could handle any more bad news. He was coming over, however, so I was going to find out one way or another what was going on.

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