Free The Ignored by Bentley Little - (ebook by Undead)

himself, and I wanted to smack him, to just walk
around the side of his desk, slap him upside the head, and wipe that smirk off
his smug pretty-boy face.
    Instead, I turned and left, walking straight to the elevator. Accounting
was on the third floor, along with Personnel, and I saw Lisa behind the counter
as I walked through the third-floor lobby. I ignored her and headed down the
main hallway, in the opposite direction of the conference room.
    I spoke to a clerk, then an accountant, then the finance director, and
though I’d half-expected to hear that I had to get Stewart to sign a form
verifying my whereabouts on each working day last week, the director apologized
for the error and promised to get me a check for the difference by Monday.
    I thanked him and left.
    I told Jane about it when I got home, related the entire story to her,
but I couldn’t seem to impart to her the feeling of frustration, the
powerlessness I felt in the face of Stewart’s disbelief in me and his complete
faith in the infallibility of the system. No matter how much I talked, I
couldn’t make her understand how I felt, and I ended up getting mad at her for
not understanding, and both of us went to bed angry.

 
 
SIX
     
     
    I don’t know why my job affected my relationship with Jane, but it did.
I found myself being unnecessarily curt, getting angry at her for no reason at
all. I guess I resented her for not being stuck in a crummy dead-end job like I
was. It was stupid and irrational—she was still going to school and working
part-time, so of course she couldn’t be in the same boat I was in—but I took
my frustrations out on her anyway. I felt guilty for doing so. Throughout all
those frustrating months when I could not find work, she had been there for me.
She had put no pressure on me, she had never been anything but supportive. I
felt bad that I was doing this to her, treating her this way.
    That made me resent her even more.
    Something was definitely wrong with me.
    I’d called my parents when I’d first gotten the job but hadn’t talked to
them since, and although Jane kept pressuring me to do so, I kept putting it
off. My mom had been supportive, my dad happy that I’d finally found work, but
neither of them had been thrilled, and I’d felt vaguely embarrassed. I didn’t
know what kind of job they’d expected me to get after graduation, but it was
obviously something better than this one, and I felt even more awkward about
discussing my work with them now than I had that first time.
    I loved my parents, but we didn’t exactly have the closest family in the
world.
    Jane and I were not as close as we had been either. Until recently, we
had occupied the same little universe, that of the college student, and our free
time had been spent together, doing the same things. But there were differences
now, gaps. We were no longer in sync. I worked from eight to five, came home,
and my day was done. I relaxed and read, or watched TV. She had night classes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays and on those evenings did not come home until after nine.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays she did schoolwork or prepared activities
for the kids at the day care center.
    Her weekends were spent in the library or in the bedroom, buried in
textbooks.
    My weekends were free, but I still wasn’t used to that. Truth be told, I
didn’t really know what to do with myself. Throughout my college years, I’d
either had a part-time job or, like Jane, I’d done schoolwork when I wasn’t in
class. Now, having two days with nothing at all to do left me at loose ends.
There was only so much work that needed to be done around the apartment, only so
much TV I could watch, only so much time I could spend reading. Everything grew
old fast, and I was conscious of the weight of all this free time. Occasionally
on weekends, Jane and I would go grocery shopping or hit a movie matinee, but
more often than not she was doing her school stuff