New Rules NYC (#Wattys2015 Winner)

The Aftermath

CHAPTER 36: EMMA

Uncertainty was the most terrifying alarm clock. Michael walked through the room purposely making a bunch of noise to irritate me. I pulled off the eye mask.

"How was the night? Late one."

The room slowly come to form through hazy eyes.

"Good, yeah."

"What time did you get back?"

"Um. It was pretty late. There was a bit of an after party." I stretched up on one arm then decided I needed to lay back down.

"It was after five, that is a decent knock party girl."

"I was celebrating, it went really well."

"Great." He said in that familiar tone of his.

I raised my head slightly to take in his sour look then dropped it back down on the pillow, reaching over to grab my phone, which was now of course flat.

"Can you plug this in for me? Please."

After moping around the room he finally took the phone and plugged it in on the other side of the room, making it obvious he was in a grump.

"It went really well. Everyone loved it, I'll show you some pictures."

"Yeah. It get pretty loose?" He replied.

"Not especially. A bit afterwards, most of them went back to an after party in Tribeca. Another ridiculous apartment. If you can call it an apartment. So many rooms."

"Look at you. Lifestyles of the rich."

It felt horrible talking to him, all of a sudden I was this cliché, this contrived personality with lame little secrets. I realized I could no longer be pissed off with him for anything, a selfish remorse that I was now the one in the wrong. The regret came in waves, the grimey crunch of feeling like a slut followed by the self-loathing that I had fucked with the one real opportunity that I had going for me, and before it even had a chance to breathe. It hadn't even given it the air to come life and I was doing what I could to destroy it.

There was a third wave, flashes of last night - good looking people smiling, dancing, a new side to the city, a taste of decadent New York. I tried to explore more memories of the night but Alex and Charlie forced their way in, him controlling me from behind as I looked up at her. I wondered if this was a regular thing for them, if this was their plan all along. Maybe they never even wanted to invest, why would they? A girl with no business background, young, naive – just an easy target. I heard her words, "it's my turn to take care of you." I felt sick.

My phone buzzed to life with a couple of messages: ten missed calls from Marcus, three missed calls from unknown numbers - terrors ran through me, unknown numbers were the worst, they always did it to me, even the sudden fright of a phone call and the possibilities of what it could mean often sent me spinning.

< Marcus>

Hey. Call me when you can.

<Marcus>

- So sorry... call me. Had some trouble with the cops after packdown. Gonna crash out. Talk as soon as you get this. -

"Fuck"

Michael came into the room.

"What?"

"Dunno. Marucs might have had some issues after I left."

"Really? You didn't stay till the end? Rookie move Emma."

"Shut up."

Marcus's phone rang though to his message, I hated voicemail but left a quick message anyway. I didn't have the faith to get out of bed just yet, I still needed pillows to shelter me from the hard edges of reality. My phone rang, I had to stretch half off the bed to answer it.

"Marcus, what's up? What happened?"

"Hey, how are you?"

"Good. What the fuck?"

"I think you're gonna get a bit of shit from some council dude, he ended up coming down when we were packing up."

"What? Random."

"Yeah, it's all my fault I guess. We finished most of the pack up and had a couple wrap drinks with the dance crew."

"Oh my god. What the fuck?"

"It sort of escalated but there were only ten or so of us. Then a couple of cops turned up, treated us like shit. Then this council dude, who kept trying to call you. They just booted us all out. I mean, we had everything packed up so it wasn't a big deal"

" What time was it?"

"Not that late, I dunno, not that late."

"Fuck, Marcus, I told you we needed to be fully out of there by eleven. The dude was super straight on that."

"Ah, yeah, it was probably after eleven. Time kind of got away on us. Everyone was really pumped after the night, you know."

"Ok man. I'll see you later on to drop off the stuff right?"

"Yeah, for sure. Let me know when you're heading over."

I'd probably be stuck with a huge fine, it would have to come out of the budget. This 'disruptive startup' was turning into some low brow amateur event management operation.