Trust the Timing - Chapter 4
No one saw Shane over the weekend. On Monday morning, she sent Rita a text asking her to tell Oliver she was not well and she was taking the day off. Rita told Oliver.
"Did she say what's wrong with her?" Oliver asked.
"No. She just asked me to let you know she wasn't coming in today."
"Ok. Thank you, Rita."
Shane did not show up on Tuesday either. By the end of the day, Oliver was no longer annoyed, he was worried. After work he went to see her. He knocked and no one answered. He knocked louder and eventually she opened the door. She was in her pjs, looking totally dishevelled and her eyes were red rimmed, as if she had been crying for a long time.
When she saw Oliver, she closed the door again.
"Shane, please open the door."
"No! Go away."
"I will not go away until you open the door. We need to talk."
"No, we don't need to talk, besides I have a headache. Go away." He then grabbed the door knob and tried turning it. It was not locked. He pushed the door open and walked in, closing it behind him.
She was sitting on the couch hugging her knees. He sat on a lounge chair opposite her.
She looked at him angrily. "Why are you here?"
"I was worried about you."
"Why?"
"Because you're my employee and I care about you."
"Well, now that you've seen me, you can leave."
"No, I can't."
"Yes, you can." She insisted.
"Shane, how are you?" He said, ignoring her.
"How do you think I am? I'm a mess, can't you see that?"
"You need to come back to work and we will figure things out together."
She glared at him. "There's no WE here, Oliver. There's you and there's me."
"There is a we! We're friends, aren't we?"
"No! We are not!"
"Yes, we are!"
Shane was pouting and arguing like a child throwing a full blown tantrum. Angry tears started rolling down her face. She hid her face in her knees.
"Just go away, Oliver." She said brokenly.
"I will not give up on you, Ms. McInerney."
"You already have, Oliver. I can't work with you anymore. I need to leave the DLO, leave Denver."
"What? No. What have you done?" He stood up from his chair and sat beside her, grabbing her face and lifting it up to look at him. "Please tell me you haven't asked Andrea for a transfer."
"No, I haven't yet, but I will."
"No! You can't do that, Shane. You can't leave. Please, come back to work." "Why do you care what I do or where I work, Oliver? There are other skilled IT people here in the Denver main branch. You can put in a request for one of them to transfer over and work for you."
"But none of them are you."
She pushed him away. "What am I to you, Oliver?" She pinned him with her eyes.
He stood up. "You're my friend." He said, pacing the floor, not looking at her.
"Right! Now that we have firmly established that, you can leave." She glared at him.
"Only if you promise to come back to work tomorrow."
She looked at him for the longest time before she finally asked, "Why did you cancel our showcase, really?"
He stopped pacing and raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. "Shane!"
"Yes?"
"Why are you asking me that? I've already told you why."
"I don't believe you."
"What do you mean? Do you think I'm lying to you?"
"No, but I think you're not being completely honest, I think you're hiding part of the reason."
He sighed. "I'm a married man, Ms. McInerney. I'm waiting for my wife to come back. Surely you can see we were getting dangerously close to making a huge mistake, a sin really!"
"We were just dancing."
"Really? Just dancing?"
"Did we do anything else other than dance, Oliver?"
"No! Not yet, Ms. McInerney, but we both know something else was going on. That's why I needed to stop it while I still could. I have to avoid the appearance of evil."
"Appearance of evil?"
"Yes! Everybody knows I'm married, but appearances would indicate that my relationship with you looks like we may be more than just friends. From the very beginning, we've sort of… got on well with each other. We sort of… clicked!"
Shane had to bite her lip to avoid smiling. She agreed with him though, they did "click!"
"Ok, Oliver, I'll come back to work tomorrow and pretend all is well between us."
"I don't want us to pretend. I want things to be well between us."
"Then, stop pretending, Oliver!"
"I don't know what you mean, Ms. McInerney. I hope my feelings of friendship towards you are genuine and don't require pretence."
Shane decided to let it go. "Ok, see you tomorrow then." She got up and opened the door for him.
He left feeling relieved she'd be back. He believed she'd keep her word. He trusted her with all his heart. Funny! In the past, he had accused her of brazenly manipulating him. But in this instance, he believed she was genuinely upset and did not have any ulterior motives for her emotional display.
The following day Shane went back to work. She had missed being at work and being useful. Self pity did not agree with her. The four of them resumed their normal activities, including spending time together on the weekends. As far as Shane was concerned, she would bury her feelings for Oliver as deeply as she could and she was certain no one would ever find out.
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Rebecca Starkwell, Shane's friend from DC, who had been promoted into a position of power to promote the USPS and lift it up against the competition, visited the Denver main branch.
During her visit, Oliver's team was awarded The Dark of Night award for going above and beyond the call of duty. To celebrate, they went to a restaurant with live music as they all wanted to dance.
Norman, Rita and Becky were having an outrageously good time, while Shane and Oliver sat together silently, just watching the three of them. Eventually Oliver asked Shane if she wanted to dance.
She looked at him angrily. "What about the appearance of evil?"
"We're among friends, Ms McInerney. No one here will condemn two friends dancing."
They headed to the dance floor. As soon as they stepped onto it, the music changed to a slow, romantic tune. Shane cringed. "Do you want to go back to our seats, Oliver?"
"No, Ms McInerney, I do not." He pulled her into his arms and they started to move together to the sound of Enrique Iglesias' Hero. The song was eerie and sensual, as if it was written especially for them. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his shoulders as his arms curled around her small waist. They were definitely not ballroom dancing!
The song was over much too quickly. As it finished, they looked at each other with the intense longing stares of two people who had forgotten they were not meant to be in love.
One early afternoon later that week, Shane and Becky were having lunch downtown when Becky asked Shane a direct question. "Are you in love with Oliver?" She had the uncanny ability to read Shane like a book.
Shane feigned surprise. "Why do you ask?"
Becky laughed. "Because I know you. You look at him as if he's a tub of chocolate ice cream and you're starving. I don't think I've ever seen such a longing look in your eyes, even when you were dating Steve."
Shane sighed, defeated. "Yes, Becky, I am. Hopelessly!"
Becky looked at her with pity. "But he's married, isn't he?"
"Yes, but to an absent wife, though."
"Shaney, why do you do this kind of thing to yourself? He's no different than Steve then."
"Yes, Becky, he is! He is totally different. He's nothing like Steve."
"He's just as unavailable though." Becky took a deep breath and asked, "Is he in love with you?"
Shane shook her head. "I don't know. I'd like to think he is, but if he truly was, he'd get a divorce, don't you think?"
"Why doesn't he?"
"I don't know, Becky. He believes in keeping his vows, even though he doesn't even know where she is."
"Well, since when has not knowing where someone is ever stopped you from finding them?"
"What are you suggesting, Becky."
"I'm not suggesting. I'm telling you flat out to find her address and put it on his desk. The rest is up to him. I bet he doesn't enjoy this situation either. You need to help him move along. You need to give him a little push. You know men. They need us to nudge them ever so slightly, so they think it was their idea from the beginning."
They both laughed, but the seed was firmly planted in Shane's head.
###
Life resumed its normal pace in the DLO. Lost letters were dealt with efficiently and forwarded to their rightful owners. People were saved from dangers, from loneliness, from themselves.
After weeks of procrastination, Shane decided to follow Becky's advice. She found Holly's address. In the process of locating it, she discovered the wretched woman had renewed her apartment lease for the next three years, leaving her husband sitting in limbo in Denver. Shane was absolutely livid. Holly didn't deserve a moment of Oliver's concern, let alone a life time of care. This marriage was more like a prison sentence than anything else. Oliver had served enough time already. He needed to be set free.
On Friday afternoon just before they finished for the day, Oliver was talking to Norman and not paying attention to what Shane was doing. So, Shane put Holly's address on his desk near his car keys so he couldn't miss it and quickly made her exit. If he was going to be angry, he'd have the whole weekend to calm down.
On Monday, they had an intriguing box to deal with, which lead them to a bank vault and a safe deposit box. Through a series of unfortunate (or fortunate) coincidences, they ended up locked together in the bank vault.
Shane, who was a bit claustrophobic, could have panicked, but Oliver's calm and collected demeanour steadily helped her overcome her fear. She noticed he was writing a letter to Holly, but he didn't mention anything about the address she left on his desk.
To take her mind off their current situation, she decided to pester Oliver. She wouldn't leave him alone until she'd pulled him into her silly word game. At first he was not amused, but both of them quickly relaxed and actually started flirting quite openly with each other.
Eventually they opened the safe deposit box and found lots of love letters from Jonathan and Katherine. As they read the letters to each other out loud, their love story started to touch them deeply. When Shane thought Katherine had died before she could marry Jonathan, she broke down. The fear of dying here with her love for Oliver going unfulfilled overwhelmed and terrified her. Oliver got up from where he was sitting and pulled her into his arms. He held her close and allowed her to cry on his chest. "Shhh…" He held her tightly until she composed herself.
The hours ticked by. Jason, the young bank employee continued to sleep on the floor, snoring away contentedly. They sat on the floor in the opposite corner with the table between them and Jason. They leaned slightly against each other's arms, exhausted.
"What are we going to do, Oliver?"
"What can we do apart from waiting?"
"What if we die?"
"I don't think we're going to die. We've been here for over 4 hours already. I've not noticed any more difficulty breathing than when we first got locked in here. I think we'll be okay."
"I hope you're right. I don't want to die yet, Oliver. I have so much I still want to do."
"What would you like to do, Ms. McInerney?"
She looked at him, contemplating whether she should tell him what her heart truly desired. "I wish to give my heart fully one day to a deserving man."
He nodded. "Very good! Very noble, Ms. McInerney. I hope you will live to fulfil your heart's desire."
"What about you? What would you really like to do with your life, Oliver."
"Like you, I'd like to live life to the fullest. Loving and being loved. Life is too short for discontentment, Ms. McInerney." He nodded and carried on. "On that note, I'd like to thank you… that you, on your own impressive initiative, found Holly's address in Paris. Why did you do that?"
"How do you know it was me?"
He smiled, amused. "Who else would it be?"
She bit her lower lip. "I just want to see you happy. If Holly makes you truly happy, then go after her. Fight for her… win her back. However, if you think you could be happy… with… somebody else, then get this situation resolved. End it!"
"What would you do?"
"As I said, if I were you and I truly loved her and believed in her love for me… if I couldn't live without her, I'd go after her."
"What if you didn't believe in any of those things, but you believed in keeping your promise regardless?"
She took a deep breath and then spoke, "Then, you'd have to reconcile yourself to the fact that, while you think you're doing the right thing, you're sacrificing any expectation of happiness from your relationship. Living your whole life knowing you'd never be happy and truly loved would be soul destroying! That's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy."
He nodded, seemingly resigned to his fate. "Often, doing the right thing in life doesn't necessarily mean being happy. Instead you reap a sense of satisfaction from doing the right thing… regardless!"
"Yep! I understand that. It's called self sacrifice. However, being the sacrificial lamb upon your own altar is not easy. I don't know if I could do it."
"Often, you don't know what you can do until you have to do it."
Shane looked at him and she couldn't stop the tears rolling down her face. The message was very clear. He was going to sacrifice his own heart on the altar of righteousness for the sake of a worthless woman. If there was ever going to be a divorce in Oliver's future, it would have to be initiated by Holly. Oliver would never do it of his own accord.
Her heart was breaking into a thousand pieces and Oliver could see it, as clear as day. His own heart was breaking, smashing to pieces, but there was nothing he could do to change it.
She covered her face and allowed herself to sob freely. There was no point in any longer pretending that she didn't love him or that he didn't know it.
He pulled her head to his chest and they both cried.