Unlikely Hero (Atlanta #1) (3 page)

Erin worked through her morning, hearing comment after comment about her hair. Her coworkers had never seen her locks in anything but a conservative twist. The 20-year-old receptionist gushed, “Oh my
gawd
! Your hair is so CUTE!”
 

Erin’s new attitude began to show. She looked around like she was waking up after a long, hazy sleep. The new sensations were exciting, but also nerve-wracking, especially when she saw the creepy guy from the audit department leering at her.
 

That look represented a reality check. If she took those walls down and let herself wake up completely, she would be leaving herself open to things that could make her want to just put those walls back up. Suddenly her light and energetic feeling pressed on her as dangerous and frightening. She didn’t let herself back down completely, but she might have to talk to the book about this.

At lunch, she headed back to “her” table at the cafe. Erin ordered a different soup and different salad, determined not to let monotony run her life anymore. Today, her selection was a spicy gumbo soup and spinach salad.
 

So, what do you think? Do we work on those walls, or do we feel good enough together to just let my hair down on Fridays and try new soups for lunch?
 

As soon as she wrote the words, the answer was obvious. She scrawled a reply to herself immediately following her own question.

Never mind. Stupid question. The hair, the soup…nice start. But soup doesn’t bring peace or happiness. It’s just a daring step out of the shell. Good for me for taking that step, seriously. I’m proud that I’m doing this and already my life is less empty than it was. Wait — did I just find something within myself that added to my happiness? There’s hope, for-real-honest-to-god hope. I may not be too damaged to come back to the world. I still can’t believe how scared I am doing it. But I’m still doing it.

Erin drew a little smiley face at the end of her entry and walked away from lunch with hope. The humid air made her face flush and her hair frizz up, but she didn’t care. She was refreshed and had something within her that felt like possibility.
 

Instead of going straight back to the office, she ducked back down in to the Underground to find something else to have on her desk to quietly celebrate her moment. She liked to look at the little glass ball and remembered the lunch hour when she dared to go buy her notebook. That glass ball represented the beginning of this journey, she now realized. She wanted something for today to represent her new sense of hope.
 

In a little card shop, Erin found various gifts and knick-knacks. There were plenty of religious items, figurines, etc., but she couldn’t find something that fit. She was about to walk out of the store and try somewhere else when she saw a small pewter necklace hanging on a rack by the check-out counter. The charm hanging from the chain was a simple circle. On the circle was stamped the word “HOPE” in big, block letters. She purchased the trinket immediately.

She refused to accept a bag to carry the necklace in. In fact, she removed the packaging completely and asked the clerk to dispose of the remnants. She wanted that word in her hand, nothing between her skin and those four letters. She smiled at the metaphor. That little cellophane bag and thin square of cardboard were the first tiny walls she broke down. She had torn them away easily and held onto hope in her hands.
 

Erin took her HOPE with her back to the office and hung the necklace from her desk lamp, looping the chain many times so the charm hung tightly near the bulb. Now the light of hope was shining on the representation of the beginning of her journey. The vision was beautiful and blocked out a bit of the grayness of her workspace.
 

I guess a person only needs one small, good thing to focus on. It’s amazing how strong that is. It can outshine the drab, or at least take me out of the tunnel vision perspective I had before. There’s power here, more than I would have expected.

She only let herself write that little bit before she headed back into work-mode. More compilations required her attention, as well as a bit of research into the new not-for-profit tax laws she needed to know before the September 15 deadline. Today, however, she used her left hand to twirl her hair, rather than to hold up her head.
 

The afternoon passed by quickly and she packed up for the weekend. She grabbed some work to take home to avoid getting behind. Her early departures and decadent lunches improved her workdays, but sponged some of her productivity. She still needed to push through her typical workload in spite of her fresh view of life.
 

At the gym, she pushed herself a little harder since she finked out the day before. She ran three miles on the treadmill and did some upper-body work before heading home to shower. When all of that was done, she was in her favorite cottons and ready to spend some time with her notebook. She poured a glass of wine and went to her work bag. She found all of her accounting work and her laptop, but no notebook. She must have somehow missed it when she packed.

She looked at the ceiling and let out an exasperated sigh. She was not going back to the office tonight; all of her grand revelations would have to wait for the morning. Tonight, wine and a favorite novel would have to do. Her evening would still be relaxing, she thought, and maybe taking a break from her notebook would be a good thing. After all, any good relationship starts out slowly and builds. From what she’d heard, that’s how lasting connections get made.
 

She really liked the feeling she got when she wrote in her little purple composition notebook, and she wanted to keep that feeling going. No need to rush into anything. She laughed at herself at her train of thought. The book was just a book! But still, the ‘just-a-book’ was rapidly becoming a friend.
 

Erin rested peacefully again that night and let herself sleep in. For the first time in months, there was no alarm beeping her awake. Usually even on Sundays Erin found the need to schedule every minute, but that was pre-notebook Erin. Emerging Erin wanted to relax and find the beauty of life. Much beauty could be found in a good sleep with a peaceful reveille.
 

When she woke in the morning, she threw on some jeans to go downtown for her book. Even without an alarm, her daily routine got her up early. Thank goodness, because she dealt with very little traffic going to and from the office. Not many people ventured downtown to work at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. The light traffic was another nice break from the usual. Seemingly everything was getting a little better.

Chapter Two

Friday nights were always Marcus’s favorite nights at the office because no one was ever there. He didn’t mind working around the occasional accountant, but being alone had always been his preference, even as a child. His dad made sure he was good and scared of everything, and now that he was a man, he was so accustomed to the solitude. He was most comfortable in it.
 

As he started his rounds through the cubicles, he went first to cubicle 15. He was curious to see how that occupant was doing. He had no idea what her name was, assuming she was a ‘she’, but he was happy for her. That little glass decoration meant something, and he was hoping to see it still there.
 

He was surprised and he smiled when he saw the addition of the HOPE charm hanging from her lamp.
So she found hope
, he though sincerely.
Good for her
. He understood the power of finding hope when everything was dark.
 

He was glad someone else found hope, just like he had when he met Bill. Bill may have just been a trainer, but in Marcus’s eyes, he was the only father he’d ever known. The biological one had no claim on that title. He threw his rights farther away with every underserved punch and every drunken rage. Bill was the one who taught Marcus about hope, strength, and character.
 

Marcus took a moment to hold the little charm in his fingers and rub his thumb across the letters. Hope was a great gift. He silently willed her to cherish that gift, and let it take her to purpose, to happiness, to healing. He wanted to leave her a note congratulating her, but he knew how creepy that would be. He didn’t want to lose this job or get some harassment suit thrown at him. Still, he wished there was some way he could pat her on the back or something.
 

He let the charm fall from his fingers and set to work dusting the black metal trim along the top of the cubicle walls. He drew his dust cloth quickly across the open areas of the desktop and then reached toward the trash, ready to empty the bin. He noticed a purple book wedged between the small, black rectangular trash bin and the cubicle wall. The little book must have fallen by accident or was meant to be garbage and missed the bin.
 

He flipped the pages open to check which it might be, and he saw delicate, looped handwriting along every line of the first few pages of the book. He was immediately interested in what she had written. Even though he knew this was a private journal, the story of her hope was one he wanted to hear.
 

Few people ever overcome the shit-storm that reality can be, and he wanted to see how she was coming through hers. There was triumph in that. He knew the truth of that triumph, because he had come through his own shit-storm victorious. He didn’t very often meet someone else who had. Sure, he had heard stories from Oprah or some damn place, but he had never really shared the experience with someone. This little notebook made him feel a connected.

Feeling guilty, but knowing he was alone and would most likely never get caught, he sat down at her desk and started reading from page one. This woman, whose name he now read was Erin Connor, was unhappy and frustrated at work. No big shocker there — look at this place. Watching paint dry would be an exciting break from this drudgery.
 

But as he read further, he saw her lack of self-confidence, her desperate search for joy in small things, and not trusting any snips of happiness when she found them. He swore this read like his own life. If he had been a chick, maybe he could have written his anger out rather than beat it out of the sparring dummy at the gym.
 

He ran his fingers over the pages as he read, trying to make them part of himself. He couldn’t believe this woman was real. She had faced unknown demons and then hid herself from everything. Now, she was coming out into the light and into her own. On some level, her story was his.

He noticed that she alluded to some trauma, some tragedy in her college years. He had no idea what specifically happened, but guessing wouldn’t be too hard. He imagined some entitled trust-fund-frat-boy decided to take what he wanted from her, even if she didn’t want to give it up. That story was told too often, and he figured Erin Connor dealt with that injustice too, or something similar.
 

God, he hated those evil bastards. Marcus had grown up in the worst of circumstances: drunk father, dead mother, never any money, and a sister to protect. All of that in his past, and not once did he mistreat a girl like he had seen members of the “upper class” do.
 

He read further, hating whatever happened to her, and then he started to see her hope shine through. She wrote about finding something from within herself — and he beamed in happiness at the lines on the paper. Whoever this woman was, she was stronger than she realized. He saw her strength in every word that graced this notebook. He felt like hoisting her up on his shoulder and carrying her around like a victor.
 

He saw a few tear stains on the page, and a few scuff marks and food smudges too. She apologized to the book for the dings. That made Marcus laugh. She was having this conversation with the notebook the whole time and he cracked up.
 

She told the book they were becoming friends, but he knew friendship didn’t work that way. Erin Connor was conversing with herself, and allowing herself to be friends from within. She was finding the person inside who was worth caring about, and worth taking care of. Marcus smiled when he shut the book and set her story gently on the desk.

He chuckled again as he thought of how she wrote. She kept referring to the book like it was that friend she was pretending it to be; each page was her audience. She would write things like “
I wish I could show you that first pink bike I got
” or “
You wouldn’t believe what my dad said to my first date.
”
 

Even though his new line of thinking wasn’t logical, and the
book
was the proverbial ear listening for her, Marcus felt like she was writing directly to
him
. She was telling her story to
him
, and not this inanimate book.
I’m going to let you keep your blemishes and talk to you anyway. That way, you can accept me as I am, too. Huh. Thanks for that. Still interesting, but I’m not sure if any of this will help me. Either way, I’m glad I have you.
Hearing her speak to him that way made him want to listen more.

He forced himself back to work even though he wanted to read her journal again. And, oh, what a jerk he was for reading in the first place. He knew those stories were private and personal. Writing them down at all was probably very difficult for her, to put her thoughts out there away from the safety of her mind.
 

Here he was stealing them from her. By the time he was done on the eighth floor, his shoulders slumped with guilt. He was such an ass. He loved the story, but the words weren’t his to have. Now he wanted to apologize rather than congratulate her. Well, really, he’d like to do both.
 

He finished up his rounds on the ninth and tenth floors, and then went back down to the eighth. Marcus realized he left the notebook on her desk. He didn’t want her to worry about whether or not someone had read her private thoughts.