The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

"If you're ready, I am. He says he's not going to move out, he doesn't have anywhere else to go. Do you think I could stay here? I don't mind sleeping on the couch." It sure sounded like it killed her to say every word of that.

"Sure, I don't mind the couch, really." I was lying through my teeth but I did my best to sound sincere. Going back to live with our parents was out of the question, they made being homeless look good. Staying with me was the lesser of all available evils. Plus, I could use a break on the rent.

Julie gave me a weak smile. It was the second to last one I would see all day.

It started as a trickle, a Facebook notification here, a WhatsApp notification there. Each one seemed to drive a dagger into her heart just a little more. By the time we reached the apartment she shared with Harlan, she was in tears again and the notifications were pinging regularly.

I finally grabbed the phone from her and took a look. The Facebook group for the employees was engaged in an all-out flame war, most of the group were on Julie's side but a very vocal minority were defending Harlan. Accusations and counter-accusations flowed back and forth.

On WhatsApp, Amanda was crossposting shit Harlan was saying in his workgroup and friend group to Julie. The fact that Amanda was in his friend group, despite her claims she hated him, sickened me. What made it worse was Harlan's claim that it was Julie who had given him gonorrhea, more than once. She was sleeping around on him, leaving him no choice but to end the relationship. She didn't bathe and didn't shave except when he made her, she was terrible in bed, just about everything you could find fault with in a person he listed as a reason for breaking up.

On his personal Facebook page, he had just posted a picture with Tiffany at a bar, with the status of "New love, new lease on life" with a bunch of heart emojis. The son of a bitch had the balls to tag her in the picture so she would definitely see it.

Since he wasn't at the apartment at the moment, I decided it would be a good idea to just go get her stuff and get out. Once we were there, Julie stopped crying long enough to get up the stairs and unlock the door.

Less than ten feet inside the door, a pair of obviously worn panties lay on the floor. A matching bra was on the back of the couch along with a dress. I guided her toward the bedroom so she could get her things and we could get the hell out. The bed was a mess and in the middle of the mattress was a fairly recent wet spot. The whole scene was obviously staged to upset her and it worked.

My sister completely decompensated, collapsing to the floor and sobbing loudly. Her clothes were in a pile on the floor in a corner. I found some large garbage bags under the sink and started jamming everything I could into them. I filled her suitcase with her personal care stuff from the dresser and the bathroom. I carried everything down to my Tahoe, managed to fit all of it in the back, and went back upstairs. Julie was still sitting on the bedroom floor, almost totally cried out at this point. I dug her keys out of her purse and removed the apartment key.

I managed to get Julie up and out through the door, locked the doorknob, and tossed the key onto the pair of panties lying on the floor before closing the door. I made sure to take pictures and video of everything before we left, including the key sitting on top of the panties, just in case.

The original plan had been to go to the store after picking up her things and her car but I couldn't take her looking like she did now and I didn't trust her to drive. We went back to my apartment, I parked her on the couch with the tissues while I brought her things up. I left everything in the bedroom, she could sort it out when she felt up to it.

During my trips back and forth, she had made herself a drink but it looked untouched. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into me again. She gave every appearance of being defeated.

She mumbled something and I had to ask her to repeat it twice before she said it loud enough for me to understand. "I can't go back there."

"Where?" I knew where before I even finished saying the word.

"Work. I can't go back. I just can't." The heartbreak and despair in her voice almost made me cry. She was good at what she did, Herman often left her in charge of things when he wasn't going to be there. He had aspirations of his own and he had been mentoring her to take over for him when he moved up the ladder. Her world was coming apart at the seams and there wasn't much she could do about it at the moment.

I held her and let her cry. Speaking low and confidently when she stopped crying temporarily, I tried to give her a little pep talk, "Jules, listen to me. Harlan is a piece of shit. You dumped him for cheating. He's doing this because he lost. You made him look bad and he's trying to get even. That's what people like him do. They try to drag you down to their level.

"Don't let him win. I know it's not easy but you can't let him see that he's getting to you. You can't ever back down. Right now, he's on the offensive and he's going to throw everything he can at you to try to break you, make you give up. Don't give him the fucking satisfaction."

"Sonny, I can't." She sounded like she was going to start crying again.

"Jules, you can. I'll be right there with you, every day. You have real friends, they'll be there for you. Amanda? She's not your friend. You need to cut her off completely. She's feeding this shit to you but she's also feeding it to everybody else too. Get rid of her."

In high school, I played varsity football as a safety and second-string running back. It seemed that every year, there would be at least one game where we would have our asses handed to us in the first half. Coach pounded into us every practice and every game that no matter how bad it was, never let the other team see you quit. You may not win but you'll never lose, unless you quit.

"I know you hate sports metaphors, especially football ones, but you know I've been there, Jules. Embarrassed, beaten, humiliated, people screaming all kinds of shit from the stands at us because we sucked. Sometimes we didn't win, they were the better team but we could walk off the field knowing we never gave up. Sometimes they just got lucky early. If we had quit then, we would have lost. Instead, we continued to do what we did best and beat them in the end.

"Harlan has you down early right now but that's okay, we can handle that. We're going to walk in to work tomorrow with our heads up. We'll do our jobs and ignore the stupid people who want to start shit. We'll walk out at quitting time with our heads up. We'll do the same thing the next day, and the day after that.

"Rumors spread fast, I get that. I know they're not true, your friends know they're not true. You need to believe in yourself, Jules. People like Harlan can't help but fuck themselves over, it's in their DNA. You need to play to your strengths and you'll break him instead. But you can't quit."

Julie continued to lean into me but at least she had stopped sniffling. "I'm scared, Sonny. I don't know if I can face him after all the shit he said."

"First, Herman won't tolerate any bullshit on the floor so I think he'll stay away from you. We'll block his messenger address on your work accounts so he can't message you privately. If you have to look in his direction, don't look directly at him, look over his shoulder at something behind him. If your eyes do meet, don't look down but look up, give him that eyeroll and headshake you give me. I know he hates that as much as I do."

That actually made her snort laugh. "Yeah, he does."

I urged her to her feet, "Go get fixed up, we need to go to the store so we can feed you. You haven't eaten all day and that's not good." Tomorrow was going to be one of the hardest days of her life, she needed a good meal and the best possible night's sleep. I could handle the first part, I didn't know what to do about the second.

She disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. She came out a few minutes later dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. They were a little wrinkled but they were clean. She had tried to do a little touchup and her face didn't look so puffy. She had also apparently put on a bra, which was helpful and much less distracting.

The grocery store would be our first test. I figured we'd meet somebody we knew, I always ran into people from work there, no matter what time I went. We needed a win, even a small win would be good for her confidence.

We got what we needed, in every possible way. The two people we saw that we knew from work were sympathetic, offering encouragement to Julie about the breakup. It seemed to brighten her mood a little, although I still couldn't get much of a smile or a laugh from her. Still, it was a small victory and I took it.

Julie insisted on making sausage and potatoes for dinner, without my help. In return, I cleaned up after dinner and ran the dishwasher. She seemed to eat well. At some point during the day, she had finally turned the sound off on her phone. I hadn't noticed, my phone rarely went off for any reason so I was used to the quiet. I jumped when she turned it back on. The pinging had subsided considerably since earlier this afternoon, at least.

I sat down on the other end of the couch, since she had put some of her stuff in the armchair temporarily. She scooted over to lean against me while she went through her social media accounts, blocking people and responding to messages. I gently reminded her to block Harlan and Amanda on everything, as well as everybody who chose to take their side. I only had WhatsApp for work, I had no use for the rest of it.

I wasn't sure what to make of her need for physical closeness. Growing up, we had gotten along about as well as most siblings. We weren't super close but we weren't mortal enemies, either. We sort of looked after each other, since our parents were too busy to bother with it.

I hadn't liked Harlan before he started dating Julie, he acted like a dick and too many girls avoided him in school. I had lost track of him after they graduated until we were all hired together when the call center opened up. I couldn't see where he had changed any during the interim, but Julie still fell for him. After that, our relationship had been somewhat strained although I felt it was still friendly.

More than likely, she just felt the need for some sort of protection, I was family so I was safe. I felt bad for her. It was tough having to break up with somebody, especially when you had been blindsided and on a major lover's holiday to boot. I had been single for almost a year so having another human being voluntarily want to touch me felt good. If it would help her feel better, then I could do that.

When she finally put down her phone, we talked about how things would work for us during the week. We decided I would shower first so I would get a chance at hot water, then it was her turn. We needed to be there by seven in the morning, it only took about ten minutes to drive on bad roads but usually less than that, so I would get up at 5:30, she would get up at 6:00 for tomorrow to see how it worked out. We should be all right as long as we left the apartment no later than 6:45.

We would go get her car after work tomorrow. My apartment came with a two car garage, my ex had used the other bay for her car. There was a place to plug in the block heaters and it was insulated. I really didn't like leaving her car at her old place but she wasn't in any shape to drive safely at the time so we left it there. I didn't think he'd be dumb enough to do anything to it. After her meltdown, I didn't feel that leaving her alone to go get it myself was a good idea, either.

We discovered that Julie needed just a few extra minutes to get ready in the morning, since she didn't have a dedicated place to keep some of her personal care things. It wasn't a major issue, we weren't late for work, but the extra time would have been nice.

She was quiet on the drive to work and spent most of her time looking out the window. I didn't say much, since I had no idea what to say to reassure her. It wouldn't have helped.

Pulling into the parking lot, her car was parked next to Harlan's, in her reserved spot. I parked in my spot and we walked into the building. Fortunately, her group was located next to mine, and Harlan's was on the other side of the room. He couldn't help but know when we walked in, because you could hear a pin drop in the sudden silence.

I'll give him credit, he didn't turn around until after Julie had made it to her workstation. I locked eyes with him momentarily and then he quickly looked away. It took a few minutes for the noise level to get back to its customary dull roar as calls were answered. Of course, everybody turned to look at one of us whenever they had a moment of downtime.

The morning went by quickly. I managed to catch Harlan in the hallway as I was leaving the men's room and he was headed that way.

"Keys. Today." He started to stammer something out but I interrupted him. "You can give them to me today or we can have the cops get them for us. Whichever way you want to do it is fine with me."

"Look, Sonny --" He held his hands up in front of him as if I was threatening him with violence.

I took a deliberate step backward, keeping my hands down to my sides. "Fuck you. I want those keys. Don't make me ask again."

I knew what he was trying to do. My family's ancestors were German farmers, built low and wide. I'm built like a fire hydrant. After I graduated, I continued to work out like a football player until my ex left. Making up for her half of the rent meant some expenses like a gym membership had to go, but I still did a lot of bodyweight workouts.

He was one of those fucking Instagram "gymbro" types, the kind that works on sculpting pecs and biceps, totally skipping leg day and any form of cardio to save his "gainz". He wanted it to look like I was threatening him physically in the hallway but I didn't bite.

The rest of the morning until lunchtime wasn't too bad. Julie stayed busy handling escalations and exceptions. Nobody on her team gave her any problems. If anything, I think they went out of their way to be supportive.

I did notice that Tiffany was unhappy with Harlan about something, I suspected it was the keys. Julie's car was a Subaru Outback AWD that she had bought new last year. She loved that car, it was her very first new one.

When the different teams started to break for lunch, I took Julie out to get lunch instead of eating in the breakroom like we usually did. When we came back, her keys were on my desk. Tiffany still looked unhappy and she avoided making any kind of eye contact with me for the rest of the day.

At exactly 2 p.m., Herman called Julie and me into his office. He pointed us to the chairs and he sat behind his desk.

"I don't want any problems, Emerson. You understand me?" In true Herman fashion, he got right to the point. Usually, he called me Sonny but when he was pissed, he used Emerson.

"There's not any problem. I told him to return my sister's keys to her car. His name's not on the title, he has no business lending it out." Julie nodded when he looked in her direction.

"You need to stay away from each other, all of you. It's bad enough response time is down with all this bullshit, any more impact and I'll get rid of all of you." I didn't ask whose response time was down, I knew it wasn't my team. Julie's team seemed to be on top of things.

He turned his direction to Julie, "If you need some personal time, please take it. Don't bring it to work with you."

"I'm good, Herman." She looked him straight in the eye when she said it. He couldn't see the white knuckles hidden under the edge of the desk, though.

"Glad to hear it. Besides the call response time, everything else looks good so far today. Keep it that way." That was our dismissal. Unfortunately, we had to walk by Harlan as he headed toward Herman's office and we were headed back to our teams. Even though I had suggested to her that she shouldn't lock eyes with him, she stared him down, her face expressionless. He couldn't maintain eye contact.

Her sigh of relief was shaky. "Okay, I can do that."

Lightly placing my hand in the small of her back, I leaned in and whispered so only she could hear it, "I knew you could." The smile she flashed was brief but genuine.

At 3:30, the shift change was almost complete. Tiffany had apparently screwed up the nerve to approach Julie at her desk. Their conversation was short and sweet.

"You had better not mess up Harley's car." To her credit, she was brave. Not real bright but definitely brave.

"It's not Harlan's car, it's mine. My name is on the title, not his. I'm making the payments, not him." I recognized the tone of Julie's voice. Somebody was about to get their feelings hurt. Better her than me.

"He said --"

"I don't give a fuck what he said. In case you haven't figured it out yet, he's a liar. Did he tell you he's going to have to move out of that apartment at the end of this month? No? Aww. My name is the only one on the lease and I'm not renewing it. He doesn't have the credit to get a lease on his own."

The look on Tiffany's face told the world that was all news to her. She tried to bullshit her way through it, though. "You're lying."

Julie's laugh was loud enough to get a lot of people's attention. "Nope. Bye." She finished zipping her jacket and turned her back on Tiffany.

We left Tiffany standing there by Julie's desk. From the look on her face, I couldn't tell if she wanted to get mad or cry. Herman scowled at me from the doorway of his office. I just shrugged my shoulders in feigned helplessness. She came looking for Julie, we didn't do anything wrong.

Tiffany had taken the liberty of decorating the inside of the car, hanging shit off the rearview mirror, and moving the seat. Julie removed her stuff carefully and I put it on the hood of Harlan's fancy Mustang. I followed her back to the apartment and we locked the cars up in the garage.

After working on sorting some of her things, we made a run to the nearby dollar store so she could pick up some plastic storage containers for her clothes that she couldn't hang up. She sorted what she wanted where and then ironed some stuff for the rest of the week. I stayed out of her way, she was just a little mad about this afternoon so I let her take it out on inanimate objects instead of me.

Julie again made dinner, running me off when I offered to help. "I need to do something around here." I wasn't going to argue, she was a better cook than I was, that was for sure.

After I cleaned up, we started watching TV from opposite ends of the couch. She tried to bring up Netflix to watch something but that had been another casualty of cost-cutting to afford the rent. I could get plenty of over-the-air channels if I was in the mood to watch TV. She quickly changed the login information, reset the allowed devices, deleted all but her profile, and authorized my TV. By the time the movie was over, she was back to leaning against me. I read an ebook so I had no idea what she watched.

I wanted to ask her exactly what Harlan paid for in that relationship besides part of the rent but decided that was a question better left for another time. She was still a little down at times, after all, they had lived together for a couple of years and that takes some time to adjust to. She picked up her phone and started doing stuff while I went in to collect my clothes for tomorrow. Even with all of her stuff, the room was still neater than when it held just my things.