Excerpt: Unintended Revenge Fulfilled

I

I’ll never forget the most insulting comment ever made to me. It was made by the woman of my dreams, and of course she had to be my supervisor. She was a thin cute thing, with long straight black hair. The girl next door type, with the face of Neve Campbell during her Party of Five years, though aged to her mid thirties. Still, she was gorgeous without a doubt. And one day, while talking about her endless encounters with bad luck and bad boys, she let slip that what she really wanted was someone like me.
We're practically the same age, but I’ve been working here at the Oakridge Assisted Living Center for the past six years, long before Natalie ever came along. I worked my way up from lowly plain old orderly to Head Nurse of East Wing through lots of hours in the classroom and sheer determination, though most call it workaholism. And the truth is, they’re right. When you got nothing else in your life, your work becomes your entire reason for being. Scratch that, when you have no one in your life, you find yourself going out of your way to become liked at the job. Others needed a day off, and I’d take their shift. Falling behind on their work and I’d stay late to help out. No extra compensation given or asked for. Just an understanding that you do your job, and you could get away with murder.
That’s kind of how I met Natalie. She wasn’t in our department at first. She was in accounting and would stop by from time to time to settle pay disputes. I would strike up a conversation, something that I called flirting, though she probably didn’t notice. When she applied for the assistant manager’s position here in East Wing, I was thrilled and told my boss Constantine how I thought she’d be a great addition. He probably thinks I’m gay cause I haven’t had a girlfriend in the entire 6 years that he’s known me, and didn’t make any connections at all that I liked her. But he has an eye for the attractive ladies more than most, and probably hired her more for that then anything else.

II

As Head Nurse I really am the “sucker-for-the-moment,”