Purposefully Accidental

Chapter Forty-one

"Everything alright with Lucy?" Freddie asks as we begin dinner. Tonight's meal is nothing fancy—just an easy stir fry of random vegetables and proteins we had left in the fridge. Unfortunately, I left it on the pan longer than I should have, which makes the broccoli a little too soft and the beef way too tough, but, hey, Freddie knows the extent of my kitchen capabilities, so he better keep his complaints to himself.

"Yeah. She's just been having tantrums," I sigh. "Anyway, I've tried baby-proofing the house as much as I can. Hope you don't mind me rearranging some stuff around."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I don't really care," he shrugs. "You know I'm rarely ever home."

"It's great that you don't have furniture with sharp corners."

"That's all for my own clumsy ass," he says with a grin. "But, seriously. Anything I can do to make her more comfortable here?"

"Everything's fine, I think. I don't know how much longer she'll stay here. My mom's thinking about picking her up in a month or two," I tell him. "I don't want to make any permanent changes to your house."

"Like I said: don't worry about it."

Once we're done catching up while having dinner, I finally get to the long overdue talk. "So. I think we need to talk about it."

"Yeah." Freddie closes the dishwasher door and leans back onto the kitchen counter. An apologetic smile rests on his face. "Before you begin, can I go first? And, by the way, I'm really sorry about what I'm about to tell you."

I don't like the look on his face. "Oh, no."

"There's... a situation," he begins. He leads me out to the terrace that's attached to the breakfast nook, which gives us the beautiful view of nighttime New York City. "You know the annual Archer Gala is at the end of this month."

"Right. That's in less than two weeks. You want me to come?" I ask as I make myself comfortable on the sofa.

"Yes, but there's something more. There'll be an announcement. I'm being promoted," he blurts out.

"Wow! Freddie, that's great. Congratulations!"

He smiles nervously. "Yeah. Head of FlixGo. Like, officially. For real real."

FlixGo is one of Archer Corporation's subsidiaries, a streaming media service currently only available in North America. It's a brand-new player in the streaming game, which is a fairly competitive field in the modern world—although things have been pretty rocky since the writers and actors strikes a few months ago. "Right. Because your current position is... not real?" I hesitate.

He huffs out a laugh. "My current title... doesn't really exist. Deputy COO of Archer Corporation. Like, that's not really a thing. We don't really have that in the company and they made it up for me so I sound important enough, but not too important to hold any real position of power."

"As if your last name is not powerful enough."

His eyes roll skywards in exasperation. "Exactly. All I've been doing these past few years is trail Harvey around like a lost dog, doing all the grunt work for him."

"Uh-huh."

He continues to rant, "Did you know I'm not even in the organizational chart in our website? My family still owns the majority of the company, for shit's sake..."

I can't help but laugh a little. "Alright, big guy. So you're being promoted..."

He sighs heavily, but smiling as he does so. I can see that despite everything, he's happy about his new role in the company. And I'm happy for him, too. He says, "I mean, technically I'm not being promoted. FlixGo is a sub-subsidiary of the corp. But now I'm, like, the real deal and shit. No more imaginary titles. No more just doing shit Harvey tells me to."