My stomach grumbles at noon. I glance at my closed office door and back to my computer screen. Asking Wesley to fetch my lunch or pick up my dry cleaning has felt awkward since...since. Since the migraine, the kiss. Since he lit a fire inside me, one I can only tend in secret, when he told me he wouldn’t mind if it happened again. Because I cannot. Of course I cannot and neither can he. So since sending him on ridiculous revenge errands just couldn’t continue—since they probably never should have started—I have to find the time again to get my own meals. I was fetching my own lunches before Wesley. I’m sure I’ll be able to do it again. After I finish all this work. My eyes glaze over as the third email in an hour from Phil Grimes pops up on my screen. He is going to be high maintenance.
“Ms. Blunt?” Wesley calls from the other side of the door. A hesitant knock follows.
“Come in.”
“Hi.” He grins as he pokes his head in, opening the door just enough to squeeze the rest of his body through. “Whoopsie.”
He stops, his body curling over the door handle as he fiddles with it.
That nervous laugh erupts from him, pink staining his cheeks. “My belt loop got caught on the door.”
He closes the door behind him, a brown paper bag clutched in his hands. “Um. So. Two things.”
He pauses.
“This feels like a good news/bad news situation,” I say.
His smile crinkles. “The good news is I brought you lunch.”
He lifts the brown paper bag and places it on my desk. The smell of my favorite chicken salad teases me from inside the bag.
“Oh.” My face warms. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugs.
“And the bad news?”
“Richard just called me,” he says, his face already apologetic.
“Okay.”
“He asked me to tell you to come down to his office tonight. After five.” The knot tightens. After five on a Friday. Almost everyone else in the office will be gone.
“Why is that bad news?” I ask, feigning nonchalance, but my voice is too tight for it to work.
Wesley pauses and I stare a hole into his forehead, hoping he’ll get the message. Please don’t bring up the conference room. “He didn’t sound...like himself.”
I nod once, eyeing the paper bag. Suddenly I’m not so hungry anymore.
“Do you want me to come?” Wesley asks.
“I...” Strangely, the idea of his presence calms the frantic beat of my heart. “I do. But I don’t know how long this will go. Don’t you need to leave early?”
He shrugs, looking down at my carpet. “It’s my party, right?”
Right. It’s his birthday. I should have told Emily. She would have helped me get a cake with too much sugary frosting and wrangle a few coworkers to sing an off-key “Happy Birthday” during the lunch hour. Instead he got stuck on lunch duty.
“That would be great. Thank you, Wesley.”
I try to imbue my gratitude in those few words but it doesn’t feel sufficient enough. Wesley’s presence at this meeting is exactly the buffer I need to feel like I can breathe under Richard’s gaze.
Thank you doesn’t feel like enough.
“Wesley,” I blurt before he closes the door behind him.
He turns, his hand on the door handle that held him up.
I run marathons, lead a department. But I can’t speak to my intern right now. After an interminably long pause in which my throat constricts around thank-yous and apologies and admissions of truths I can never reveal, I say, “Happy birthday.”
A dimple appears on his cheek. “Thanks. You, too.”
Everyone takes their breath for granted; we’re alive so we breathe oxygen. That’s it. But when I’m at the end of a race, my body screaming, my legs wanting nothing more than to stop, my breathing saves me. Preparing for this meeting with Richard feels like the end of a race. I can’t breathe and I just want it to be over.
Slowly, I take a deep breath in, let it fill the four corners of my chest. I grip the door handle and my heart pounds. Mostly because of nerves over this meeting with Richard, but maybe a little bit because Wesley is on the other side of this door.
And I feel smitten.
He’s not the man I thought he was. Not at all. He’s kind, he’s sweet. He wears socks with skunks on them.
He surprises me, and I thought I was done feeling surprised by anyone.
When I open the door, Wesley is already turned to me, his computer screen dark. He leans back in his chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other. His hands rest on his stomach, just above his belt. He smiles up at me in that easy way he’s had this last week. Is this how he smiles at all the women he’s kissed?
“Ready?” he asks.
I should be asking that. I nod and he stands, holding his hand out for me to lead the way. He follows two steps behind, like he did on our way to the meeting. I feel like the queen. But it gives me space to think, to prep, to breathe.
I stop at Richard’s closed door. Emily is gone and there are a few murmured voices from behind the offices around us. Even more so now, Richard’s request seems strategic and icky. Standing here I feel strangely vulnerable and exposed, that I was summoned by my boss, that I was scared to come, that I felt relief at Wesley’s offer to chaperone.
I spin on my heel, ready to tell him to just go, but he holds up a pen and notepad. “Don’t worry. I’ll remember to take notes.”
He says it like I’ve chided him before, for not taking notes, but I can’t remember ever doing that. Wesley blinks at me but I don’t move. I use this pause to remember to breathe, to remind myself that he is not my chaperone. He will not protect me from Richard because I don’t need protection.
He’s my support. I protect myself.
With a cursory knock, I open the door. Richard keeps reading something on his phone as we walk in, as Wesley closes the door behind us, as we stand in front of his desk. When he deigns to look up, his eyebrows jump as he takes in Wesley.
Richard glances back and forth between us. “I’m sorry. I should have stated this was a private meeting.”
Wesley shifts beside me.
“I asked him to come to take notes,” I lie. I send a silent apology to Wesley.
Richard rests his arms on the desk, leaning toward me. He drops his voice, as if Wesley won’t be able to hear him. “I think this is better left private, Corrine.”
I stand taller. “I’d like him to stay.”
He shakes his head. “Suit yourself,” he says, and a note of disappointment mixes with his trademark condescension.
“Corrine.”
He sits back in his chair, face impassive. Master of his own domain. King of his castle.
“You won’t be getting the promotion.”
My brain blanks, filled with static. “I...what?”
“You won’t be getting the promotion,” he repeats, as if hearing is what I’m having trouble with.
“But...the Grimes account?” I sound defensive, petulant. I can’t help it. I worked my ass off for that account. I glance over at Wesley. We both did.
He sits in one of the chairs in front of Richard’s desk, his hand poised over the pad of paper but not a single note taken. Good. I don’t need a record of this moment.
“Richard, I aced that presentation and we both know it. How could you come to this decision?”
He releases a belabored sigh.
“Wesley,” he says, turning to my intern. “Can you excuse us? I think this is a conversation better had in private.”
The look on his face is so smug, so superior. My molars crack trying to keep the rage-induced scream from escaping. I close my eyes for a breath, waiting for the scrape of Wesley’s chair, but when it doesn’t come I open them again. Wesley sits half turned in his seat, staring expectantly up at me. It takes me another beat to realize he’s waiting to hear what I have to say.
“It’s okay.” I gesture to the door. I just hope he doesn’t go too far.
“Shut the door behind you, please,” Richard calls as Wesley reaches the door. I used to spend hours, late into the night, in this room, with that door closed while we brainstormed new ideas. Sometimes there would be other associates or executives. Sometimes just us.
I don’t think that will ever happen again.
With the click of the latch the air feels closer, the smell of Richard’s cologne overwhelming. The room has shrunk by at least a few feet.
“Why, Richard?” I ask, more for something to do, a way to take control of this situation than because I actually want to know. Any answer he gives will only make me angrier.
“Oh, Corrine.”
Deep breaths, Corrine. Deep, deep breaths.
“You’re just not ready.”
“How could you possibly—”
He holds up a hand. “Yes, your presentation was adequate—”
“Adequate?” Is this really happening? I might be losing my hold on reality. “Were we in the same room? We landed the account. With a client who has been suspicious of our process from the start.”
My cheeks heat and my tone is not one I would ever accept from a subordinate, but I can’t stop.
He tsks. “This is what I mean.” He gestures to me. “You’re too emotional to take feedback right now.”
I grab hold of the back of a chair as my blood pressure skyrockets.
I quit.
I can hear myself saying the words in my mind, feel my lips form them. I can taste them in my mouth and they are so, so sweet. I almost let them free and let loose on this man, who I can’t even recognize anymore. He’s not the man who mentored me. And yet, I owe my career to him.
“What about the mentorship?” I ask, and already it sounds like the fight has left my voice. “You said you’d be taking this mentorship into account.”
He waves my words away, like they mean nothing. “Speaking of mentorship, I think you could benefit from some more one-on-one time with me.”
Richard barely finds the time to mentor his own intern. “You want to mentor me?”
“Yes.” He leans forward. “You need to be...” He purses his lips. “Molded into the VP we need.”
Maybe it was that pause, the prickling along my spine, or the way he said molded but suddenly it all clicks. This is a punishment. Because I wouldn’t have dinner with him. Because I’ve rebuffed his advances. An elaborate excuse to force me to spend more time with him.
The thought is absurd. Completely ludicrous. But as I examine his narrow, calculating eyes, it’s entirely plausible.
My hands shake. I no longer know what feels real and what feels fabricated by my boss for his own personal gain. “No,” I hear myself say. “No.”
“Pardon me?” The razor-sharp edge of his voice pulls me back to reality.
I take a deep breath, set my shoulders, and look him straight in the face. “Maybe you’re right.”
The words hurt, physically, in my chest, to say.
“Maybe I’m not ready. Even for a mentorship.”
I just want to get out of this room.
“I need more time.”
I don’t recognize myself, the sound of my voice. It’s flat, like me.
I don’t know when I turned around and walked to the door but when my hand turns the handle, he says, “Think it over, Corrine.”
I turn and he’s already putting on his coat, ready to leave. Like dropping a bomb on the middle of my career goals was nothing to him.
“What happened?”
I jump as I shut the door behind me and Wesley stands there. He’s waited here this whole time. I gasp for air to keep from crying. When did this man become my ally, while the one in the office behind me became my enemy?
“Let’s go,” I say, striding back to my office on the other side of the building. My whole body trembles, adrenaline and frustration pulsing hot and hard beneath my skin. I crave the mind-numbing pain that comes from running for hours. The harsh gasps for breath, the weakness in my legs, the body buzz that serves as the perfect distraction for internal screaming on a loop in my brain. All of the offices are dark now and the Pit is empty. Maybe it was a good thing that Richard sent for me so late. No one can witness this walk of shame. No one except...
“I didn’t know you were up for a promotion,” Wesley says quietly.
“I never was.”