28. Maddy
28
MADDY
I t was just like me to spill soy sauce on my white blouse. Noah and I had been enjoying our third phone-free lunch in his office, his way to make things right again after the mess at Cassie’s shower, and I’d gotten a little too into telling him a story, accidentally tipping over the tray of sushi in front of me and sending the brown mess down my front.
I was staring at my shirt and muttering to myself as I walked into the women’s bathroom, which was equipped with all sorts of emergency supplies. When I looked up, I saw a pretty woman I didn’t recognize sniffling at her reflection, her cheeks wet with tears. She caught my eye in the mirror and immediately straightened up, pretending to wash her hands. She gave me a tight-lipped smile I could tell was fake.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I walked closer.
She nodded quickly. “I’m fine, thanks.”
She looked to be about my age, with a beautiful, open face and long, straight blonde hair. I watched her for a few seconds longer and her expression crumpled again.
“I’m lying, I’m not okay,” she sobbed.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” I asked as I walked closer to her. I rubbed her back as she hung her head and cried silently. “You can talk to me. What can I do to help you?”
“I feel so stupid, crying at work. Maybe it was my fault?”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened,” I suggested gently. “I’m Maddy. What’s your name?”
She took a few steadying breaths. “Anna. Nice to meet you.”
I cracked a smile at her making pleasantries even while crying. “It’ll be nicer once you tell me what’s going on with you.”
Anna leaned closer to the mirror to study her face. “I’m a mess.” She ran her fingertips beneath her eyes to get rid of the black smudges that had collected there. She glanced at me in the mirror. “I’m sorry, it’s nothing.”
“Nope, I’m not letting you leave until you at least give me a hint about what’s going on. Is it work-related? Because if it’s something personal you don’t want to discuss, I won’t pry.”
Anna turned to look at me and her bottom lip trembled. “It’s work.”
“I’m listening…”
She sighed and stared down at the sink. “There’s this guy, he just moved to my floor, and we’ve sort of been flirting for a while. I thought he was hot.” She let out a nervous laugh. “But then he started getting a little weird. Pushy. Saying stuff that was inappropriate.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “What sort of stuff?”
“That’s the thing,” Anna sobbed. “It wasn’t, like, bad in the beginning. He made me feel pretty. So I didn’t tell him to stop, and then I felt stupid changing my mind about him. I wondered if I was overreacting. He’d say stuff about how good I looked, or how he liked what I was wearing. And honestly, I sort of liked it at first. But then it escalated to things that made me feel weird, like saying he could see the outline of my thong through my skirt. One time he said he liked my ‘FMPs,’ and then he asked if I knew what that meant. I started to answer, and he cut me off and said, ‘Fuck me pumps, emphasis on fuck me .’ And the way he looked at me when he said it.” Anna shivered. “So he shifted from a guy I thought I could maybe date to a guy who creeped me out. I started distancing myself from him—but he wouldn’t take a hint.”
I held back from asking who it was. Deep down, I was pretty sure I already knew, but I wanted to get the full story before asking. “I’m so sorry that’s been going on. Have you talked to HR?”
“I didn’t think I needed to. I just avoided him, and that was working. It didn’t seem like an issue. But I think he caught on that every time he came by my desk, I suddenly had a phone call. Or I was running to a meeting. The guy’s not stupid, he figured it out.” She frowned. “And then today…” she drew in a shuddering breath and tears sprang to her eyes again.
I rubbed her back gently. “What happened?” I asked softly.
Anna pulled away from me and wiped her eyes with her fists, smearing what was left of her make-up. “I was going up to the sixth floor to talk with Rachel from promotions about a project we’re working on together. I got on the elevator and then he got on right behind me, as the doors were closing.”
My stomach dropped. I was feeling more and more certain that I knew who Anna was talking about, and it made me feel sick.
“He told me he’d read about an elevator cheat code online, to get it to stop in between floors. And then he did it. He pressed the first and top floor buttons at the same time and the thing stopped. There was no alarm or anything, we were just… trapped in there.” Her eyes welled again. “I told him I needed to get to a meeting, and he laughed at me. Then he… he backed me into a corner.” Anna sniffled. “He thought it was funny, but I started getting upset. I don’t like confined spaces as it is, and he was crowding me, looking me up and down like he was about to devour me or something. Then he put his hands on the wall on either side of me, pinning me in the corner even though he wasn’t actually touching me. He was laughing about it, like we were playing a game or something. Like I was enjoying it.” She made a face. “He leaned really close to me and whispered in my ear, that we could fuck right then and there. I wanted to throw up. I told him to stop a bunch of times, and when he didn’t move back, I pushed against him. It seemed to make him angry. He said I was being a bitch.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I was so scared. Because I didn’t know what he was going to do to me.”
My heart was pounding with both fury and fear over what had happened to Anna. “How did you get out?”
She took a breath. “I think someone hit the elevator button on another floor and it overrode the cheat code. We started moving again, and he backed away from me like nothing had happened. He actually started talking about where we should go for lunch! I just stood there, frozen, until the door opened. I nearly knocked Pete Miller over running to get out of the elevator.”
“It’s Beckett Tate, isn’t it?” I asked.
Anna froze. “How did you know?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back against the sink. “Let’s just say I have a history with him. Most of it predates my working here… but he’s said and done a few things since I started at PSM that were totally out of line. One of those incidents is probably part of the reason why he got moved to your floor.”
I hadn’t realized Noah had moved Beckett—I’d just felt relieved I wasn’t seeing him around as much anymore. Now, after hearing her terrifying story, I almost felt responsible for what Anna had gone through. But I had a feeling Beckett probably had a bunch of women scattered throughout the building who also felt uncomfortable around him. He was the problem—not his seating assignment.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably nothing.”
“You need to go to HR,” I said, grasping her shoulder gently. “What happened to you is different. It’s harassment—and from the way you described it, it’s escalating into something dangerous.”
“Did you go to HR?” she shot back at me.
I frowned, a little embarrassed she’d called me out. “No, I didn’t, but I should’ve, because look what happened to you. What if we go together?”
Anna straightened her back. “You’d do that for me?”
“For us . We need to stick together. The more of a paper trail they get on his misbehavior the quicker they can make a case to get rid of him.”
“Wait… you want to get him fired ?”
I stared at her in disbelief. “Don’t you?”
“I… I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think about it, but… Yeah. I do.”
“I think we should go now, while it’s still fresh in your mind so you can be specific. And so they can pull the security camera footage.”
Anna’s eyes welled again. “They have it on camera?”
“You don’t have to watch,” I assured her. “You lived it once, that’s enough.”
She pointed to the stain on my blouse. “Do you want to…”
I shook my head and tucked the stained portion into my skirt. “I don’t want to wait another minute. Let’s go.”
I thought about texting Noah, but he’d encouraged me to go to HR before, so I knew he’d be supportive of me helping Anna file the necessary reports with Jennifer.
Anna hugged herself when we stepped on the elevator, looking like she was entering a shark cage.
“I know it must be uncomfortable being here,” I said. “We can have HR talk to building services to see if there’s an override for the cheat code, so it can’t happen to you again.”
She nodded, looking slightly green.
When we got off the elevator, she grabbed my arm to stop me. “I feel like this might be overkill. Maybe I misinterpreted, you know? I don’t want to be a complainer.”
I understood why she was hesitating. I’d done the same thing myself. Women are programmed to go with the flow and not make waves, and that’s what men like Beckett count on. He was about to get a rude awakening.
I covered her hand with mine. “Look, you’ve already had someone try to force you along with what they wanted today. I’m not going to do that. It’s your choice, completely. But that fear you’re feeling—that is not how you should be made to feel. Ever. Beckett’s the one who did that to you, and I want to see him face consequences for his actions. He breached about a half-dozen parts of his employment contract. He threatened you. I actually read through my contract when I signed it a few months ago, and I can tell you what he did to you is a fireable offense.”
What I didn’t tell her was that I’d read the document carefully to see if it was permissible for me to crush on my boss.
“Did somebody summon me?” Jennifer asked, appearing in her doorway. “I heard ‘fireable offense.’ Would you like to come into my office, ladies?”
Anna gave me a nervous look and I nodded at her.
“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “I need to talk to you about something that happened to me.”
“And I also have an incident I’d like to report,” I said to back her up. Anna gave me a grateful smile as Jennifer pulled the door shut behind us.
Anna tearfully told the story for a second time, and then I followed up with my story about how Beckett had whispered the inappropriate comment in my ear during the staff meeting.
Jennifer dialed building security while we were in the office, and within seconds she was watching the security camera footage of the incident unfold on her screen. We both watched the emotions shift across her face, from curiosity, to concern, to disapproval, to outright anger. She slapped her laptop closed in disgust.
“With your account and this corroborating evidence, we have more than enough information to move forward with his termination. I’m comfortable doing it today. I need you both to complete these incident reports and sign a few other documents.” She pushed papers across the desk to us then leaned down to pull a few more from her drawer. “This is important in case he tries to come back with an unjust termination suit. We need to make sure everything is by the book and completely airtight. Speaking of, I need to loop in legal as well. But I can assure you Beckett Tate will be escorted out of the building before the end of the day.”
“Wow.” Anna let out a long breath through pursed lips. “Everything’s happening so fast.”
“Not fast enough,” I replied as I placed the pen on top of the signed documents. “And I feel like I’m partly to blame for not coming forward sooner. We can’t be the only ones. I bet there are other women who’ve been forced to deal with him acting in a way that made them uncomfortable. Or worse. Today, we’re putting an end to Beckett’s harassment. Never again.”
Anna reached out and gave my arm a squeeze. “Thank you.”
I placed my hand on top of hers and squeezed it back. After everything that had been going on, I finally felt like things were back on track.
I was back in a good place.