Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I’ve always put my anxiety into work. I scrape the bad feelings off my skin, gather them into manageable pieces, and bury them around the office—between file folders, underneath desks.
It’s always been like this.
When I was a teenager, I’d get anxious my mother wanted to live my life for me. Make decisions for me, pass judgment on my body for me, make social plans for me, care about schoolwork just enough for me. ( Don’t be too smart, darling, it’ll only get you into trouble. ) When it got to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was made of straw or blood and bones, I’d disappear to Oma’s house and sew something. That was a tangible use of my hands. Proof I had meaning, that I was productive. That my existence was tied to the world.
When Oma died—when I was a senior in high school with two months left, friendless and lonely and heartbroken—the only way I knew how to feel close to her was to make.
Good grades, clothes, plans.
Decisions.
I decided to delete my social media, decided to attend the best college to admit me. I worked hard, took on extra credit, and wound up with a better second-semester GPA than I or my parents thought possible. I started working at a boutique, steamed every item we put on sale even though my boss told me it wasn’t necessary. At the end of the summer, I went to college and turned over a new leaf.
I wasn’t the friendless girl with cute clothes and passable grades.
I was the quiet girl with homemade clothes and straight A’s.
Junior year, when I started dating Clay, and for some reason started to feel like I was made of straw again—a tumbleweed, whose thoughts weren’t important, whose decisions didn’t matter, whose existence wasn’t tied to the rest of the world—I founded Revenant.
It’s always been like this.
Anxiety equals productivity.
You’re panicking? Do something.
Don’t do something about it . Just do something.
Even now, as I pull back on sleeping hours and spend later nights in the office, I’m at least partially aware of what I’m doing. You can’t coexist with the worst parts of yourself for twenty-seven years and not sometimes pull back the curtain.
I go on a few rides with Gio and Leonie, make amends with Camila after our voice-raising in her kitchen, but I avoid talking about what’s really eating at me with all three of them. I make excuses about work stress when they broach the subject of my mental state.
All in all, I girl-boss so close to the sun that nine days after Garlic Fest, I almost pass out from exhaustion.
I’m on my way out of my office, having stood up abruptly when I realized I was late for a meeting, when my head begins to pound, inky black spots poking at my vision. I sway, knocking my hip on my intern’s desk just outside my door.
I tumble a bit at the obstruction, catching myself with my palms on the surface of her desk and sending my laptop and planner flying.
“Oh!” Eugenia gasps.
My eyes blink closed when I realize the black in front of my eyes is growing. “Sorry,” I mumble.
Firm hands grip my wrists, lifting me away from the desk. “Just…” Her voice trails off. She pulls me back and pushes on my shoulder. “Sit down for a second.”
I obey, lowering myself to the floor and resting my head between bent knees. Eugenia rubs my back while I take a few breaths. My office is at the end of the hallway; I’m desperately hoping nobody comes past and sees me like this. Vulnerable. Overwhelmed.
“This is embarrassing,” I grumble.
“You’ve been putting in a lot of hours lately,” Eugenia notes. “Your body caught up.”
I can feel a tiny heartbeat behind my eyelids pulsing in agreement with her words. I haven’t slept, eaten, breathed evenly since Garlic Fest.
I inhale, exhale. Do it again.
Every day I get closer to my two-week trip abroad with Will Grant is another day I’ve been piling obscene amounts of work onto my desk. Even Derrick asked why I’d been calling so much lately, and he’s usually the one sending angry texts when I don’t answer the phone.
I’ve made a point not to create a toxic hustle environment. I’ve made a point to encourage our employees to maintain their work-life balance.
For everyone besides me.
I’m usually better at hiding it than this.
“You’re usually better at hiding it than this,” Eugenia says.
A garbled laugh trips out of me. I pry my eyes open, focusing on her. She’s on the floor, too, seated facing me in her pink jumpsuit, her braided hair draped over one shoulder, her legs crossed, posture straight.
Over the past ten days of Eugenia managing my calendar, I’ve become a scarily productive version of myself. She’s asked me on several occasions if this is too many meetings per day, if I’d like her to block thirty minutes for a lunch break, twenty minutes for an outdoor walk. I lied when I registered the concern on her face, told her that the day I got back from San Francisco last week, I took the afternoon off and spent it lounging in the sunshine. (Actually, I spent that afternoon indoors at home, catching up on my CEO class coursework.)
“I know an overachiever when I see one.” Eugenia points at herself.
“You’ve gotten me at my worst,” I admit. “I’ve been self-medicating with work ethic.”
“At first,” Eugenia says, “I thought you were just trying to get everything squared away before your trip abroad with Will Grant. But Josephine, you spent thirty minutes on the phone yesterday haggling over a warehouse toilet paper contract. ”
“What if we fail the B Corp review because our toilet paper isn’t made with recycled materials?” I practically shriek.
“Nobody wants to wipe with recycled toilet paper!” Eugenia shrieks back.
“It’s not recycled toilet paper, it’s toilet paper made with recycled—” She holds up a palm, and I cut myself off, huffing.
“What’s going on?” she asks. “Really. You can talk to me. About anything.”
I swear, there’s something easier about admitting your problems to people you hardly know at all.
“I feel guilt,” I blurt. “The guilt is what’s pushing me to act like this.”
“Guilt,” Eugenia repeats.
“I feel this overwhelming, heart-wrenching guilt,” I say, all in a rush, confused and unsure and wobbly. “Because I have a crush on him. Will Grant.”
“No kidding.”
“You aren’t surprised?”
“I saw you two interact. No, I’m not surprised.”
“Well, we’ve been on a few accidental dates. But the problem is, he’s just—” I push my fingers against my temples, out of breath. “ Fitting himself into my world. Will comes here, to Austin, and works for me. He does favors for me. He fixes personal problems for me. It’s not right, it’s not fair. ”
“Maybe fixing things for other people is his love language?” Eugenia prompts. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be fair.”
He’d said the same thing: Not everything has to be fair, Josie. Most things aren’t.
“I want it to be fair,” I whisper. “And I feel guilt that it isn’t.”
“Then make it fair,” Eugenia proposes. A realist, like Cami or Gio.
“I. Can’t.”
“Why not?” she asks.
“Because Revenant matters more. It has to.”
The guilt swallows me from both sides.
I haven’t been giving my full attention to Revenant since I ran into Will—hence my overcompensation over the past few weeks. Sure, it’s just a business, but we all profit share. These employees are depending on me to care. To put in my best effort. I’m depending on me to care, to not give up what I started. I love this company. I want it to succeed, to get B Corp Certified, to be meaningful to the customers.
But even amidst being distracted by Will, I still couldn’t match the care he showed me. Contact solution, a shoulder to cry on, a distraction, a consultant, a quiet companion to keep me company when I had classes to take but felt lonely. I haven’t intended to be selfish, but that’s what happened. Will Grant has molded himself into my world because I don’t have the time or energy to be fair with him.
“I can’t have it all,” I whisper to Eugenia. “I think, maybe, I’ve been killing myself with work as a subconscious reminder of that reality.”
She considers me, chewing on her lip. “Then I guess I can’t either.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I want to be like you when I’m older,” she says, measured and precise.
I blink twice and immediately backtrack on my admission. “Wait. I’m not saying nobody with my type of job could ever be in a relationship.”
“You’re just saying I’d have to make sacrifices you’re not willing to make.”
I cock my head. Is this a trap?
“Eugenia, you should date if you want to,” I say with extra conviction. “Like I said, I genuinely wasn’t interested in a man for a long time until now. I know you have a crush on that other intern. The freckled kid who always comes by your desk. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you giving him your smiles.”
Her face freezes. “I do not give him my smiles.”
“Eugenia, you do, too.”
We glare at each other in a standoff.
“I can’t get romantically involved with another intern, ” Eugenia says. “I have a plan for my future, and no boy, no matter how much I might like his freckles, is getting in the way of it. Didn’t you break up with your boyfriend after college?”
“How did you—”
“It’s on Reddit.”
My eyes narrow. “What else about me is on Reddit?”
“You lie about being a vegetarian. You refuse to do press. You and Cami aren’t best friends anymore and actually hate each other. You don’t have any social media accounts because you got canceled in high school.”
I flinch. “So, nothing nice.”
“Since when has anybody put something nice on Reddit?”
That makes me laugh—for the first time in more than a week. It gathers in my belly, expelling itself alongside the frantic nervousness I’ve been carrying in my gut since Will left me by that fence line at Cami and David’s place.
“For the record, I’m an aspiring vegetarian.”
“For the record,” Eugenia replies. “You don’t need the label of vegetarianism—or a B Corp Certification, for that matter—for me to know what kind of person you are.”
It’s a nice sentiment. If only I were biologically capable of caring less about perception.
“I’ll be better after the supplier trip,” I say. “I don’t want you to think this is healthy or normal behavior.”
“Oh, I’m aware. I know you’re, like, a borderline millennial, and I’m ambitious, make no mistake. But at the end of the day, romanticizing the grind is not in my generational makeup.”
I smirk at her. “Neither are corporate flings, apparently.”
“I can make an exception for the CEO and her very hot consultant.”
“We aren’t going there,” I say.
“Yet,” Eugenia says.
My brain spins back to my childhood, recalling my brother, Robbie, repeating, “This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object,” over and over during his Batman phase. He said it all the time.
Unstoppable force, immovable object.
Will and me.
I can’t put into words why I think of us like that, but I do. And I’m worried what it means. Or rather, what it will mean, when it’s just the two of us.
Alone, together, on the other side of the world.