7. Lina #2
Jonathan shrugged as he wiped the counter down with alcohol, still wearing his grin. “Since we’re already done here, you can leave early, Sheryl,” he said.
Her green eyes lit up. “You sure, doc?”
“Yup.” His eyes stayed on the clock as he tipped his head in my general direction. “Dr. Lee and I can handle this.”
There was a chill in the air now.
Not from the door that had just opened out to the icy mid-winter January night, but from Jonathan—the man who was supposed to be and act like a manager.
He’d been reserved, quiet, and avoidant.
This new behavior replaced his previous haughtiness from my first day when he told me he never liked me.
In addition to the simple fact that he didn’t look forward to working with me and other unnecessary details about my hire.
The urge to be petty took hold before I could weigh the words I had spat at him last week— ‘Don’t you worry, Dr. Lo. The feelings are mutual’—and now our work relationship had become tense.
None of it was true. My feelings toward Jonathan Lo had always been neutral. However, that very neutrality was crumbling under the unnecessary tension simmering between us. I admit, by biting back at his sharp jabs, I wasn’t trying to make much peace with the situation either.
When Sheryl left, I was already done collecting all of the trash except the one next to Jonathan by the computer station. I glanced at him. The warm smile he wore earlier was long gone and his lips were curled into a snarl.
“I guess you’re still as popular as ever,” I said, commenting ten minutes late on his patient interaction earlier.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he quipped. His gaze now trained on some obscure, interesting spot on the wall.
I watched the way his brows pinched into a knot. “Everyone always seems to love you, Dr. Lo.”
“Except for you.”
“Yes. Except for me.” I pulled a soft, genuine smile across my teeth. My patience with him was wearing thinner the longer we worked together.
He turned and glowered at me, finally locking his fiery eyes with mine.
This was the first time he had truly looked at me since the other day, when he had stormed out of the break room during lunch.
I couldn’t help but perk up. I held my stance against the man who despised me, tipping my chin up to challenge him.
This wasn’t how I usually was. If someone didn’t like me, then I wouldn’t bother to change their mind. However, Jonathan clearly knew his way around me, enough to push and pull at my patience with his juvenile behavior.
“I can sweep and mop. You can leave now if you want,” he muttered, voice low.
His words sounded more like a threat than a statement.
“Sir, I can take care of my responsibilities perfectly fine,” I countered at once, still holding onto the smile on my face. It now felt more forced the longer I was in his presence. “I suggest you head home instead. You’re the one working overtime, and it’s my job to close the pharmacy tonight.”
Jonathan’s nose twitched and his eyes flared brighter with animosity. “I advise you to leave now before anything upsetting happens, Dr. Lee.”
The shaky corners of my lips dropped immediately, letting the agitation in me surface for a second. “Oh?” I arched a brow at him. “If you’re referring to your lack of professionalism, then that’s entirely on your end, sir.”
He narrowed his eyes. “My lack of professionalism?”
I lowered my eyelids just slightly to give myself the look of composure and utter control of my surging emotions.
A gaze I learned to harness early in my life to redirect how people viewed, treated, and responded to me in circumstances like this.
If they thought they had the upper hand, I proved them wrong—I did—over my emotions, over the situation, and, most of all, over how they reacted to me.
Most people didn’t respond well to my icy resting bitch face, but it taught them to fear me. Especially my family.
An unreadable emotion flared across Jonathan’s face for a split second before he schooled it under a mask of frosty indifference. Similar to the way I had done.
“Yes,” I answered in the same low and gravelly tone.
We didn’t say a single word or move an inch as we stood on the pharmacy floor, staring down each other. Both our faces were bare of any emotion, yet every bit of pent-up agitation and pettiness were written in the depths of our silence.
“Please leave, Dr. Lee,” Jonathan finally said. He jerked his head toward the exit.
I did as he requested and motioned. My foot was about to walk off the pharmacy floor and into the break room when I turned around.
I already regretted what I had just said.
Despite my pointed words, this person was still my manager.
He could easily terminate me tomorrow morning.
It would be unlawful, but it was also the last thing I needed right now.
To be the bigger person, I looked Jonathan straight in the eyes. He kept staring at the wall behind me, looking bored. Yet, we both knew more brewed underneath.
“I wanted to apologize about what I said last week in the parking lot and what I said a moment ago. It was inappropriate of me to behave in such a way,” I said, gentler.
Jonathan continued to look past me as if I were nonexistent.
He walked toward me, off the pharmacy floor, and into a little hallway that led to the back.
I watched him jiggle the janitorial closet door, likely to grab the cleaning supplies we stored in there.
Once again, it was another day where I was nothing but a waste of space for this person.
Our conversation today had the tiniest of progressions until we both became petty mere seconds into it.