Chapter 36 Lily
By the time Friday comes around, I’m so tired I don’t even have the energy to pretend I’m fine.
I’ve spent the whole week shadowing Jacquetta, reading summaries, sitting in meetings that could have been emails, and watching people argue in professional tones that somehow make everything worse.
I have heard the words alignment, accountability, and clarification so many times they’ve started to feel personal.
My office looks the way I feel. Papers everywhere. Half-empty water bottle on my desk. Two granola bar wrappers beside my keyboard. My Lit with Lily notebook closed under a stack of folders, which feels symbolic in a way that makes me want to throw something.
I’m a professional, so I resist the urge.
Jacquetta steps into my office right before lunch, holding her tablet and smiling that polite HR smile that makes me want to sit up straight and smooth down my shirt. It’s creepy.
“You’re doing wonderfully this week,” she says.
“Thank you.” It comes out as almost a whisper.
“You’ve been quiet.”
“I’ve just been observing.”
“That’s good.” She claps her hands. “Observation is a key leadership skill.”
I know I’m supposed to agree, so I nod.
She sits in the chair across from me without asking. “I wanted to check in before we finalize your transition schedule.”
My stomach tightens.
Transition schedule. Those two words have been sitting on my calendar all week, getting bigger every time I look at them.
Jacquetta taps her tablet and starts listing off all my new responsibilities.
I stare at her, hoping my face doesn’t show how I’m feeling. I’m finding it more and more difficult to keep my expressions clear of my emotions lately.
“We’ll need you available later on Tuesdays and Thursdays for supervisor coaching prep, at least for the first quarter. Once you’re fully in the seat, we can evaluate workload.”
Workload. Evaluate. Fully in the seat. Every word sounds heavier than the last.
I glance at the corner of my desk where my Lit with Lily notebook lays buried. I can see the edge of the cover sticking out, bright and cheerful under all this beige and manila misery.
I look back at Jacquetta. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“If I take this role, what does balance look like?”
She smiles. “That’s something you create.”
I sit with that for a second. It’s a non-answer.
“I mean realistically,” I say. “What does leaving on time look like? What does taking lunch look like? What does not being available after hours look like?”
Her smile slips a fraction.
Not enough for most people to notice.
I notice.
She sits up straighter. “Well, leadership roles require flexibility.”
There it is. Flexibility means my life bends around the job. Not the other way around.
I nod slowly. “Right.”
“But you’re capable of it,” she says. “That’s why you were selected.”
“I know I’m capable.”
That’s not the problem.
I can sit in conference rooms until my eyes dry out.
I can take everybody else’s frustration and turn it into action items. The new systems, the difficult conversations, the tracking, the coaching, the constant need to make leadership feel like someone has the messy parts under control, I can handle it.
I can do the job, but that doesn’t feel like a good enough reason.
Jacquetta tilts her head. “You don’t sound excited.”
“I’m not.”
The words leave my mouth before I dress them up and make them feel pretty, and once they’re out there, I don’t want to call them back.
Jacquetta goes very still.
I almost laugh. I have seen this woman stay composed through employees crying, yelling, threatening grievances, and admitting they forwarded confidential documents to their personal email because they “wanted to work from home.” But me saying I’m not excited about a promotion has her blinking in real time.
“You’re not?” she asks.
“No.”
“Lily, this is a significant opportunity.”
“I know.”
“It comes with a salary increase.”
“I know.”
“And visibility.”
“I know.”
“And a leadership path.”
I take a deep breath. “I know all of that.”
“Then I’m not sure I understand.”
I fold my hands in my lap, so I don’t start fidgeting with everything on my desk. “I’m grateful you thought of me. And I know I can do the work. But I don’t want this role.”
The silence in the room has a pulse.
Jacquetta sets her tablet on her lap. “You don’t want the role.”
“No.”
“Can you tell me why?”
I take a breath. “I have to be honest with myself about capacity. ”
“I know I’m good at employee relations,” I say. “I’m not questioning whether I can do the work. I’m thinking through what the role would require day to day and whether I can give it what it needs while still honoring the other work I’m building.”
“What other work?”
“My art business,” I say.
Jacquetta frowns.
“Lit with Lily,” I say, because it deserves its name in the room. “It’s not a hobby. I teach classes, host events, run private parties, and create art experiences. It’s growing, and I want to grow with it.”
Jacquetta leans back, her frown deepening. “Are you resigning?”
My whole stomach flips.
“No,” I say quickly.
“ I also don’t want to accept a promotion without a full understanding of whether I can do everything else in my life too.”
She studies me.
I hold her gaze, even though every responsible bone in my body screams at me to shut up and take the money.
My creative bones are louder today.
Jacquetta exhales through her nose. “This is unusual.”
“I know.”
“We don’t often have people decline advancement. It may affect how leadership views your long-term trajectory here.”
There’s the warning wrapped in professionalism.
I swallow. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, and I’d rather be honest now than step into a role I already know I’m not fully committed to.”
Jacquetta sits back for a moment, her fingers folded around her tablet.
“I appreciate your honesty,” she says, and I can tell she means it in the HR way, not the regular human way.
“Thank you.”
“We’ll need to discuss what this means for coverage and succession planning, and we may need you to continue supporting certain transition tasks until another option is identified.”
That sounds about right.
I turn down a promotion and still get leftover work from it.
Delightful.
At least I can breathe now.
“I can support a reasonable transition,” I say. “I’d like to stay in my current role.”
Jacquetta nods slowly. “I’ll need to speak with leadership.”
“I understand.”
She stands and smooths the front of her blazer. “Take some time to think through your goals, Lily.”
“I have been.”
Her eyes meet mine, and I think she actually sees me. Not as the dependable employee who can handle any mess. I think she sees an actual human.
“I’ll circle back,” she says.
She leaves my office, and I stare at the empty chair for a bit, then I laugh.
It comes out small at first, then bigger, and I have to cover my mouth because I’m still at work and apparently still interested in keeping this job for now.
I just turned down a promotion.
In this economy.
My mom can never know this happened.
Edie taps on my door, and I wave her in.
She closes the door behind her. “Well?”
I lean back in my chair and let out a long breath. “I told her I don’t want the promotion.”
Edie’s face shifts from nosy to serious. “You really did it?”
“I did.”
She sits across from me, quiet for once, and that almost makes me cry faster than any big reaction would have. “How do you feel?”
“Terrified,” I say. “Relieved. A little sick. Mostly like I just turned down money I may eventually regret turning down.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe you turned down a version of your life that already felt too heavy.”
I press my fingers against my eyes and breathe. I keep coming back to the fact that I can do the job and be good at the job. But being capable of something doesn’t mean I have to sacrifice my joy for it.
“I don’t know what happens next,” I say.
“You don’t have to know everything today.”
“That sounds fake, but I appreciate it.”
Edie smiles a little. “It’s not fake. It’s just annoying because you want a full plan before your heart rate comes down.”
After she leaves, I sit there with my work calendar still open on one screen and my inbox glaring at me from the other.
Nothing about my day has actually gotten lighter.
There are still emails waiting, forms to review, conversations to document, and people who expect me to have answers before I’ve had a chance to recalibrate myself.
I feel recharged.
I pull my Lit with Lily notebook out from under the HR folders. Just seeing it there, tucked beneath all the work I’m paid to care about, makes my chest ache. I open it to the page earlier in the week.
What would help?
Underneath it, Edie’s handwriting mixes with mine and I see all the pieces I keep trying to manage alone because asking for help feels foreign to me.
I stare at the list and finally understand the difference.
I don’t need somebody to hand me a finished life. I need room to build the one I keep saying I want.
That makes me think about Javonte. I think about him standing in that studio, proud and nervous, waiting for me to see what he saw. I see his face when mine couldn’t do what he expected it to do.
My chest still hurts, but the hurt has a shape now.
He saw me. That’s the complicated part. He saw that I was tired and that Lit with Lily was outgrowing the corners I kept squeezing it into. He saw the problem clearly enough to try to solve it.
He just skipped the part where I got to choose the answer.
I know what I need to say to him now. I know why it hurt. I also know I don’t want to keep punishing him for trying when what I really need is for him to understand.
I pick up my phone and open his messages.
His last text is still there.
I’m here when you’re ready.
I’m not ready to fix everything in one conversation, but I am ready to stop hiding from it.
Me: I’m ready to talk.