Chapter 15
The commencement ceremony had already started by the time Charlotte made it to the President’s Lawn. Beyond a sea of royal-blue-and-silver graduates, on a podium erected outside his mansion, the university president greeted the Class of 2018 and their families.
Roger sat beside the president with a toothy smirk on his face, tapping his foot on the floor. He had found his way to the stage without her.
Charlotte looked haggard next to the smiling families in their Sunday best. She entered the tent at the back of the crowd and sank into a folding chair by an RC water station. As soon as she sat down, she caved in on herself and rested her forehead against her knees.
God, the way Reece stared at her before she walked away. The hurt in his eyes, the shock splitting his voice…
Reece let her in, held her close, made love to her and held her all night long and she ruined it. Again.
You are nothing.
Her job was a dead end. Her best friend hated her. Her relationship had failed before it could even start. This time tomorrow she’d be sitting at her desk with nothing to look forward to. Gray walls, gray blouse, gray future, gray existence.
She didn’t know who she hated more, Roger or herself.
Disgraceful.
Ravishing.
Is this really who you thought you’d be?
Charlotte couldn’t hear herself over the din in her mind. She couldn’t remember the words to say, the grounding techniques, the colors. Her legs felt heavy, and her arms, and her head. She pressed her fingertips into the back of her neck. Her skin was wet and clammy under her hair.
Nothing.
Eventually Roger took the microphone. Charlotte didn’t catch a word. She stared unseeing at the podium decked out in blue-and-silver bunting. The hues swam. She sat up and opened Twitter on her phone, but her hands shook too much to hold it steady.
“…forty years in the industry, I learned to get my knuckles bloody…” Roger’s self-satisfied growl wafted past her.
It was all for nothing. Years of answering his emails. Years of picking up his dry cleaning. Years of holding her tongue when he snapped at her for not laughing at his jokes. Years of smiling placidly as her morals rotted in her chest.
None of it counted.
None of it was enough.
Not the calls answered on the weekend, or the emails written late at night. Not the social life she sacrificed to meet Roger’s unrelenting demands. Not the endless abuse she absorbed until her heart staggered and her breath came in heaving gasps.
You haven’t proven yourself to me.
She knew his favorite cocktail and his preferred brand of undershirt. She filled his prescriptions and drafted his presentations. She cleaned his ashtray twice a day because the building janitorial staff refused to touch his office. She filled her head with meaningless facts about his life, all to prove that she was worth investing in.
All it had proven was that she served at his beck and call.
Charlotte had nothing outside this job and it still wasn’t enough. She would never be enough.
“…is war. It’s a goddamn competition. Every day you gotta be the first, be the smartest, be the best…”
She remembered Reece’s profile tightening as Roger berated her. Her stomach filled with acidic brown humiliation. It was so much worse to have a witness, to have him witness her degradation. Now for a second time. She couldn’t ignore Roger’s insults when Reece’s reaction played out across his face. His horror made her reality impossible to ignore.
From now on she would see Reece’s face when Roger called her stupid. She would see Reece’s brows furrow in offense. She would see his eyes dart to her in concern. She would remember.
You haven’t shown your dedication to this company.
“…first at your desk in the morning and the last to leave at the end of the day. If you clock out before the sun sets, you’re walking out on your dreams…”
Why had she run herself into the ground for this man? What had she sacrificed her friendships for, her community for? The chance to maybe, someday, move to another team, where she would continue to work overtime to design a magazine that did jack shit to make the world a better place? What kind of dream was that? What was all this striving for? What was she killing herself for?
Maybe Jackie was right about this too. Maybe abuse was all she knew.
Disgraceful.
For years Charlotte had sanded down her edges to try to fit the box her mother had made for her. She’d done it again with Ben, falling victim to the same dynamic because she didn’t recognize his tactics. She thought she broke the cycle when she cut her mother out of her life, but here she was again. This was different; she didn’t want love or validation from Roger, she held on to this job for financial security. But Roger knew that too. He knew how vulnerable she was as layoffs rattled the bones of the media industry, and he used it to exploit her. Another abuser in a line of abusers who bled her of her strength and convinced her she deserved it.
Why should she even live-tweet his grandiose bullshit? Why should she go above and beyond for a man who would never, ever notice her effort? Why should she care one iota about Roger’s approval? She could never prove herself to a man who treated her like dog shit.
Sometimes the only option you had was to leave.
If you want to keep your job, you should reconsider your attitude.
Fuck that. On Monday she would start applying for jobs. When she landed something else, she would give her two weeks’ notice.
Hell, she would give a week.
If in two months she still had nothing, she would quit anyway. She had to take responsibility for what was within her control. She didn’t have to subject herself to this anymore.
Her friends would catch her when she fell. They kept offering to help and she didn’t believe them, but why shouldn’t she? Had they ever given her a reason not to trust them? Jackie fed her and dressed her and pushed her to share her feelings. Reece talked her through her anxiety and held her hair back when she puked. Jio and Matt kept telling her to stay with them in D.C.
She said so herself: She didn’t know how to ask for help.
It was time for her to learn.
There are so many people who love you, Charlie.
She could figure out the details later. The math of her finances didn’t matter. She couldn’t afford to live like this anymore.
Charlotte blinked away unshed tears. The roaring in her ears quieted. She took another deep breath. She let it go.
She focused on her surroundings. The metal folding chair stuck to her thighs. Sunlight poured across the President’s Lawn. Imani, the bartender from Thursday’s class reception, stood behind the water station, still in her blue RC shirt. The student grimaced as she listened to Roger’s commencement address.
Someone had given Charlotte’s boss an elaborate gown to wear over his suit. The shiny blue fabric clashed with his spray tan. His eyes bulged from his face. He must look ridiculous to the university’s new graduates. She knew Roger well enough to recognize the liquored-up recklessness in how he spoke, and she’d bet the Hein kids listening could hear it too.
The energy on the President’s Lawn had changed. Students exchanged whispers behind cupped hands. Parents shifted uncomfortably on their folding chairs. Imani took out her phone to record Roger’s address, one hand over her mouth in horror.
Charlotte sat up straight, wondering what she’d missed.
Across the field, Roger hunched over the lectern, his blue-and-silver cap askew. “Your generation thinks you are so special,” he sneered. The mic clipped to his lapel popped and hissed as it picked up the disdain in his voice.
Oh my god.
Her hand rose to her mouth too.
Roger wasn’t kidding in the parking lot. His address was pure, uncensored Roger Ludermore wisdom. This time he didn’t have a podcast editor to polish his dreck, and boy, had he picked the wrong audience.
Imani guffawed as she leaned against the water refill station. She pinched her fingers on her phone screen, zooming in on Roger’s face as she filmed.
“You all complain when life doesn’t hand you everything you want,” he continued. Charlotte could see the malicious glee in his eyes all the way across the field. He was enjoying himself, ignorant of the damage he was causing. Or worse, reveling in it. “The world isn’t out to get you. It doesn’t care if you’re a woman or gay or whatever words you all use now. The world just doesn’t give a shit about you.”
A shocked laugh escaped her mouth. Never in her wildest work-related fantasies did she think Roger would be reckless enough to broadcast his bigoted opinions to the world.
With a sneaking suspicion, she typed the Reunion Commencement hashtag into Twitter. A sea of tweets from Hein grads and their parents filled her screen. Roger’s name was already trending locally.
@Annabellecruz96:Roger Ludermore is a sexist bigot and I can’t believe Hein brought him here to speak. What an insult to one of the most diverse graduating classes in the school’s history. #HeinRandC2018
@BLMbabycakes:roger ludermore canceling himself in real time lmaooo #HeinRandC2018
@HeinULaborUnion:Pretty sure @RogerLudermore just violated Title IX in this commencement address, y’all. @FrontEndReview #HeinRandC2018
Charlotte laughed. His Twitter notifications were already destroyed. People tagged Front End’s account in their tweets too, and she spared a thought for the company’s social media team.
But Roger was only getting started. He knew he had lost his audience and he clearly didn’t care. He fed off their disapproval the way he fed off Charlotte’s discomfort at the office.
“If you want that job, offer to do it for free. Set yourself apart from the pack. Hate to break it to you kids, but no one is gonna hand you opportunities. You need to get off your entitled asses and fight.”
@JustineDanielPerry:Did @RogerLudermore just tell #Hein2018 graduates to work for free?
This might be the best moment of her life.
Charlotte pulled up a new draft and did her best to remember Roger’s exact wording. He wanted her to live-tweet this train wreck? She’d share quote after quote, word for goddamn word.
She was just typing out hate to break it to you when she caught her name.
“I was just talking to my assistant Charlotte about this.”
Oh god. Oh no.
Her eyes snapped back to the stage across the Lawn. Roger’s eyes held a manic glow.
“Nice girl, but nothing special,” her boss confided like he was trading gossip in the executive lounge. “A few months ago, she gets all bent out of shape about her salary, thinks she deserves more. Now she’s upset she didn’t get a promotion.”
Roger knew she was listening. He knew this was her school too. He knew and he didn’t care. She was just a useful anecdote to illustrate a point. Just some entitled millennial who drafted his strategy proposals and coordinated terse lunches with his wife. Just some failure in an ill-fitting blazer with the gall to ask for an industry-standard salary. Just some girl who thought if she worked hard enough, something might finally go right for her.
Roger slouched on the lectern, one arm propped on the ledge while the other gestured aimlessly toward the sky. She could hear the peppery loathing in his voice as he delivered his advice to her in front of an audience.
“Look, honey: If you’re not getting ahead at work, maybe you should ask yourself if you’re the problem.”
His words landed like a slap.
She shouldn’t be surprised. She wasn’t surprised. She understood. All her life she had been the problem. She was her mother’s problem, her shameful queer disappointment. She was Ben’s problem, his weak-willed girlfriend who couldn’t take a joke. And now she was Roger’s problem, his pitiful, entitled, talentless assistant.
She had asked herself if she was the problem ever since her fourth birthday party, when she was too scared to play piano in front of so many adult strangers and learned that her mother’s affection was conditional. She didn’t need some wealthy libertarian prick to tell her to consider that she might be the problem.
Unheeded, the memory of Reece’s voice blotted out Roger’s diatribe. She saw his sleepy face in the monochrome of the dorm’s early morning, his hand gentle against her face.
I can’t understand anyone choosing not to know you.
She didn’t deserve this.
I’ll tell you again anytime you need a reminder.
She deserved so much better than this.
My name is Charlotte Thorne and I feel fucking angry.
Charlotte looked down at her phone. She toggled from Roger’s Twitter account to her own, and she opened a new tweet.
@CThorne:Hey @RogerLudermore! I quit. Order your own ugly business cards, you obnoxious prick. #HeinRandC2018
A deep breath, the gleaming white of a decision made. And…
She hit post.
Immediately her tweet started racking up likes and retweets. A burst of laughter erupted from a group of students hunched together in the last row, presumably reading her post on someone’s phone.
@BLMbabycakes:@CThorne omg!! good for you bitch!!!
@HeinULaborUnion:@CThorne Is this really Charlotte? Would love to connect.
Roger continued to rant, oblivious. He moved on to berating his audience for something else, her name mercifully absent.
As the tweet ricocheted across the President’s Lawn, Charlotte waited for regret to hit her. When she reached for it, it didn’t materialize. She wasn’t disassociating. If anything, she felt robust and awake. She could smell the sunblock and sweat of the graduates sitting in front of her. A baby cried faintly in the distance. The sun bore down on the field and her heart beat hard and stubborn in her chest. Her phone vibrated in her hand as notifications continued to come in.
This part of her life was over. She was done taking anyone’s shit.
She took another deep breath and put her phone on silent.
Then, on second thought, she turned it off.
Sunlight nearly blinded her as she emerged from the tent. Charlotte blinked through it and turned toward the quad, ready to join her friends at the picnic. She needed to talk to Reece. She needed to fight for him, really fight for her happiness and her friends and her future stretching bright and open ahead of her. For the life she wanted to build next, whether or not Reece chose to be a part of it.
She needed to apologize to Jackie too. She needed to tell her she was right.
“Thorny!”
She almost stopped. Her body wanted to respond on autopilot and turn to face him.
But that blissful sense of done made her laugh instead, because of course Ben Mead would track her down at her moment of victory. Anytime she reached for her freedom, her ex-boyfriend could smell it in the breeze.
Charlotte shook her head and kept walking.
“Hey, Thorny! Wait up!”
She heard his shoes behind her on the grass just before he grabbed her wrist. Charlotte planted her feet and pulled her arm out of his grip, but Ben only danced around her to block her path.
The musk of his cologne followed him. It couldn’t hide his stale all-nighter smell. Ben was shorter than she remembered, and he hunched inward like the direct sunlight hurt him.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “What do you want?”
Ben’s smug mask slid neatly into place. “My, aren’t you looking flushed today. Didn’t get much sleep last night?”
The insult slid past her. She remembered Ben at twenty-one, his face contorting with fury as she collected her things from his bedroom at the frat house. No one will ever love you, he told her.
Roger used that same tone when he called her inessential. Dial it up a few octaves and you’d have her mother’s accusation that she was a disgrace to the family.
It was a pattern. It was all a pattern. She let these selfish, vicious people into her life and she apologized and apologized and apologized.
Not today, Satan.
When she moved to get around him, he stepped sideways into her path again. “Hang on, I want to talk to you!”
She felt no fight or flight, no freeze or fawn. If anything, she felt hungry. She hadn’t eaten since sneaking a bite of Wynn’s leftovers at Acronym. A hot dog at the picnic sounded perfect.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she said, trying one last time to dodge around him.
Ben’s eyes narrowed as he stepped left to counter her. “Well, that’s not very nice. I just want to catch up. Like old friends!”
“No, you don’t,” Charlotte said. “You don’t give a damn about me. You’re either here to harass me, or you want something. So what is it, Ben?”
Surprise took all the danger from his face. He goggled at her like she’d started speaking Swedish.
He really wasn’t that handsome. His precious hairline had begun to recede. A bead of sweat collected at his temples—he must be boiling in that awful jacket.
All trace of smarm vanished as he changed tack. Ben sized her up like a negotiation opponent. “You work at Front End. With Roger Ludermore.”
Not anymore, dipshit.
Charlotte considered correcting him, but her curiosity won out. “So?”
Ben stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I want to come on his podcast. As a guest.”
Whatever she expected, it wasn’t that.
Dear god, her ex-boyfriend was a loser.
“What?”
Ben didn’t look pleased by the laughter in her voice. “I’m expanding my show to cover the economy.” When she didn’t react, he shifted his weight to his other foot. “Our audiences don’t overlap, so we would, you know, mutually broaden our reach and stuff.”
Charlotte’s hair moved loose and wild around her face in the breeze. She grinned. “Aren’t you supposed to be a leftist? Why would you want to talk to a rabid capitalist?”
Ben stiffened, caught off guard by her refusal to play his game. “I mean, it’s all brand building—”
“No.”
God, the look on his face. She’d remember it for years, the delicious shock that swept across his ratty, old-money jaw. No one told Ben Mead no. No one except her, apparently.
“Excuse me?” he stammered.
“No, I won’t help you use Roger’s podcast to build your career.”
That jaw looked decidedly weak as he gaped at her. “What’s your problem?”
Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t have a problem. In fact, I have a lot fewer problems in my life now that you’re not in it.”
She wished she could bottle this feeling. Preppy pink delight, like the dresses her mother wore to the Chevy Chase Country Club.
Ben’s hands fisted at his side. “Excuse me? Who do you think you are?”
She didn’t like the anger streaking through his question, but she wasn’t afraid of him, not out in the open like this. In public, Ben kept his voice low and his malice in check.
“I’m someone who really knows you,” she said. “And I have somewhere else I need to be.”
Charlotte turned on her heel and made toward the quad. Before she could take a step, Ben grabbed her elbow and yanked her backward. Her balance tilted and she nearly lost her footing on the grass.
“Hey, don’t walk away from me,” Ben sneered. His fingers dug into her skin as she tried to right herself. He wasn’t built, but his grip was strong when it mattered.
The world clipped into stuttering microfiche around her. “Let go of me!” she snarled. Adrenaline roared through her body as she tried to shake him off.
“We got a problem here?” Garrett’s deep voice jolted them both. He appeared out of nowhere to stand beside them, not quite getting in the middle. Reece’s best friend looked between her and Ben like a referee bursting onto the field to settle a dispute between players.
Ben immediately let go and raised his hands in the air, looking at her like she was the difficult one, but his face was an ugly smear of fury. “Jesus, don’t be so dramatic, Thorny.”
Charlotte pulled her smarting arm against her chest, Ben’s fingers still a white burn on her skin. Tears pressed against her eyes, emotionally stuck somewhere between horror and relief.
“What’s going on?” Garrett barked, not taking his eyes off Ben’s face.
“Nothing,” Ben spat. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Charlotte. “Just a lovers’ quarrel.”
She rocked back a step as his words hit her like darts of tainted memory. Her voice flickered and died in her throat, tranquilized. She could hear her old words like an echo through time: I’m so sorry Ben I didn’t mean it—
Garrett glanced at her, his face unreadable. Then he stepped between them in one seamless movement, his back to her.
“Okay, you’re done.” Garrett placed his hand at the center of Ben’s chest and gave him a firm shove backward. “Get your goofy ass out of here.”
Garrett’s wide hockey player’s body towered over her ex-boyfriend. Charlotte peered around his back to watch Ben splutter. “Do you know who I am?”
“Everyone knows who you are,” Garrett seethed. He didn’t need to raise his voice—his raised hackles were proof enough of his seriousness. “We don’t care about your daddy. No one wants you here. Go home.”
Charlotte’s jaw dropped, but Garrett wasn’t done. “You hear me? Back. The hell. Off.” He punctuated each word with another shove against Ben’s chest, not hard enough to hurt but enough to force him backward on impact.
Her ex looked around for backup, but he was alone. The graduation ceremony proceeded unaware of their argument as Roger wound up for some awful big finish. A few fearless graduates booed.
Only the RC girl running the water station peered over at them. Charlotte realized in a rush why Imani looked familiar—she had Garrett’s round face and elegant neck. His sister, the future senator.
Ben glanced at Charlotte, his eyes flinty, before considering the man in front of him. Garrett showed no sign of backing down.
With a huff, Ben brushed the front of his jacket like he was dusting off Garrett’s prints. Then he spun on his heels and power-walked away, his head ducked as he disappeared into the tent.
Garrett turned around. He looked her over, his pale eyes wide with concern. Charlotte suddenly noticed they were a soft blue, like the forget-me-not flowers that grew in her backyard as a child. “You okay?” he asked.
Words abandoned her. Garrett had a fresh scrape on his chin. Little speckles of dried blood were already forming scabs. “What happened there?” she asked, nodding at the injury.
“Oh.” He brought his fingers to his face. “Fell last night. Tried to jump off a loft bed.”
She blinked. “At Acronym?”
“Yeah. I got dared.”
She laughed. The scrape made him look rugged.
“What about you?” He stayed still and made no move to touch her, which she appreciated. Her brain felt like the needle had fallen off the record. “Are you okay?”
“I think I’m in shock?” she said. “Maybe?”
He frowned. “Seems like it. Let’s get you some water, yeah?”
Charlotte rested her hands on her knees and reminded herself to breathe as Garrett dashed off to grab a drink at the water station. She felt light-headed as her adrenaline rush slowed.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
“Here.” Garrett crouched down in front of her. He handed her a paper cup and she gulped down the cold water. “Do you need to sit down?”
“I’m fine,” she said. He raised a bushy eyebrow and she coughed, pressing her hand to her chest. “Really, I’m okay. Thank you for—” She didn’t know what to say, how to explain it.
No one ever stood up to Ben like that. Not even Jackie. No one but Garrett—and now Charlotte too.
Garrett cut her off with a firm shake of his head. “Least I could do,” he said. “I was trying not to smack him.”
Charlotte let out a shaky laugh. She took another sip of the water, her heart finally slowing its sprint.
“For serious, should we do something?” he asked in a low voice.
Charlotte shook her head. It wasn’t worth it. The Mead family’s lawyers had shielded Ben from much worse than being an aggressive prick to his ex-girlfriend in broad daylight. “Nah, there’s no point. It would just blow back on us. And I think he’s gone.”
Garrett watched silently as she finished the water. Charlotte stood up and pushed her hair out of her face. She handed him the empty cup. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged a meaty shoulder. “Yeah, I did.”