2. Ash #2
Query’s San Francisco campus is a monument to success, with sweeping Bay views, brightly colored workspaces, and curated demo areas.
I’m lucky to have a coveted spot. There’s a long waitlist of people gunning for my desk from their soul-crushing Valley commutes, quietly rooting for me to quit or get fired.
This office, my work, my team, my ridiculous compensation package—it’s more than I deserve. I know that.
“Ash!” Chase calls, practically sprinting down the hallway, MacBook clutched to his chest.
“I’m heading to the meeting,” I say, not slowing.
“I know. I’m… sorry.”
“It was one kiss,” I say, quickening my pace.
Here I am trying to outrun this mistake, and he’s following me.
Every year, I warn my team that the company holiday party isn’t the place for drunken confessions, cathartic arguments, or dressed-up bad decisions. I usually sneak out early to watch a movie or spend time with Jenny and her family.
Last year, I ignored my own advice, stayed too late, and drank one too many whiskeys.
I wasn’t falling-down drunk, just warm and careless enough to stop treating Chase like someone I needed to manage.
I noticed the softness of his red jacket, wondered what was underneath his black vest and pressed white shirt, and let his hand stay on my shoulder through Troye Sivan.
When the song ended, he pulled me in, and I acted like the room had narrowed to two people.
Company parties never narrow to two people, and certainly not to a manager and his report.
Reality slammed back in the second we broke apart. I scanned the room as my shoulders tightened at every laugh and clink of glass. I knew enough to be afraid then, even before someone reported it.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, barely loud enough for Chase as we head onto the glass bridge between buildings. “Against company policy? Maybe. But wrong? No. There must be loads of manager-report… things. Query has a process for this, I’m sure.”
A process that might end with a cardboard box and a security escort.
“Yeah,” Chase says, staring at the polished floor.
Walking the glass West 14th Street bridge is no longer eye-poppingly surreal, with traffic crawling below us and sunlight flashing off windshields. Today it feels like a long, public walk to my own execution.
“You okay?” I ask, hating that I have to.
He’s still cute, but panic has a way of bleaching the attraction right out of a person.
He’s an employee with high potential and even higher ambitions, full of the same sharp-elbowed confidence I had when I started.
The difference is timing. Query was still growing when I got here.
Now the place is logjammed and top-heavy, and it’ll take him years to climb where I got in three months.
“I just…” he says.
Of course he’s nervous. I’m his manager and the guy he kissed.
Should I reassure him? Hold his hand? Explain the HR process to him like this is happening to both of us in the same way? It’s becoming painfully obvious why these relationships are frowned upon.
“Hey. I’ll be fine.” I stop walking and force some version of managerial calm onto my face. He still won’t look at me. “Hey,” I say again, until he finally lifts his eyes. “I’d love to chat, but I’m trying to get in the zone. Let’s talk later?”
“I told them,” he blurts.
“I’ll see you at the team meeting,” I say, not really hearing him.
“I told them we kissed. It was me.” Chase’s eyes are a watery mix of fear and misplaced compassion for the bomb he’s dropping on my career.
“You what?” I bark, too loud, heat flooding my face as I glance around to make sure no one heard.
He kissed me. He made the first move. And now he’s the one reporting it?
“I’m newer here,” he says quietly, as if that explains anything. As if I’m one log he’s clearing out of the way.
“You’re kidding.” He isn’t, but I say it anyway, staring out the window at the traffic below and trying not to imagine shoving him into it.
“You’ve worked here forever,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”
I force a laugh that sounds as miserable as I feel.
“When it happened… I didn’t mean for it to happen, but then it did, and—”
“You kissed me,” I snap, stepping closer. “And now this is serious for me. This is my career.”
“It’s my career too.”
“Are you meeting with HR today?”
He looks away again.
“I’m… sorry?” he says, his voice lifting at the end.
I can’t. I turn and keep walking, but Chase trails after me.
“You said it’ll be fine,” he says. “Right?”
“You should have talked to me.”
“And said what?”
“I don’t know, Chase. Maybe, ‘I’m panicking. I’m second-guessing this. I’m about to go tell HR and let them decide what happens to you.’”
Chase doesn’t even try to answer.
“Do you have any idea what this could cost me?” I ask. “Because of you?”
Chase’s mouth opens silently, his shoulders shrugging once as we reach the conference room.
The realization punches me in the chest. “You don’t care, do you?” I whisper.
“Of course I care!”
“You think I’ll be fine no matter what.”
“You already have millions—” he starts, then sees my face and cuts himself off.
“We’re done,” I say.
I walk into the conference room reserved for my “support” and close the door before the HR rep can see Chase standing there, mouth agape.
A scream claws at my throat, but I swallow it.
I’ll have plenty of time to lose it if I walk out of here unemployed and scrambling for jobs that will never match my current pay.
“Hi, Mr. Pierce.” Her smile is unnervingly wide, like we’re about to share a pleasant cup of coffee instead of dismantle my career. “Would you like some water or anything?”
“Hi. Ash, please. I’m fine, thank you. What’s your name?”
“I’m Kimberly.”
“Nice to meet you.” I force a polite nod. “How long have you been at Query?”
I don’t know why that’s my first question. She looks to be in her sixties, probably newer than me. Gray hair isn’t really part of the Query aesthetic.
“Two months,” Kimberly says, a slight furrow forming between her eyebrows.
Oops. I was right, exactly the wrong way to kick this off.
“Welcome,” I say quickly. “Glad you’re here. I know this won’t be a pleasant conversation, but I understand you’re just doing your job. So don’t hold back.”
Kimberly’s expression remains unreadably fixed. “If you want honesty, Mr. Pierce, I’m not just doing my job. I’m addressing a very serious concern.”
“Right. I mean…”
What did I mean? That this is all Chase’s fault? That he traded my career for his?
“Please, have a seat.” She gestures to the chairs across the table.
“I know it was wrong, and I’m prepared to accept the consequences.” My body folds into the chair before I’ve decided to sit.
“What was wrong, Mr. Pierce?”
“Kissing a subordinate,” I say. “Kissing Chase.” Kimberly remains silent.
“I know how it looks, promoting him, but that was before we kissed. His previous manager recommended it. Promoting him I mean, obviously. And when he joined my team, and instead of resetting his career like often happens with horizontal moves, I honored that recommendation when I saw his performance.”
“That sounds like one part admission of guilt, ten parts justification,” she says, tone sharp. “You did ask for honesty.”
“I’m sorry. I never intended this to happen.”
“We don’t evaluate intentions here, Ash. We look at actions.”
“And I’ve acted inappropriately.”
“Yes,” she confirms. “And neither of us gets to decide what happens next.”
Eight years at Query ride on this one moment. My carefully planned path to financial independence, my one real shot at the life I want, hangs on what Kimberly says next.