I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

Chapter One

ONE

Dear Debra, I am going to kill you.

I aggressively backspace before a nosy colleague can read the brash email draft over my shoulder.

Narrowly escaping the cubicle life—and the privacy that comes with it—means the whole office is privy to everything I do between the working hours of eight and four, when my ass is glued to my seat behind my receptionist desk by the front door.

Of course, their asses should also be glued to their seats, but I’m convinced nobody does time theft quite like the employees at Curated Care Life Insurance.

I try again for something less likely to get me reported to HR.

Dear Debra,

I hope this email finds you well! I’m circling back to see if the end-of-week report is ready? I’d love to drop it on Luke’s desk by four.

Thank you, and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help!

Best,

Brie

I debate taking out the exclamation marks, but at this point, fuck it. If Debra didn’t want an over-eager receptionist in her inbox, she should have sent the reports by noon, like she’s supposed to.

A huff escapes as I click send and push away from my desk. In the five months since starting at Curated Care, I’ve gone from teary-eyed gratitude at finally getting hired somewhere to needing to give myself morning pep talks in the bathroom mirror every day while getting ready.

Moisturizer: It’s a new day. Make it a good one!

Eyeliner: You’re the hottest receptionist (see also: only receptionist) in the place. Work it.

Mascara: How lucky you are to get a biweekly paycheck! Thriving!

With twenty minutes to kill before end of day, I wander to the water jug, which is adjacent to Debra’s office.

Since we share the same floor, I can just nag her in person, which worked fine until recently.

I even kind of enjoyed it. Debra used to give off gracious granny vibes, like she loved nothing more than letting me sit in her office while she stuffed me full of gingersnaps from the cookie jar she keeps on the corner of her desk.

But I’m starting to suspect that was just a make-the-new-girl-feel-welcome ruse.

I’m now well acquainted with the procrastinating menace beneath her sweet-as-pie facade.

I’m pretty sure she’s asleep at her desk, if her tucked-in chin is any indication. I clear my throat, then do it again when she gives no response. Jesus, is she dead? I know she’s old, nearly at retirement, but not that old.

“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, giving the empty water jug a shake. A few drops drip sadly into my waiting cup, but nothing more.

“Nearly that time,” Ted from Sales says, passing me from the hall that connects the office with the stairwell leading to the back door.

He smells faintly of something too sweet to be natural, a sure sign he was on a vape break.

“Also, don’t forget to fax this week’s sales numbers to Corporate.

I think I saw Luke leave a note about it on your desk earlier. ”

First off, Ted, mind your fucking business. Second—

“Just waiting for Debs to send me the report,” I say through clenched teeth. The Post-it note I found stuck on my clunky keyboard upon returning from lunch read in neat print:

B,

Please fax the weekly report to Corporate and leave a copy on my desk.

Thanks in advance,

L

As if my boss thinking I can’t competently do my job without nudging isn’t bad enough, I also have the joy of bracing myself for my weekly brawl with our prehistoric fax machine.

Meanwhile, the fact that I could send the report as a PDF attached via email hangs over my head like a juicy steak.

If only Curated Care didn’t still abide by operations put in place in the ’80s.

Ted takes the initiative to strike up a conversation and props an elbow on the empty water jug. “Any fun plans this weekend?”

Ted is the type of man who shows just above the normal colleague level of interest in my life, but his salt-and-pepper hair and receding hairline make it difficult to tell if his weekly asks are in the office dad way or the office dad-dy way. I desperately hope it’s the former, for both our sakes.

“Nothing much,” I say, the same answer I’ve given every Friday since starting here. “Takeout, trashy TV, tequila, oh my!”

I should return the question, but I never do, because that breaks one of my most sacred rules: don’t get personal with others, and they won’t get personal with you.

He smiles in a clueless way that suggests he doesn’t get my reference. “Cool, sounds like a great time. I miss the days when tequila didn’t end with my head in the toilet.”

“Stomach of steel,” I boast. A lie, given I don’t even drink tequila and wouldn’t put money down on it not coming back up if I did. It’s admirable if I consume more than two cups of water most days, even with a full water jug.

Before we can dig into the conversation further, I toss my empty paper cup into the trash and turn back toward my desk.

I only make it a few steps away when he clears his throat. “Oh, and, uh, also, the water jug is out. Might be nice to replace that so you won’t need to worry about it Monday.”

He ambles back to his desk and I try not to throw the finger at his retreating form. When I signed on for this job, I didn’t realize it’d make me into the office pleb.

As I haul a fresh water jug out from the storage closet, I brighten marginally to see Debra is awake again, her open inbox reflected in her glasses. After getting my workout for the week while switching out the jugs, I sprint back to my desk to see an email from her in my otherwise empty inbox.

The report is attached…

That’s all she wrote. If this were our first rodeo, the foreboding ellipses might be cause for concern.

But after weeks of this cat-and-mouse dance, I’m immune to Debra’s lack of email etiquette, though she usually adds a closer.

Like me, she uses Best, but unlike me, she doesn’t do an anxiety double scan, so more than once I’ve received a response with the signature:

Bet,

Debra

I really can’t blame her, because if I was seventysomething and working at the same company I’d started off at as a twenty-seven-year-old receptionist, I wouldn’t give a shit, either.

Then again, I have zero plans to still be here forty years from now.

I fire off a quick Thanks!, print the pages, and staple one set for Luke. Just in time for the little hand on the clock above the door to click over to four.

Ted and the rest of the Sales team are out the door first, as usual.

Everyone else files out after, chatting about weekend plans and the impending holiday.

Eight AM and four PM are Acknowledge Brie Hours, where I get a stream of hellos and goodbyes from people I barely communicate with aside from during full staff meetings, when someone has a birthday—I was bullied into joining the birthday committee as a newbie—or, apparently, when the water jug needs to be swapped out for a new one.

“Hey, angel, ready to go?”

And then there’s Krystal Santiago.

“Almost,” I say, shrugging my coat on as Krystal leans against my desk.

The fluorescent lights don’t make her look half as sickly as me, though whether that’s due to her glowy light brown skin; the ten-step skincare routine she swears by like it’s the Bible; or the hummingbird, glass-half-full energy she radiates, I don’t know.

Before moving to Tarrentown, Pennsylvania, I had never met anyone who smiled as much as Krystal, except my dad.

Maybe that’s why she’s the only one I let weasel in.

As painful as his memory is, I’m greedy for any scraps to feed it so he doesn’t disappear.

I hold up the report, flashing her a smile. Not the fake kind I used on Ted, but a real one. “Just gotta drop this off in Luke’s office.”

Her freshly waxed brows pop up. “How much coaxing did Debs take this week?”

“Only my soul and the blood of my firstborn,” I reply.

“She’s been exceptionally forgetful lately,” Krystal comments. “She never used to give you this much of a hassle.”

“Lucky me.” I round the curve of my desk and knock on Luke’s closed office door. He doesn’t answer, which I expected since I can see it’s empty through the open blinds. Normally, I wouldn’t barge in, but it seems safe to leave it on his desk since he told me to in his note.

His office looks as drab as every other time I’ve been in here in the month since he started.

Nothing but a WORLD’S BEST BOSS mug of pens on the intricate rosewood desk, a few books on the shelf to the right, and a plaque that the old boss got him that reads LUKE D’ANGELO.

No wall decorations or photos of a partner or kids.

Or any family at all. Luke has yet to lay down roots.

That makes two of us.

My gaze catches on a sizable brown paper bag tucked behind his desk. It sits on top of a huge book with a cracked leather spine. There’s faded gold lettering across it, but even with my contacts in, I can’t make out what it says. I plant my palms on his desk to lean closer so I can read it—

“Do you need something?”

I spin to face my boss in the doorway. Except, he’s not in the doorway—he’s here.

Right behind me here. So close that my shoulder smacks into his and I reel back from the collision.

But then there’s his desk, and there’s nowhere to go as the backs of my thighs bump against it and I fall backward, planting both butt cheeks on it as my balance vanishes with my dignity.

Hands grab my arms to steady me before I fully topple over. The world stops moving, my balance returns from war, and I stare at a silk eggplant-colored tie because I can’t let my mortified gaze meet the eyes of the man whose desk I was just bent over.

“You scared me!” I burst out.

“It is my office.” If my ears squint, they might detect a hint of wryness in Luke’s usually even tone. His hands leave my arms and he backs up so I can hop off his desk. “Do you need something?”