Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
The next morning, I’m getting ready for work when Mom calls.
Which is weird. Mom doesn’t usually call in the morning.
I answer on speaker while pulling a blouse from the back of my chair. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetie. I won’t keep you,” she says. “I just saw a woman outside the grocery store balancing a coffee, a phone, and about six different bags, and it made me think of you. So I thought I’d check in.”
I smile despite myself. “That is both sweet and insulting.”
“It was meant lovingly.”
“Sure.”
She laughs softly. “How are you? How was New York?”
I glance at myself in the mirror. Hair done. Makeup done. A perfectly acceptable work version of myself, considering my life is currently on fire.
“It was good,” I say brightly. “Busy, but good. Work is great.”
I should add a clown nose to complete the look.
“That’s wonderful, honey. I’m so glad.”
There’s a small pause after that. I know that pause.
I lower the blouse a little. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Mom.”
She sighs. “The car broke down this morning. I had it towed, and the mechanic is going to call later, but I don’t think it’s worth fixing this time.”
My hand stills on the hanger.
That fucking car. The weakest machine ever created. You just have to look at it, and a bolt comes loose. If it were a person, I would bully it so hard. I would beat it up behind a gas station.
“Send me the estimate when you get it,” I say.
“I’m not calling so you can pay for it,” she says, gently but firmly. “I only mentioned it because you asked.”
“I can help.”
“I know you can, sweetheart. But you have your own bills, and I don’t want you throwing money at every problem I mention. I know you. You’ll say it’s just a little, and then you’ll rearrange your whole month around it.”
“I’ll just wait for the estimate,” I say.
Mom sighs, and I can hear the smile in it. “You are impossible.”
“Genetics.”
She laughs, and for a second, everything feels almost normal.
Then we say goodbye, and I stand there with my phone in my hand, staring at the dark screen.
A minute later, I open my banking app.
Rent. Groceries. Credit card. Savings. Mom’s car.
It’s fine.
I’ll just skip takeout for a few weeks.
People are still acting weird around me.
Which is to be expected, I guess.
Still sucks, though. Especially when it starts affecting my work.
By ten-thirty, I’ve already been bypassed three times.
Legal sent the contract comments directly to Andrew, even though I asked for them.
Kyle from Architecture emailed him to “double-check” whether the Westbrook renderings were actually supposed to go to Communications.
And now Jessica from Client Relations has emailed Andrew about tomorrow’s client call, “because Carly mentioned moving it.”
Carly mentioned moving it.
Carly also sent the updated invite, attached the revised agenda, and confirmed the new time in writing, but sure. Let’s all pretend I communicated this through smoke signals and feminine whimsy.
I hit reply all.
The client call was moved to 10:30 to accommodate the legal review. The updated calendar invite was sent this morning, and I’ve attached the revised agenda here as well.
Then, because I am professional and not at all fantasizing about setting the building on fire, I add:
Please direct scheduling questions to me going forward so Mr. Bennett’s inbox stays clear.
A minute later, Andrew’s door opens.
He steps out with his phone in one hand and a printed report in the other. His eyes move briefly to my screen, then to my face. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, Mr. Bennett.”
Something flickers across his face. Then it’s gone. He looks down at his phone. “Why am I getting questions about tomorrow’s client call?”
“Because Jessica wanted confirmation.”
“From me?”
“Yes.”
“You manage my calendar,” he says. “I don’t want my inbox used as a second approval system.”
“I reminded them of the process.”
“Good.” There’s a beat. “Westbrook meeting in five.”
I grab my laptop and stand. “I have the deck ready.”
The Westbrook meeting is in the smaller conference room, which means everyone has to sit closer together than they want to.
Andrew takes the head of the table. I sit to his right with my laptop open, notes organized, action items formatted, because I am a professional woman and, despite recent gossip, not a blow-up sex doll.
Jessica arrives two minutes late and gives me the kind of smile people wear when they’ve been talking about you and hope you can’t smell it on them.
Look at this snout, motherfucker. You know I can.
We get through the first few points without incident. Then Jessica looks down at her agenda and frowns. “I just want to make sure this is the current call schedule,” she says, turning toward Andrew.
“Why?”
“There was some confusion earlier. I just wanted to confirm.”
“Miss Michaels sent the schedule,” Andrew says. “Did you receive it?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then it was confirmed.”
Her smile falters. “Right. Of course.”
A tiny, vicious part of me wants to applaud.
When the meeting ends, everyone gathers their things a little too quickly. Andrew waits until the room is empty before turning to me. “That was inefficient.”
I close my laptop. “Most meetings are.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I know.
I slide my laptop into the crook of my arm and stand. “I’ll send out the notes within the hour.”
“Carly.”
My grip tightens around the laptop. “Yes, Mr. Bennett?”
His mouth opens, then closes. Whatever he was about to say disappears, and I know why.
Because I am standing in front of him, doing everything in my power to make sure the only thing he sees right now is his assistant.
Not Carly. Not the woman from New York. Just Miss Michaels, with a laptop against her chest and meeting notes to send.
I give him a polite smile.
“Right,” he says in a cool tone, because Andrew Bennett is nothing if not good at reading a room. “Send me the notes when they’re ready, Miss Michaels.”
“Of course.”
By lunchtime, I have fixed two calendar issues, corrected one outdated attachment, redirected three people back to my inbox, and resisted the urge to walk into IT and staple Josh Stanton’s mouth shut.
So, a productive morning.
I’m sitting at my desk with my second cup of coffee, which is doing absolutely nothing except giving my anxiety a fun little drum solo, when I check my personal email for the fifth time in twenty minutes.
Still nothing from Atlas Development.
No missed call. No email. No polite little message saying: Hi Carly, we would love to rescue you from your current workplace hellscape and offer you a shiny new job where nobody thinks your primary skill set involves sexually servicing the CEO.
A ping from my inbox interrupts the fantasy.
This time, it’s from Communications, asking whether I have the latest Westbrook materials before they send the press package for approval.
There are already three attachments in the thread, all labeled some variation of FINAL, because apparently no one in the history of office work has ever understood what that word means.
I open them side by side and immediately feel my soul leave my body.
One version has the old renderings. One has the updated timeline but the wrong square footage.
One has Andrew quoted as saying the project will “transform the area into a thriving new urban destination,” which sounds impressive until you remember that people actually live in that area and might not enjoy being described as a sad little pre-transformation wasteland.
I sit back, rubbing my forehead.
This is not my job.
Technically.
My job is to send the right document to the right person and keep Andrew’s schedule from collapsing like a cheap lawn chair. But the brief is wrong. It’s too corporate. Too shiny. Too much like BenCo is sweeping in to save a neighborhood that never asked to be saved.
It reeks of gentrification in a way that makes my skin itch.
So I fix it.
I pull the latest renderings from the shared folder, update the timeline, correct the numbers, and rewrite Andrew’s quote into something that still sounds like him, only less like he was assembled in a factory. Then I add a short note beneath the draft.
I’d avoid “transform the area” here. It makes the project sound like it’s being done to the neighborhood rather than with it.
Suggest framing this around long-term investment, access, and working with local stakeholders instead.
I also softened the quote so it doesn’t overpromise outcomes we can’t fully control yet.
Then, because fuck it, why not, I add three possible press lines in case they get questions about displacement, traffic, or affordability. Nothing fancy. Just clear, careful answers that don’t sound like they were written by a man who owns cufflinks.
I hit send before I can talk myself out of it.
For five whole minutes, nothing happens.
Then a reply comes from Marissa in Communications.
Good catch on the wording. Really good, actually. Did you write the suggested responses too?
I stare at the email.
Then I read it again.
Yes. Just suggestions, obviously, but use whatever is helpful.
Her reply comes less than a minute later.
They’re very helpful. Thanks, Carly.
I lean back in my chair and look at the screen.
The relief that moves through me is immediate and wildly disproportionate. I take a sip of coffee and try not to look as pathetically grateful as I feel.
One person in this building treated me with kindness and respect, and I’m sitting here like I’ve just been handed a blanket after surviving a shipwreck.
Truly thriving, aren’t I?