Chapter 19
NINETEEN
The email comes as I’m getting out of the shower.
I’m in the middle of wrapping a towel around myself when my phone pings from the sink. The screen is half-hidden behind a layer of steam, but I can still make out the sender.
Atlas Development
I wipe condensation from the screen with my thumb and open the email.
Dear Carly Michaels,
Thank you very much for taking the time to interview for the PR Manager position. We appreciate your interest in Atlas Development.
Although we thought you were a strong candidate, we unfortunately
I stop reading.
For a second, I just stand there with the phone in my hand, dripping water onto the bath mat. Then I place it back on the counter very carefully, as if moving too fast might somehow make the rest of the sentence worse.
The mirror is fogged up. I stare at the blurry outline of my face in the mirror.
I didn’t get the job.
The words sit there, quiet and factual, while my body takes a few seconds to catch up. Then disappointment moves through me, sinking into my stomach, my ribs, my knees. I hadn’t realized until this exact moment how much I needed that job.
Not wanted.
Needed.
It was my escape route. My emergency hatch. My tiny glowing exit sign at the end of a very long hallway.
And now it’s gone.
I grip the edge of the sink and try to breathe.
I’m stuck at BenCo. Stuck with the gossip and the second-guessing and the way people look at me now. Stuck sitting outside Andrew’s office every day.
I press a hand to my chest.
I can’t quit. I have rent. Bills. A mom who needs help.
Fuck.
My eyes start to sting, and suddenly I feel very small. Like a child who wants someone to take her hand and say there is nothing to worry about, that everything is handled, that someone else knows what to do.
I need my mom.
With shaky hands, I pick up my phone and find her contact.
She answers on the first ring. “Hi, honey. What’s up?”
The sound of her voice breaks something in me, and a sob slips out.
There is the smallest pause on the other end. Then her tone changes completely.
“Carly?”
“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“What happened?”
I slide down onto the closed toilet lid, one hand clutching the towel against my chest, the other pressed hard against the phone.
And then I tell her.
Not everything. Some things get caught in my throat and stay there. But I tell her enough.
I tell her I hate my job. That I’ve hated it for a long time but kept pretending because the money was good and I wanted to help her. I tell her about the virus. About fainting at work. About waking up in a hospital and finding out my boss was my partner. I tell her about Josh and the gossip.
“Oh, honey,” she says, and her voice sounds small in a way I hate. “I’m so sorry.”
“And I applied for this job,” I say, the words rushing out now.
“At Atlas Development. It was a PR Manager position, and I knew it was probably a long shot, but I thought maybe if I got it, I could leave BenCo. I could get away from the gossip and stop being Andrew’s assistant and make more money and help you more, and now I can’t. ”
There’s a silence on the other end.
“Carly,” Mom says at last, very softly.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I don’t want you staying somewhere that makes you miserable because of me.”
“I know.”
“No,” she says, and there’s something firmer in her voice now. “I need you to hear me. I don’t want that. I never wanted that.”
My throat tightens. “I just wanted to make things easier for you.”
“I know you did, baby.” Her voice cracks a little on the last word. “And I love you for that. But you are not my retirement plan. You are my daughter.”
I press my hand over my eyes.
“I’m supposed to worry about you,” she says. “Not the other way around.”
A laugh slips out of me, thin and awful. “Bit late for that.”
“I know,” she says, and now I can hear that she’s crying too. “I know. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry you felt like you had to carry so much.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m still sorry.”
She tells me to call later, and I promise I will. Then she says she loves me, and I say it back with my throat so tight the words barely come out.
When we hang up, I stand there with the phone still in my hand, the towel damp against my skin, my hair dripping onto my shoulders.
Mom knows now. Not all of it, but enough. I thought telling her would make me feel lighter, and maybe it does, a little. Mostly, though, I just feel exposed. And even after everything she said, some stubborn part of me still doesn’t know how to stop feeling responsible for her.
I look down at my phone.
The email is still there.
I force myself to read the rest.
Although we thought you were a strong candidate, we unfortunately decided to move forward with another applicant whose experience more closely matches the needs of the role.
We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
There it is.
The whole email.
Somehow worse than I imagined, yet exactly what I thought it would say.
The next morning, BenCo looks exactly the same.
I don’t know why, but it bothers me. Like the building should have the decency to look different after everything that’s happened.
The facade should be darker, more dramatic.
Maybe the windows should be cracked, and maybe the elevator should groan ominously when I step inside, and maybe there should be a choir of ghosts singing creepy kids’ songs in the lobby.
But no.
Same revolving doors. Same polished floors. Same woman at reception telling someone on the phone to have a great day in a voice so cheerful it makes me want to call the police.
I take the elevator to the top floor with two people from Accounting. They’re talking when I step in. Not loudly, and I can’t make out what they’re saying, but the way the conversation dies the moment they notice me makes me suspect I might have been on the agenda.
I give them a smile.
Caught you, fuckers.
Neither of them says anything else.
My desk is exactly as I left it. Laptop closed. Notebook slightly crooked. A stack of papers in the tray. I sit down, turn on my computer, and then I do the same thing I’ve been doing for the last three years.
I work.
I answer emails. I move meetings. I update Andrew’s call sheet for the afternoon. My fingers know where to go, what to open, what to type. It is almost insulting how easily the job fits around me.
Then Andrew’s office door opens.
I don’t look up right away. I give myself one extra second, because I need to mentally prepare myself before looking at a man whose dick has been in my mouth.
“Good morning, Miss Michaels.”
I look up. He’s standing in the doorway in a dark suit, hair neat, expression controlled.
“Morning, Mr. Bennett.”
“I have a call with Singapore at nine-thirty,” he says.
“I moved it to conference room three. The screen in your office has been acting up lately.”
“Thank you.”
“I also sent you the revised notes for Westbrook.”
“I saw.”
It looks like he’s about to say something else. His eyes hold mine for just a beat too long, and my stomach twists. But then someone opens a door farther down the corridor, and the moment folds in on itself.
“I’ll be in conference room three,” he says.
“Of course.”
He leaves, and I stare at my screen until the words blur, feeling something ache deep, deep inside me.
At lunch, I head down to the cafeteria to pick up something to eat. It’s busy, full of voices, coffee machines, and forks scraping against plates. I grab a salad I don’t actually want and stand in line, pretending not to notice the way two women from Marketing stop talking when I walk past them.
That’s when I see Josh.
He’s by the drinks fridge with Tim from IT, both of them holding sodas. Josh spots me almost immediately. His mouth twitches, and then he leans in and says something to Tim.
Tim looks at me, then away.
I turn back toward the cashier as if I didn’t notice, even though nausea rises in my throat.
When I get back upstairs, I eat three bites of my salad and throw the rest away.
The afternoon passes in fragments. A phone call. A calendar invite. A printed agenda. Someone from Legal stepping out of Andrew’s office, offering me a smile that is just a little too polite.
At four, Andrew comes out of his office with a folder in his hand. “Miss Michaels?”
I look up. “Yes?”
“Will you join me for my next meeting?”
I pick up my notebook and stand. “Of course, Mr. Bennett.”
He turns toward the corridor, and I follow beside him, my notebook pressed to my chest. We walk close enough that I can smell his cologne, close enough that our hands almost brush near the elevator.
By the time we reach the conference room, my face is calm, my pen is ready, and I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I hate it.
The meeting is with Communications, Legal, and Development, which is a fun little corporate cocktail of people who all think they’re the most important person in the room.
Andrew takes a seat at the head of the table, and I take the chair to his right.
It’s my chair at every meeting. My spot.
My assigned little corner of competence, where I take notes, remember action items, and subtly stop everyone from agreeing to deadlines that will make their lives worse later.
Usually, I like that part of my job. Not the chair itself, necessarily, but the knowing. The being useful.
Today, the chair feels like a cage.
I open my notebook anyway.
Marissa from Communications is already standing by the screen, clicking through the Westbrook press package. She looks sharp as usual, wearing a crisp black blouse and red lipstick, without a single hair brave enough to be out of place.
“Thanks for making time,” she says, glancing around the table. “This should be quick. We’ve updated the package to reflect the latest renderings and the revised access plan, but there are a few lines I want to make sure we’re aligned on before this goes out.”
Andrew sits back, hands folded on the table, expression unreadable as Marissa clicks to the next slide.
Oh, would you look at that.