21. Anouk
Anouk
Humiliation is a silent devil.
It doesn’t shout, rage, or demand attention. It just settles into your bones, heavy and cold, and it makes everything else distant—muted, surreal.
It’s like watching your life through a Salvador Dali lens.
Everything is distorted, and the wrong things are exaggerated.
I get to my cubicle and feel the crush of the things Luther said to me, as well as the things he didn’t, the things he said to Erin that I had the misfortune of overhearing.
I was too eager to start our meeting. I wanted to kiss him, tell him I love him, tell him how ready I was for the board meeting, and thank him for his trust in me before we talked about work.
So I got there early. And the universe showed me who he really is before I made the mistake of opening my heart completely to him.
That’s a lie.
The universe was fucking late—I already gave myself to him…entirely.
“She struggles to communicate under pressure, Erin, that’s not a moral failing,” I heard Luther’s clipped voice. I didn’t need to know who the ‘she’ was that they were talking about.
Erin responded immediately, crushingly. “No, it isn’t, but she is a risk to your career.”
I waited for him to deny it. I waited for him to say that it didn’t matter that I took my time to present. My effort would show. My data would speak for me.
He said nothing.
And then Erin pushed again. “Tell me, Luther, that you know she’s a damn risk to your career.”
I held my hands together, my eyes closed, waiting for him to show me what I mean to him.
“Luther?” Erin all but shouted.
That’s when I heard him say, “Yes.”
The word was a bullet.
Then, because my heart needed to break completely for me to learn the lesson that I forgot about people—that I trusted Luther even though I knew better, he said, “I know. I know she’s going to fuck things up for me at the board meeting.”
I stopped listening.
I walked into the bathroom blindly. Needing to calm myself. Needing to find purchase when everything I was holding on to was slipping.
I know what Erin thinks. She doesn’t hide it. I know she has Luther’s ear. I’ve been worried about it, but I refused to live in fear. I told myself not to jump to conclusions, that Luther would disagree. That he’d say, “Anouk’s presenting her own work.”
I held on to that hope like a talisman.
And then, in his office, he took it apart piece by piece with a calm voice and careful words and the kind of kindness that hurts worse than cruelty. And then he has the gall to say, “This doesn’t change how I see you.”
But it changes the way I see him.
I stare at my monitors without really seeing them.
Numbers blur.
Cells bleed into each other.
I feel exposed, like everyone can see the shame clinging to me, like they know I’ve been deemed unsuitable.
Dot comes to my cubicle. “Come to my office,” she orders.
I move like an automaton, following her.
She takes a seat and studies me. Her expression is grim.
She knows.
“What happened?” she asks.
My throat tightens, but I force the words out. “He d-doesn’t want me to p-present.”
I see her temper ignite. “He just told me that Erin will present the data and the model.”
I nod.
Her chair scrapes loudly against the floor as she stands. “This is fucking bullshit,” she cries out, her palms landing with a thud on her table.
I recoil—not at the language, but at the fury behind it.
“It-it’s okay. I am n-not b-board f-facing.”
“That fucking dickhead has his fucking head way up his fucking ass.”
I force myself to smile. “That is a c-creative u-se of the w-word f-fuck.”
Dot swears again. “Anouk, I am so sorry.”
“N-no n-need.” I shake my head. “H-he’s t-the b-boss. He can d-do wh-whatever he wants.”
I can see now that I made a mistake with Luther.
I trusted him to see me, appreciate me; instead, he’s like all the others; he only sees the stutter, the outside, and makes decisions based on that. He thinks he’s being a good leader, protecting his career by shafting mine. That’s not good leadership. Dot would never do something like that.
He thinks it’s nervousness, lack of confidence, or whatever.
And, granted, it isn’t the kind of stutter most people are born with, the one that lives quietly in the background, no matter how calm or confident they feel.
Mine is different. Mine came later. It flares when my body senses a threat—real or remembered—when something inside me tightens before my mind can catch up.
People love to say: just breathe, just relax, just slow down—as if I wouldn’t have tried that a thousand times already.
Like calm is a switch I can flip.
Like hell it’s that simple.
Dot’s jaw tightens. “I’m going to talk to him. I’m going to—”
“No,” I cry out. “No,” I repeat.
Because if Dot fights this battle for me, if she drags Luther back into doing the right thing, I’ll always wonder if I belong at the table, or if I am just tolerated.
Plus, Luther doesn’t get the chance ever again to make me feel small like he just did.
I don’t normally give that kind of power to anyone, but I gave it to him because I fell in love.
Well, I’m not going to make a mistake like that again, am I?
I may have a stutter. I may have anxiety in social situations. I may have psychological issues. But I have a high IQ, and I know how to protect myself from a threat. Luther is one.
Dot studies me for a long moment. Then she exhales, slow and controlled. “How are you?”
I feel my emotions, all of them.
It’s a tool I learned from Finn to calm myself. It’s what he does when he’s in a life-or-death situation. He just lets himself feel fear, panic, rage, helplessness, lets it pass through him, and then becomes the best person he can be, not weighed down by the detritus of sentiments.
“I-I a-am g-going to b-be f-fine.”
Her expression twists with raw pain. “I’m so proud of you.”
I nod, grateful and hollow all at once.
I leave her office and return to my desk, telling myself I can still do this, that I can still work. That my value hasn’t evaporated just because I won’t be standing in front of the board.
Then my email pings.
Meeting Update: Board Review – Attendees Revised
I have been removed from the invite entirely.
So, Luther decided that I don’t even need to attend to support. That’s not a bad thing. It would’ve cost me to watch Erin screw up presenting my model and data. She’s not as good as she thinks she is. She’s not as good as Luther thinks she is, either.
Actually, this is a decent thing Luther has done.
Sure, it hurts now. It’s not just that I’m not presenting—I’m not observing, either. I’ve been cut out entirely.
As I turn those thoughts, a realization lands with a dull, nauseating finality.
Luther doesn’t only think I’m unfit to speak—he doesn’t want me to be seen. I am something to be managed quietly, behind the scenes. Something embarrassing.
There were those who treated me that way in university and at work. Dot changed that. She showed me that my stutter didn’t need to be overcome, that I could work through my anxiety, that she’d give me room and space to be the best version of myself.
I think then of Luther’s words—gentle, apologetic, reasonable. “You did everything right.”
Apparently, that still isn’t enough.
I let shame wash through me without trying to outrun it. I’ve survived worse things than this.
But this hurts in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I know it’s because this time it isn’t a stranger dismissing me—it’s the man I trusted, the man I fell in love with, the man I now have to fall out of love with.