I finish first, placing my plate onto the table. I trace the mouth of the beer bottle with my index finger. “So... I’m sorry,” I say.
She turns to me. But before she can answer I stop her.
“You have something.” I point to my top front teeth. “Right here.”
She smiles, a little embarrassed, closing her mouth and wiping her tongue over her teeth. She bares them at me. “Did I get it?”
Leaning forward, I swipe at the flake of pepper with my finger and wipe it on her tongue.
“Got it.” I laugh.
“You’re gross.” She smiles. “Thank you,” she says. “For the apology. I understand how upsetting or frustrating it must be for you to hear that being said about me but what I need you to understand is that no matter how frustrated you feel, I feel it ten times worse. And I need you to trust me when I say I know how I want to handle it.”
I nod. “I’m sorry. I’ll be more understanding. Can you just tell me why?”
“Why what?”
“Why won’t you report him? Why is being a team player more important than their respect?”
She sighs, takes a final sip of her wine, and sets the glass on the table. “When I was in college this woman, Sarah Beck, came into one of my business classes at the end of the year. She gave a lecture on digital marketing and how it’s changing how we consume and use the internet and how we sell things. She was...”
Corrine shakes her head like she’s trying to dislodge the right word. “Aspirational. Everything about who she was, that was what I wanted to be. I went up to her at the end of class and practically begged her to give me a job at her company.” Corrine gives me a knowing smile. “She worked for a place called Blitz Media. She was the only female executive and she was notoriously difficult.”
Corrine closes her eyes, sighs again, a smile still on her lips. “She let me be her assistant for that summer. And she was an infinitely better boss than I’ve been to you. I never had to do so much as a coffee run. She let me work alongside her, like an equal. It was a dream come true. Richard was my mentor and he launched my career but Sarah, she...nurtured me, she raised me into the business woman I am today.”
Corrine’s wistful expression flattens and my stomach sinks. “There was this senior marketing associate who had the worst attitude. I don’t think it was that he couldn’t handle having a woman as a boss, but he couldn’t handle having a strong woman as a boss. She didn’t send emails filled with exclamation points and happy faces and she didn’t pose ideas in the form of questions. She just...did it. She told her team what she wanted and she expected to get it. She didn’t fit into his idea of what a woman should be and he let her know it. He made sick jokes about her, in front of her. He’d chum it up with the other execs and rub it in her face that she wasn’t one of the guys. Once he even did that shtick where she was standing in his office and he dropped a pen and asked her to pick it up.”
My eyes bulge out of my head and Corrine laughs.
“Yeah, that was my reaction, too. She marched straight to HR after that and filed a report.” Corrine turns to face me fully. “The next day she was fired. They told her she wasn’t a team player and had security come and escort her out. And of course I was fired, too, since the only reason I was there was to be her assistant for three months.”
I open my mouth and then shut it again. It’s not that I don’t know what to say. I just don’t think there’s anything I could possibly say to make it better. Other than, “I’m sorry.”
She smiles, shrugs. “The last I heard, she got a job in New York. I don’t think she’s working at the same level that she was but...at least she’s employed. But that’s why. Okay? I know not every office environment is like that. But I also know enough aboutouroffice environment, about Richard, not to risk it.”
I place my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I say again, trying to infuse as much sincerity as I can. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you to handle it yourself.”
She pats my hand in a placating way and we’re silent for a moment longer. “Do you want to talk about the other thing?” she asks.
I wrack my brain for some other stupid thing I’ve done recently. “What...other thing?”
She lifts her eyebrows. “The ‘girlfriend’ thing?”
I blow out a long breath through my mouth. “Right.” I did call Corrine my girlfriend. “Do you want me to not do that again?” I wince.
“You know that we can’t...we can’tbethat to each other.”
“I know,” I say. I know, Iknow, we can’t but it hurts anyway. More than I thought it would.
“But if you’re worried about...” She winces. “Exclusivity...”
“No.” I shake my head, holding my hand out to her. “I trust you, Corrine. I guess I just got...carried away in the moment,” I say, making a circle with my finger around my ear, trying to play it off like a joke but it doesn’t feel like a joke to me. Calling Corrine my girlfriend feels like the truth.
“You were pretty upset,” she says quietly.
I nod.
“In fact, I think you might need a reminder.” She stands slowly in front of me.
