Hissecretary.
I close the email and shut my laptop.
Through the glass walls, Nico is still on a call. Still not looking at me.
Business as usual.
I’m done working late nights.
Done devoting myself to this job.
If this is how he wants to be, then I’ll treat this like any other job. Just a means to an end. Not a place where I can make a difference.
I gather my things and head for the elevator, my messenger bag feeling somehow heavier on my shoulder than it was this morning.
Tomorrow I’ll be invisible again.
But tonight?
Tonight I’m going home, opening a bottle of wine I can’t really afford, grabbing a carton of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream from my fridge, and seriously reconsidering every life choice that led me to this moment.
At least I said my piece.
14
Nico
Monday morning and I still can’t get Thursday out of my head.
You’ve been using my work for a while now. So stop pretending I don’t exist when there are witnesses.
I’ve replayed that conversation about forty times since then. Dissected every word like I’m performing an autopsy on my own goddamn psyche.
And the worst part? What I said back.
I don’t think you’re beneath me.
What a stupid fucking thing to say.
Loaded with meaning I didn’t intend.
Or maybe did intend.
I don’t even know anymore.
I should have apologized.
Should have acknowledged what she said, given her the credit she deserves, promised to do better.
Instead I sent her a business-as-usual email. Board prep meeting. Take notes. Ensure coffee service is arranged.
What a moron.
Classic Nico Rossi.
So here I am, Monday morning, sitting in my office pretending to review some random documents while my attention keeps drifting to the woman at the desk outside my glass walls.
Walls that seem somehow symbolic of my own. Transparent when I want to project authority, opaque when I need privacy. State-of-the-art technology that somehow became the perfect metaphor for every defense mechanism I’ve spent a decade perfecting.
