Apparently, I give off the sexual energy of a Sunday school teacher.
But Craig might know more or at least suspect. He knows we went to dinner together. He’s probably put two and two together and come up with “that mousy IT girl is trying to sleep her way up the ladder” because that’s the sort of thing Craig would think.
So that was it. Patrick tidied me out of his life as neatly as rescheduling a flight. He arranged a helicopter back with another pilot. Professional boundaries maintained right to the bitter end.
The night before Jake left, we had dinner in town. We performed an impressive dance around the Patrick-shaped elephant, talking about literally everything else: work, London, Mum, his plans, my favorite spots in Skye. The conversation was easy enough, but I could see the sadness in his eyes. They’d been mates for years, and now Jake could hardly look at him. All because of me.
Even with that weight between us, Jake kept trying. He cracked jokes, asked me about work, pushed chips onto my plate when I wasn’t eating much. Before the night was over, he told me he was shelving his next expedition and heading back to London for a while to spend more time with me.
“You don’t have to babysit me,” I’d protested.
“Not babysitting. Just... being around. If you’ll have me cluttering up your space.”
The old Georgie would’ve disappeared into work. Would’ve coded until my eyes crossed and tried to bury heartbreak under layers of Java. But I’m trying not to be her anymore.
So, when I get back to London, instead of doing my usual thing of becoming one with my laptop, I do something revolutionary: I book a wellness retreat in the Cotswolds that Fee mentioned. One with pottery classes and sunrise yoga. “It’s about reconnecting with yourself,” she’d said. Just a weekend, two weeks from now.
My weekend time is my own, and I’m going to treat it like the sacred thing that it is.
I’m back in London for a whole two weeks, and being back in the office feels surreal. Everything looks the same, but I’m not. I left for Scotland as one version of myself and came back as someone else entirely. Except this new version of me doesn’t feel stronger. She just feels lonelier. Like I left the best parts of myself on that island.
Everyone asks about Skye, and I’ve perfected my response: “Beautiful scenery. Challenging project but really rewarding.” All true, just missing the footnote where I fell catastrophically in love and got my heart handed back to me in pieces. I deliver it with a smile that makes my face ache.
Mostly, I’m just sad. Every night, I cry myself to sleep, probably freaking out Riri’s ghost.
I hate that I misshimso much. That I wonder what he’s doing and what he’s feeling. And I need to move on, especially since it feels like he peeled me open, looked at everything raw inside me, and then decided it wasn’t worth keeping.
I still work on IRIS—I’m professional, even heartbroken—but I’ve started this radical thing called boundaries: leaving at 5:30, taking lunch breaks. Roy nearly called an ambulance when he saw me packing up at a normal hour on Tuesday.
“Who are you and what have you done with Georgie?” he asked.
“Trying this thing called work-life balance,” I told him. “Apparently it’s all the rage.”
I told Roy everything, and he’s been lovely. He didn’t make me feel stupid for falling for someone so obviously wrong for me. Instead, he’s been dragging me to the park at lunch, forcing sandwiches on me, and occasionally hauling me to the pub.
“You can be sad,” he said yesterday, “but you’re not allowed to disappear.”
The retreat is this weekend. Two days of making pottery and journaling about feelings with strangers. The old Georgie would have spent the whole time anxiously checking her phone. The new Georgie is going to try to make a decent bowl and not think about Patrick for five bloody minutes.
Maybe I’ll even do the sunrise yoga, though let’s be honest, I’ll probably watch from my window with tea, applauding everyone else’s flexibility.
First, I need to deal with Craig.
The resource allocation feature is nearly done, but it needs proper testing, and I can’t give it what it deserves when I’m basically a walking Taylor Swift album.
Not to mention, Craig’s deadlines are, as always, completely divorced from reality.
Ravi would’ve sat with me, worked through realistic timings, and built in buffer time for the inevitable disasters. Craig just picks dates based on whatever he’s promised Patrick, then acts shocked when code doesn’t write itself.
I hate even walking down the corridor toward his office, but I don’t see another way. By the time I knock, my stomach is a knot of nerves.
“Yeah,” Craig barks, like the word itself is an inconvenience.
The moment I step in, that familiar dread settles over me. His office hasn’t changed. His desk is buried under printouts he’ll never read, the motivational poster aboutExcellencehangs on for dear life, and the perpetual smell of reheated curry makes me queasy.
“Craig, I need to talk to you about the resource allocation feature.”
His eyes don’t leave the screen. Click. Scroll. Click. I’d put money on Solitaire. “What about it?”
