I crossed my legs under the tiny dining room table, bumping my knees against the air conditioning unit awkwardly. I’d given Bart the bigger side of the table. He needed it; he was a huge man, over six feet tall and very solid, with the rounded chest and belly of one of those guys who liked to do strongman competitions on the weekends. But paired with a razor-sharp dapper short-back-and-sides haircut, a manicured beard, and his purple silk dinner jacket and crisp white shirt, he looked like a giant, well-groomed teddy bear.
“It’s true,” I said. “Richie Curran told me to withdraw my name from the candidate pool, or he’d tell all the department managers my dirty secret.”
“No.” Bart stared at me from across the tiny table, his mouth open, aghast. “Richie said that to your face?”
“Uh huh.”
“No beating around the bush? No subtle hints, no veiled threats?”
I sighed and picked up my own wine glass, extracting it carefully from where it was wedged between the wall, my main course dinner plate, and the vase holding a lovely arrangement of cherry blossom branches I’d stolen on the way home from work. I took a little sip, savoring it.
My tiny apartment wasn’t built for dinner parties. In fact, it wasn’t even built to have more than one person standing in it at a time.
In an apartment building filled with studios for single people, the only one I could afford was a half-studio; an afterthought apartment built on the very top floor of a very tall building. Most of the space on this level had been appropriated for the communal rooftop garden and lounge—some of which I could see right outside my window right now. The result was an apartment the size of a shoe box, right next to a busy communal area.
I’d been desperate for company tonight, so I folded my bed away, put my armchair in the shower, set up a tiny dining table under the one window, and invited Bart up for dinner.
Bart lived three floors below me. I adored him beyond reason. He was the only person from my former life who didn’t spit on me in the street, the only person from my social circle who didn’t turn their back on me when the Bad Thing happened. He was my only friend in the world.
I reached behind my back, grabbed the bottle of wine from the kitchenette counter, and splashed more into Bart’s glass. He deserved much better than a seven-dollar bottle of Lindonne ‘22 Merlot, but it was the best I could afford, and he was gracious enough to drink it without grimacing.
“Yes, Richie said exactly that, straight to my face,” I said. “While I know for a fact Richie Curran has the ability to be slimier than a snake when he wants to be, he also understands that right now, time is of the essence. He wants the promotion, and I’m standing in his way. So, he made it very clear. Withdraw, or he’d tell both Human Resources and the other department managers all about what happened. Not only will Inotget the promotion, but it will also ruin my reputation in the office completely. Even if I don’t get fired, nobody will ever take me seriously, and I’ll never be able to work my way upanywhere. And,” I added, “Human Resources will be pissed that we fudged the details on that little gap in my resume.”
When my interviewer at Base Budget Insurance had asked about the two-year-long gap in my employment, I fluttered my eyelashes demurely and told them I couldn’t elaborate; there was a non-disclosure agreement in place.
Bart made a gruff noise. “You didn’t lie.”
“No, technically I didn’t.” Therewasan NDA. It had nothing to do with the gap in employment, though. “But I didn’t tell them the truth, and those monstrous trolls in HR will be furious about it. Nobody in the world would be fool enough to employ me if they knew the truth.”
Bart didn’t disagree. He knew how important it was for me to keep the last two years of my life a secret, especially if I wanted to climb back up the corporate ladder. He frowned, glaring into his wine glass. “This does not bode well,” he rumbled in his teddy-bear growl. “How did Richie find out?”
I sighed and hitched my shoulders, taking care not to bump anything. “I don’t know. I’m assuming Richie did a deep dive on me after I rejected him.”
Bart tipped his wine glass towards me. “I told you to report him when he did that.”
“I couldn’t, Bart! Imagine running off to HR on myfirst dayto tell them that one of the Customer Experience and Support Team Leaders… uh… propositioned me.”
It was a nice way of putting it. Richie Curran looked like a Loki cosplayer dipped in grease with his skinny, weaselly face, long black hair, and pronounced widow’s peak. He’d slimed up to me at the sinks in the communal kitchen on my first day at the call center, only six months ago. He explained that it was Base Budget Insurance company culture to sleep with your co-workers, invited me into astall to blow him, then blew it off as a joke when I very frostily declined.
“If I ran off to Human Resources to complain on my very first day,” I explained. “They’d flag me as a problem. I’d be seen as a weak idiot who couldn’t handle herself.”
And I could definitely handle myself. I’d gotten used to it over the years. I was cursed—or blessed, depending on how you looked at it—with a very curvy figure, big boobs, a small waist, and long shapely thighs. No matter how many masculine power suits and giant nerd glasses and sensible loafers I wore, I somehow ended up looking like a poor man’s Jessica Rabbit.
Even now that I was in my mid-forties and a tiny bit overweight, with sparkles of silver sprinkled through my thick, wavy dark hair, I still attracted the assholes—sleazy men who stared at my breasts and busybodies who demanded to know my ethnicity, wanting to know where I got my “exotic” coloring from. Because apparently, having light-green eyes and tanned skin was “exotic.”
I used to be able to put people in their place with an arch of my eyebrow. I’d lost that ability in the last couple of years.
Along with everything else.
“I understand,” Bart said. “Still, you should have reported him.”
I inhaled and sighed it all out, trying not to let my deep breath bump the table. “Yes, in retrospect, I should have.”
I was still pissed about being outmaneuvered on my first day. I’d been out of the game for too long; I’d lost my edge. I didn’t see Richie moving his chess pieces, arranging his pawns around him to protect himself in case I did complain to Human Resources about his sleazy proposition.
“I didn’t realize until it was too late,” I said. “That afternoon, three other men asked me to go for a drink with themafter work. When the last one approached me, I realized Richie had made sure I couldn’t reportanyof them. Human Resources wouldn’t believe that four men separately propositioned me on my first day in the office.” I grimaced. “Richie outsmarted me.”
“Hmm. You know…” Bart said, pursing his lips. “I always thought you were exaggerating about how complicated office politics are.”
