Which of these things should you not say to a coworker?
A) Good Morning
B) Did you get a new haircut?
C) How was your weekend?
D) Remember when we hooked up in that phone closet? Thinking of you.
I stare at the screen, only taking in how much worse this is going to be with the upbeat generic corporate music that plays in the background when employees take the quiz.
I hit the backspace key until the last answer clears and rub my forehead. I haven’t been able to think of anything that isn’t something I would say to Vlad if I emailed him.
We’ve emailed back and forth a little since the retreat ended and work resumed as normal. Nothing more than necessary. It’s all overly professional and stilted because of how we left things.
After forwarding so many of Kathy and Ted’s email threads to him, I can type out [email protected] faster than most of my passwords, and the muscle memory carries me through entering the address. I want to talk to Vlad, even if I don’t really know what to say after I yelled at him.
It’s bad enough when it’s someone I can quietly cut out of my life when things inevitably go sour, but somehow, it’s worse that it’s the gargoyle I kept bumping into and making a fool of myself in front of, then drunkenly kissed, and was completely ready to jump his bones. It's kind of a leap in topics from the MR paperwork.
But life goes on after work trips.
My plants are looking a little peckish, having not been watered for a week, but that’s about all that’s changed. I work from home, playing an endless stream of podcasts and movies and anything that will keep me from being alone with my thoughts. I really want to go somewhere, but I don’t know where. I just know I am so tired of keeping myself company.
I end up going to the office of my own volition, for once.
Well, sort of. I could just call Kathy about the new complaint she’s filing instead of scheduling a one-on-one meeting with her, but I need the change of pace. My apartment has become a black hole of despair that is actually starting to get to me.
Some part of me hopes, when I get there, that nothing will have changed. That maybe everything that happened could stay packed away as a distant memory.
Waiting for the meeting room to empty, I hover by the water cooler alone, and rest my paper cup against it, pretending it’s not weird to just stand somewhere, doing nothing.
For the most part, no one really notices, people I don’t talk to just pass me by without a look. My shoulders start to untense until I spy a familiar three pens tucked into a little blonde bun zipping past.
“Afternoon, Gwen, I heard you had to go home early last week, everything alright?” Lily asks, just as I’m registering that it’s her.
“I, uh. Yeah. I wasn’t feeling well,” I lie, and shrug a little.
“Aw, well I hope you’re feeling better,” she gives me a sympathetic frown. She’s always been nice. For a moment, I think maybe it’s not as bad as I’ve built it up in my head.
We don’t get a chance to talk much more, as the meeting room’s door opens and most of the HR department start to leave. Lily waves one of the humans over.
Janice just barely conceals the way she instantly recoils upon seeing me. I hold myself still and try not to react, wishing desperately in that moment that I’d never left the apartment.
It is as bad as I’d thought. Everyone knows I’m a soul-sucking siren, and I shouldn’t have hoped otherwise.
“See you later,” Lily says, and flounces away as she always does before I get a chance to respond.
I slip into the emptied meeting room. It’s amazing how a job can go from kind of nice to something I dread, not because of the work itself but the people I have to be with.
But it is just a job. A job I have to keep doing, at the moment, if nothing else. I’ll have to hold onto it a bit longer while I look for something else, at least.
Why does it have to be so hard to get to know people? I either have to feel like I’m deceiving people by hiding my nature, or “be myself” like some trite, after-school special would tell me to, and basically invite them to become gross, awful versions of themselves. Why can’t it just be easy?
Kathy cracks open the door and seems to internally curse that I’ve gotten there before her. She holds me in her stare for a long moment, almost daring me to bring up what I witnessed her and Ted doing last week in the elevator.
It would be easy to bring it up like she’s a petulant child who needs to learn how to behave, instead of treating her like an adult who has her own reasons for the decisions she makes. Whether those reasons are good or bad, is not for me to judge.
“I’m still catching up on unpacking, from the trip,” I say, more to break the silence than anything else.
