“You do?” he asked quietly, nibbling at his bottom lip.
“I do,” I replied.
“I was kind of expecting them to offer me something permanent,” he admitted after a second. “At the beginning of the internship, I mean. That was the impression everyone gave me.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“It just… stopped feeling like that after a while.”
He spoke the sentence with quiet restraint rather than resentment, but the distinction did not make the implication less clear.
“I don’t think anyone eversaidI wasn’t being considered,” he continued, shoulders drooping. “It was more like theconversations changed. Or stopped happening. I kept thinking maybe I was just reading too much into it, or maybe they were waiting until the end of the placement. But then people started saying stuff like ‘while you’re here’… and well, yeah… That’s when I started thinking maybe I just didn’t fit in the way I thought I did,” he went on, his gaze drifting briefly back toward the horizon before returning to me again, a sense of aching loneliness in his expression. “Like maybe it was a company culture thing. Or maybe I wasn’t what they were looking for long-term.”
I grunted my disagreement.
He tilted his head, brows scrunched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Institutions frequently fail to recognize individual value until it has already left them.”
He looked vulnerable as he asked, “You really think I’m valuable?”
“Very much so,” I answered, locking eyes with him.
He held my gaze as he softly murmured, “Thank you.”
“There’s no need to thank me for being truthful.”
He smiled, the faintest pink dusting his cheeks.
I cleared my throat, pushing away the thoughts about how pink I could make him elsewhere, and went back to answer his original question. “I think it would be appropriate for you to speak with your supervisors directly rather than waiting for them to initiate the conversation.”
“Why?”
“Because it demonstrates intention,” I said. “You are not leaving because you were overlooked. You are leaving because you accepted a position that better reflects your abilities. It also prevents them from assuming you remained available,” I added. “Ambiguity benefits institutions more than it benefits individuals.”
“Okay…”
He leaned back in the chair then, running his thin fingers absently through his hair as though reorganizing the timeline in his head.
“I guess I should probably tell them soon then, right?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated again before continuing. “And… do I tell them I’ll be working here?”
That question required more consideration.
“You may,” I said. “Though it isn’t required.”
“I don’t want it to seem secretive.”
“It wouldn’t.”
“But it kind ofissecretive,” he said, glancing around the room with a small smile that acknowledged the scale of the house without quite naming it again.
“The position itself isn’t,” I grinned.
His smile widened, eyes creasing at the corners as he laughed. “I just don’t want them thinking I disappeared or something.”
