He stared at me for another second, then let out a short breath through his nose that wasn’t quite a laugh, but wasn’tnotone either.
“For who?” he asked.
The moment I’d really been dreading had arrived.
I looked past Mark, not feeling comfortable enough to try to maintain eye contact, then mumbled, “For Tobias Kelly…”
Eventually, I shifted my gaze back to him after he was so quiet I was concerned he hadn’t heard me.
“When did this happen?” Mark questioned, his lips thin in poorly hidden displeasure.
“A few weeks ago,” I answered cautiously. “Well, he mentioned the position maybe a month or two ago, but I only just accepted his offer recently.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t go looking for anything from him,” I added quickly. “He just—he asked me questions when he was visiting, like about the tanks and animals. It wasn’t until later that he mentioned he had a private collection that needed someone. I didn’t mean to go around anyone,” I promised, the words coming out faster now. “I wasn’t trying to—like—I didn’t ask him for anything.”
“I didn’t say you did,” Mark replied, sounding a bit annoyed still. “I just find it odd that the bloke wants you over a more experienced aquarist.”
“That’s what I said to him,” I explained, a hint of pleading in my voice. “But—but he said he doesn’t like having strangers in his house, and that he felt comfortable with me,” I finished, feeling my shoulders creep upward toward my ears as I spoke.
Mark’s expression didn’t improve. “And how, exactly, are you not a stranger? You’ve only been here for a few months.”
I shrugged, unsure how to answer that when I partly agreed with him.
Mark exhaled slowly, one hand shifting to rest against his hip while the other rose to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“To be honest with you, Cove, we reached the decision not to extend a long-term offer to you weeks ago.”
I swallowed thickly and dropped my head.
I had already known it, but it still hurt to hear.
“Can I ask why?”
Mark didn’t answer immediately.
For a second, I thought maybe I shouldn’t have asked.
Or maybe he wasn’t going to tell me.
Or maybe the answer was going to be something polite and vague likebudgeting constraintsororganizational restructuringorwe just didn’t have the space right now, which somehow always managed to sound worse than whatever the real reason actually was.
Instead, he sighed again and said, “It wasn’t about your work. You did well here. Better than well, actually.”
“Then..?”
“That’s not me being nice,” he continued, glancing at me briefly before looking back down the corridor like he didn’t entirely want to be having this conversation either. “You’ve got good instincts. You notice things other people don’t. Half the time I didn’t even have to tell you where something was going sideways before you were already fixing it.”
“So why not keep me?” I asked quietly.
He shifted his weight again. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated,” I repeated, feeling a dull ache in my chest.
“You’re here on a training visa,” he said. “If we hired you full-time, we’d have to sponsor you properly. That’s not something we can do at the department level. It goes through HR, legal, budgeting. There are salary requirements attached. Minimum contract lengths. Documentation about why we’re hiring internationally instead of locally. It’s not impossible, but it’s not simple either.”
I stared at the floor tiles between us, following the grout lines like they might help me process what he was saying faster.
