Her phone buzzed.Where the fuck did u go??Co-wannabe texted.
Rae didn’t reply.
Numbness was less about feeling nothing and more about feeling everything so much that it froze you. Numbness blocked everything while shielding you from nothing. She wanted to jot the insights down on her phone notepad, but the paralysis prohibited her.
The numbness had dominated her trip to Florida to visit her dad a couple weeks ago too. Rae had braced herself for fresh heartbreak upon seeing him with his new family, but everything had passed over her in a detached sort of way, as if all the rain had been wrung out of the storm clouds and only a gray haze remained. As she’d sat at the dinner table making small talk with her dad’s wife and stepdaughters as if it were an awkward first date, Rae had almost felt like she was looking down at her body, observing someone else.
The trip could best be described as fine—an adjective Rae deemed worse thanawfulorcombativein how emotionless it was.
Once or twice she’d caught herself wondering what Dustin would think if he found out she had visited her dad, but she didn’t linger on it. Both her head and heart seemed to know that wasn’t safe territory anymore.
Her phone buzzed again from the back of the cab.U fucking kissed me first.
Rae knew this was the version of the story Co-wannabe would stick to if Rae dared report him.
The old thoughts returned.One dayI’ll quit my job.One dayI’ll leave New York.
One dayI’ll start writing.
The cab braked as a U-Haul truck cut in front. Rae let physics whip her body forward and back again, numbly cursing whatever fool was driving a U-Haul at two in the morning—probably some kid who’d driven fifteen hours straight from her Midwest hometown and was now blinking in awe at the sheer number oflightsin this city, naïve enough to think she might become someone here rather than be swallowed up and spit out as an unbecoming number in the denominator of New York’s makes it/dreams it ratio.
But from the numb bitterness and bitter numbness, a new thought coalesced.
One dayhad arrived.
Her bonus had safely hit her bank account, and tomorrow—today, technically—she’d walk into her boss’s office and quit. It was a twoA.M.thought, but the kind she knew would stick in daylight, if only because she didn’t have the energy to brush it off any longer.
The cab driver sped past the U-Haul truck and beat it to the next red light.
I did it,Rae texted Ellen from the office bathroom the next afternoon.
Earlier, hungover in the Starbucks line, she’d filled Ellen in on the club incident and how she was quitting her job today.
“Report Co-wannabe to HR and threaten a lawsuit if they don’t give you a damn good severance package,” Ellen had coached.
Ellen was adamant that Co-wannabe had committed sexual assault. When Rae had protested that she was as much to blame because she’d gotten too drunk and hadn’t done anything to stop him, Ellen had accused her of missing the whole point of the #MeToo movement. Rae had come around to agreeing that Co-wannabe was the sole culprit, but she found it easier to encourage other women to speak up than to speak up herself.
Her main focus today had been to break up with Wall Street. She’d procrastinated the “It’s not you, it’s me” conversation withher boss all morning, until Co-wannabe had swaggered in at noon, slouching down at his desk without glancing or even grunting Rae’s way.
Slurping a sixteen-ounce Red Bull through a plastic straw, he flipped back and forth on his computer browser from a blog post titled “Three Steps for Exiting a Long-Term Relationship” to an engagement ring website, then to a valuation analysis for a new deal.
Rae felt nauseous seeing him, something that had nothing to do with the alcohol. It had been the motivation Rae needed to stand up and march—or at leastwalk—into her boss’s office. She’d dressed in her crispest suit, hair pulled into a neat bun and makeup masking the under-eye shadows.
And then, after years of fantasizing about this day, she’d quit. Or at least, she’d tried to.
How’d it go?!?!Ellen replied now.
Unexpectedly well,Rae answered, still trying to process what had just happened.
YAY!!!! You’re finally free of the decimal point dungeon!!!!
Not exactly … I didn’t end up quitting after all.
WHAT???
Rae pictured Ellen hopping out of whatever meeting she was in. Sure enough, Rae’s phone rang, and she picked up, not caring if Kelly or women from other groups at the bank eavesdropped. There was a sacred kind of sisterhood formed by using bathroom stalls as bunkers, a sisterhood Rae hadn’t appreciated until now, in the wake of her failed escape.
“What happened to the plan!” Ellen said.
