I ignore him. I don’t have anything to say.
After a stretch of silence, he huffs. Stomps his foot into the floor and grunts, “You’re really wearing that? Are you trying to get the internship by sleeping with the interviewers?”
My eyebrows raise. It’s not hurt coursing through me this time—it’s shock. In the countless times he’s attacked me, he’s never been so brash.
“My outfit is fine.”
I don’t glance down to check. My hands don’t itch to yank my skirt lower.
Jeremiah scoffs. “Maybe for a slut. Did your boyfriend tell you your outfit was appropriate? You’ve got him wrapped around your finger so tightly he’d probably tell you a blatant lie like that.”
The venom comes clear through his pitch, but the insults don’t scratch at my skin or bounce against my skull. I don’t cling onto how he spits outslut, orlie, orappropriate. I’m too busy thinking over the accomplishments I can outline for the people behind the office door.
I’ve been on the dean’s list every year, both in undergrad and graduate school. I’ve won multiple trading competitions. I’m confident in numerous programming languages, like Python and R-
“Do you think you’re hot shit now that your boyfriend handles everything for you? Just because he thought calling me a loser was some sort of ‘gotcha’ moment? Is his rich daddy’s bank account going to pay your way into Xion too?”
My head whips to the left, where Jeremiah has thought it appropriate to sit next to me. His face is red, breathing heavy and jaw clenched. He’s the one who’s insulted me, but out of the two of us, he’s fuming.
“What’s rich is you getting on a high horse about my partner, when you were ready to kiss his feet a few weeks ago.”
His expression is familiar. It’s a copy of the eyes wide, mouth agape expression Locke’s father had at Friendsgiving.
I was so proud of him that night, and I’m proud of him now. He’s forged a path for himself despite facing his fears of the unknown. My situation isn’t an exact replica. The ache I’ve felt has always connected to my future, not my past. I always knew who I was. It was my need for other people to know, that slashed away at my heart.
Locke doesn’t have a perfect idea of what’s coming next and neither do I. I could walk into that room, be ridiculed by the interviewers, and face a reality where my career doesn’t start at Xion Group. Everyone in this building could turn their noses down at me right now and try to make me feel small.
They won’t. Knowing that my path will be forged by me, and me alone, takes away all the power others have over my mind and heart. It washes away the need to see a room of strangers validate my skills. I can sit with my talents, contently, knowing what I’m capable of—with or without someone else being aware of it too.
The feeling is liberating. Jeremiah doesn’t seem impressed.
“I liked you better before you thought you were worth something.” He hisses.
It’s the evilest thing he’s ever said to me, and the most insignificant.
I turn to him slowly. He perks up with the attention I give him. It dawns on me that he always said I needed other people’s focus. Like I couldn’t live without it. That night at the bar, he insisted I only stood up for that stranger because he wasn’t paying attention to me. It didn’t cross his mind that I just refuse to watch other women being bullied.
The longer I look at him, the straighter his back gets. The wider his grin grows. I laugh, small and quiet. The irony can’t write itself.
The best, most mature thing to do, is go back to ignoring him. I could let him stew in his own loneliness and crave the attention he so desperately needs. Obviously, it means more to him than he’ll ever admit. I’d be okay with torturing him that way.
It’s five seconds of internal debate before I recognize that current Rosie doesn’t need to tell Jeremiah off. She’s happy to wait until she reaches the top and can look down on him later.
Past Rosie wants to tell him off, just once. Just to give him a taste of his own medicine.
Jeremiah scoffs and leans back into his seat. Cocky smile twisted onto his face, he throws his arm around my back rest and gets comfortable. He thinks he’s won again.
I turn my body to him fully, my own wide grin blossoming. Just this once.
This is for past Rosie.
“Jeremiah, your only value is that of what people give you. The people you bully, the ones that hang around so youwon’tbully them… You don’t have anything else, if you don’t have them. In a way, I guess I was like that. Minus the fake friendsand people not really liking me, though. I haverealfriends, who see me and want me around because of who I am. Not because of what I threaten them with. Do you have real friends, Jeremiah?”
I pause to let him answer. Suddenly, he has nothing to say. His arm starts to slowly move away from my chair, and I laugh.
“The biggest difference between you and me, is that I was mistaken. I thought I needed other people to tell me what value I had. It took me too long to realize I hold so much power in my mind and soul, and the opinions of people like you are useless. They’re just words.”
The door opens. Jeremiah’s “friend” walks out looking frazzled—face washed of any confidence or self-assuredness. It hits me then that Jeremiah isn’t the only person in my program who has been hiding their insecurities behind insults. I was so caught up in my own self-doubts, I never noticed everyone else’s.
