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That was what came of loving her. Pain and unhappiness.
No. Enough.
Fuck wallowing. There was nothing she could do about Jonathan, but she could damn well fix this problem with the project.
She already had an idea, she just needed to flesh it out a little more and double-check a few things. It was a good idea. Actually, no, it was great. She was going to knock their damn socks off at that meeting on Monday and show them what she was worth.
What she needed was some motivating jams to drown everything else out. She started up her Rihanna playlist, cranked the volume, and got to work.
She spent the entire weekend working on her presentation for the roadblock meeting. She was going to rock this. The solution she’d come up with was efficient and innovative: designing a single composite part to hold both sub-assemblies in the same space. It would be a little more expensive, but save both weight and space. She had a killer PowerPoint deck to illustrate her proposal, and detailed data to back it up. The only other person who had submitted a proposal was Dan, and his solution wasn’t anywhere near as elegant as hers.
Esther got to the conference room early and chose a seat by the whiteboard. Dan showed up a few minutes later with a dozen doughnuts. Not cheap doughnuts either, but expensive gourmet doughnuts from a shop in Manhattan Beach. He’d even made sure to get a couple vegan doughnuts for Bhavin.
“Hey, my favorite doughnuts!” Dmitri said when he arrived. He had the friendly, slightly slick demeanor of a car salesman. The fact that he was almost always smiling helped counteract the fact that his Lithuanian accent made him sound a little like Dracula. He clapped Dan on the back, grabbed a chocolate doughnut out of the box, and shoved it halfway into his mouth as he took his seat.
Esther’s proposal was up first in the bake-off, and she presented it in a calm, unemotional, professional manner. She fielded questions from the other designers, and when Dmitri asked about the grounding path, she got up and walked him through it on the whiteboard.
Dan didn’t say a word or ask any questions. He just sat there silently with that same smug expression on his face.
“Well, that’s certainly an interesting idea,” Bhavin said when Esther had finished. “We’ve never done anything like this before.”
“That’s true,” Esther said. “But it’s not entirely untested. It’s just a new application of processes we’ve used on other projects.”
“Here’s the thing.” Dmitri leaned forward, flashing his jovial salesman grin. The one he used to let people down easy. “We talked about your idea, and it sounds risky. There’s a reason we do things the way we do them.”
Beside him, Bhavin bobbed his head in agreement.
Dmitri stood up and helped himself to another doughnut. “Why don’t we hear what Dan’s got to say?”
Esther capped the whiteboard marker and took her seat again. She listened quietly, keeping her expression neutral, as Dan launched his proposal. He talked a good game and made an impressive PowerPoint deck, but it was obvious he’d hand-waved some of the science. She kept waiting for someone to call him on it, but no one did. Bhavin wasn’t technical enough to realize Dan was blowing sunshine up his ass. Dmitri was, but apparently he didn’t care because Dan was his bro.
When Dan finished, Dmitri was nodding his head. “Thanks very much, Dan. I think we’ve heard all we need to.” He turned to address the whole table. “Esther, I like the innovation, but in this case I think we need to stick to the solution with the tried and true application that offers the most cost savings. Everyone agree?”
There were nods and a murmur of approval around the table. Esther sat there in shock as the meeting was adjourned and everyone began shuffling out of the room.
“Better luck next time,” Dan sneered on his way out the door.
“It was a good idea,” Bhavin told her as he took the last vegan doughnut. “It showed a lot of initiative.”
Not good enough to implement though. “Dmitri said you’d talked about my proposal.” It was an effort to keep her voice from shaking. “When was that?”
“At trivia on Friday,” Bhavin said around a mouthful of doughnut. “I’m on a team with Dmitri and a couple of his devs.” He finished chewing and swallowed. “It’s not like it was a planned meeting or anything. It just came up in conversation.”
Esther nodded. “Was Dan there?”
“Yeah. I mean, he’s the one who organized the team.”
Of course he was. It was no coincidence the team included both Dmitri and Bhavin. What better way to suck up to them outside work?
If Esther had thought to organize a trivia team and invite Dmitri and Bhavin to join, would they have picked her proposal instead? Probably not. They probably wouldn’t have joined her trivia team, because she wasn’t “one of the guys” and she never would be. Not even if she learned to play Magic: The Gathering or forced herself to care about fantasy football.
The one thing she’d thought she could control in her life was her job, and it turned out she couldn’t control that either. No matter how good she was, or how hard she worked, she’d never be appreciated. Like everything else, it all came down to being liked—something Esther wasn’t any good at.
She’d just needed one thing in her life to go well. It hadn’t seemed like too much to ask.
She spent the rest of the afternoon fuming silently at her desk with her headphones on. Instead of going home when five o’clock rolled around, she took herself to the movies. She couldn’t bear the thought of another night alone in her apartment, knowing that Jonathan was right on the other side of the wall. It was excruciating.
The air inside the movie theater was hot and stale and thick with the smell of artificial butter. She bought herself a small popcorn, which turned out to be as big as her head, and a five-dollar bottle of Diet Coke. Dinner of champions.
