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Welcome to my hell.
fourteen
Sophie
“So we’re reallygoing to need talent development’s buy-in,” Stuart said, forwarding to the next PowerPoint slide.
Buy-in.Why couldn’t the jackass just saysupportorhelp? His constant use of business buzzwords drove me nuts. It was just sohim.
Also, why did I have to have a role that required me to sit through so many of Stuart’s presentations? I sighed and looked at my watch.
“Therewillbe extensive deliverables from a reporting standpoint,” he started, and I sighed again.Deliverables.What a douche.
Stuart kept talking, but his gaze went to me and he swallowed, as if he knew he was irritating me.Good,I thought.You deserve my disdain, you jargon-vomiting assbag.
I glanced to my right, at Edie, and gave her a commiserative smile; surely she was suffering as much as I was from this worthless presentation.
I swung my leg back and forth, watching the man who’d once tearfully confessed that he loved metoo muchas he laid out his team’s sales forecasts. His fashion sense was as flawless as ever, and he was clearly still running; Stuart Lauren was a beautiful man and wore a suitverywell.
The prick.
I remembered that suit—the navy Calvin Klein. He’d boughtit at Macy’s a few months before we got engaged, and I went with him when he got the pants tailored.
It was weird, but I used to love shopping for his clothes and picking up his dry cleaning. There was just something about seeing the clothes when they weren’t on his body that felt intimate—domestic, even—like I was a part of Stuart’s behind-the-scenes life.
I told him that one Saturday, as I gathered the clothes from his closet to drop off, and he’d called me “painfully sweet” and made me promise to love him forever.
“Promise me, Soph,” he’d said, taking the clothes from my hands and wrapping his arms around me. “Promise you’ll always love me, because I don’t think I could live without you.”
“I’ll always love you,” I’d said, smiling, wrapped in a cocoon of soft emotion. “You’re my person, remember?”
“That’s right, I am.” He’d given me a half smile, the one that told me I was charming him, and said, “Your person. And you are mine, Sophie Grace.”
God, the way he used my middle name.
“...really looking forward to the results we’ll obtain as we synergize our ideation and workflow.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I didn’t mean to, but I groaned.
Out loud.
Edie’s eyes shot to me and she whispered, “Are you okay?”
I nodded, heat flooding my cheeks as Stuart glared at me.
Everyone else in the conference room was looking at me like I’d just burped the alphabet, like they were horrified and amused, all at the same time.
“Sorry,” I said, waving a hand and pushing my lips into what I hoped was a smile. “It was about something else. Not you. An, um, email. That I got. Carry on. So sorry.”
I heard nothing else, no other buzzwords, because I had died of embarrassment.
—
“Sophie, can I see you for a second?” Edie asked as she walked by my desk and went into her office.
“Of course,” I replied, glad there was no one else in the area at the moment because they would know—just like I did—that I was about to be called out for my childish behavior. I took a deep breath through my nose, pushed back my shoulders, and stood.
