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She pinches her lips and shakes her head. Her curls swish. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears.
I want to stand up and give her a hug, but something about the way she’s looking at me like I’m the one who’s dying makes me remain seated. My limbs feel suddenly heavy.
“Okay… you’re acting super weird. Seriously. What’s going on?” I whisper.
“Gwen, you are going to hate me forever.”
“No way.”
“Yes, you will. Never mind happy hour at my place this Friday. The only reason you’d swing by is to put a bag of flaming dog poop on my front stoop. Toilet paper my trees. Smash my mailbox.”
“I would never do any of those things.”
“I know you wouldn’t, but I wish you would. You should. I can’t believe how badly I messed up. I hope you have a baseball bat because I deserve a smashed mailbox and much, much worse…”
Her face crumples, and tears well up on her lower lids. When they start to spill out, I hand her a tissue box.
She places a trembling hand over her lips and refuses to take a tissue. “He asked me to fire you, Gwen. A few minutes ago. I am so, so, so sorry.”
I’m too stunned to react. All I can feel is a breathless, strangled sensation in my throat. It tightens, and a lump forms.
“You see?” she whispers, as choked up as I am. “Smash my mailbox. Please. I screwed up. I thought I was doing the right thing, messing with the situation. But it was so wrong of me. I’m supposed to be your resource, and I cost you your job.”
I can’t breathe.
I have to breathe, but it’s like my chest is too tight to let in the air. “I asked you to take off your HR hat,” I hear myself say. It’s like listening to someone else speak from miles away.
I am floating outside of my body.
Brock is firing me.
No.
This can’t be happening…
Can it?
She shakes her head. More tears spill down her cheeks, tinted ash black by her mascara. “No. Please, Gwen, don’t try to take the blame for this. Honesty, I interfered. It was unprofessional.”
Lizzy has no idea just how unprofessional I’ve been this week. My stomach twists and drops.
I kissed him in the break room. In his office. He spent the night at my house…
And now… he’s canning me?
I lower my head into my hands and moan.
The image of Vanessa and Brock in his office doorway fills my head like some angry storm cloud. She was so sleek, so put-together. So beautiful. Her hair, perfect. High heels, model-like body, sculpted and curvy in only the right places.
So different from frumpy me.
He stooped to my level for fun and games, and now he’s back to the caliber of woman he belongs with.
Wealthy, worldly, sleek and shiny women. Not me.
Why did I ever think he’d pick me?
I was kidding myself. Lost in some delusional daydream. I know all about Brock’s ways with women, and yet I thought all the suave, seductive things he said to me were genuine.
