“Printing things out helps me get my head around them.”
“Fine.” She deposits the plant in front of his cubicle. “But throw some things away.”
The mint green planter seems like it’s trying too hard. The office is all gray—gray fabric cubicles, gray carpet, gray office chairs, the gentle gray hum of the building’s systems. Even the ceiling tiles, once white, have faded to a light gray. The place looks like it hasn’t been redecorated since the 1980s.
For years, TKCORP was all about tradition—great benefits, one of the last bastions of lifetime employment. But there was a changing of the guard a few years ago after the longtime CEO retired, and a new guy came in, cutting costs, slashing budgets.
“Ruby, how’s that memo coming?” Erica shoots over her shoulder.
“Good!” I squeak. And bygood,I mean I haven’t started.
“Don’t take too long.” She hurries back to her office, floofing up some potted plants along her way with the energy of a hummingbird visiting her favorite flowers.
Slumping in my chair, I stare at my notes until the pixels blur together.
I close my eyes and think about how I’ll wander the aisles of TKMART alone after work, maybe buy a scented candle to make the house smell less like a time warp to my high school years. Or I’ll treat myself to another throw pillow—the couch has become buried in them since I moved back.
How can you be so unmotivated?Mom said the last time we spoke on the phone.
I have to focus! I should be grateful to be here.
Mom always wanted to work in this department, writing advertorials. She thought it was glamorous—your words in the pages ofElleandNewsweek,without the risks of a creative career!
She’d applied a few times over the years, but Erica never gave her a shot. And now I’m here instead, in Mom’s dream job. Somehow, impossibly, even though the print journalism industry it relies on is dying.
I had to come home after she died—I inherited the house, and there were so many things to attend to. When I saw Al at the funeral, he mentioned there was an open position in the department after the layoffs. And there was nothing calling me back to New York, anyway. Mom was right: I wasn’t going anywhere in my job, and somehow after years of living there, I hadn’t made any friends who would miss me after a couple weeks apart. It seemed too perfect; I had to apply, and when I got it, it felt like fate.
But something must be wrong with me, because I can’t even appreciate it. I’ve been barely dragging myself through the days, sluggish and slow to react.
I try to get my head in the game by clicking through my emails. And a message introducing the hire of a new junior executive stops my scrolling.
It’s his headshot that grabs my attention first. A pale young man with tousled brown hair, standing with his arms crossed, giving the camera an intense look. He’s wearing a suit, lines of the jacket hugging his broad shoulders. He’s kind of uncanny-valley handsome. Maybe it’s a fake photo, AI-generated. The resemblance to Jacob Elordi is too strong.
Mark Winterson,the email says.London School of Economics BSc, Harvard MBA.A bunch of fellowships and awards, lots of things with the wordsentrepreneurshipanddistinguished.I almost laugh out loud. If you called up Central Casting and asked for A Man My Mom Would Want Me to Date, it would literally be this guy. The universe must be taunting me.
He’ll be the new Associate VP of Sales, Marketing, and Customer Experience—say that five times fast!—but he seems young for an executive, maybe just a few years older than me.
I’m trying to read the words alongside the picture, but the headshot keeps drawing me back. There’s something weirdly magnetic about him, like those brown doe eyes are actually boring a hole into my soul.
Come on, Ruby!I imagine him saying.Hot people finish their memos!
I’m reading the part about how he’ll be visiting every team that rolls up to him, when a Slack message from Erica pops up with a Zoom link.
The first time she did this, I had anOh no, what have I done?moment. Even though I need to produce the same volume of copy that three people used to, Erica still insists on painstakingly debriefing about every misplaced comma.
She starts a screen share so we can view the document I submitted together and she can make me explain why each one she’s circled is wrong. But it doesn’t even seem like this is about boosting sales, or hitting goals, or any of the things Erica likes to fixate on.
It reminds me of Mom dictating the order in which I had to eat all the things on my plate at dinner, and how upset she’d get when I deviated from it. Meaningless things that give you some sense of control in an out-of-control world.
I catch my eye in the little Zoom window, light brown face floating against the gray of my cubicle wall. Al said I look like Mom, but I can’t see any of her strength in the face staring back at me—just a brittle shadow of the real thing.
It’s not like this is what I expected when I pictured having a daughter.
I close my eyes and try to push away the memory of that final painful conversation.
“Ruby, are you listening? Or are you falling asleep?”
My eyes fly open and I force a smile. “I’m concentrating! Go on.”
