Evidence?
I’m rewarded by a picture of her in her shitty Sorrowsong bedroom, my hoodie pulled tight around her face like it was when I left. Her face is smiling and freckly.
It’s the perfect reminder of exactly why I’m still treading water.
Alex
Cute
Alex
I’ll call you later.
Ophelia
I’ll wear stockings.
Oh, that’sit. I’ve been teased by stockings long enough. I hit FaceTime on her contact. She picks up but hangs up right away—just long enough for me to hear her cackling on the other end.
Ophelia
I gotta go to an evening lecture. Later.
Alex
Great, now I’m depressed and hard.
Ophelia
When are you not?
I’m smiling at my phone when I lock it. She’s a nightmare.Mynightmare. But she’s lit a copper spark in an otherwise charcoal day.
I bring up my emails again. Carmichael has ended his months-long silence with me to forward me a news article from three years ago, like he’s trying to remind me of something.
Sorrowsong University Adds Architecture to Its Limited List of Course Offerings in Rare Break from Tradition.
From Carmichael, it feels like a slap in the face.
No apology for how he treated me, for how he treated my girl, just this.
He picks up my call almost immediately. “Alex. It’s been a while.”
“You’re a real piece of shit, Harris.”
“I wouldn’t delete my email without giving it consideration.” He’s calm. Friendly, almost. Like he’s my father, giving me a man-to-man chat about my career. It only makes me angrier.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve emailing me.”
“I’m genuinely sorry for the way it all played out, Alex.”
“You voted against me,” I bite out, pushing back my chair and pacing my office, the sky so full of black clouds that it’s almost the same shade as my mood. “You almost cost me the CEO job. Aftereverything. I came to Sorrowsong for no good reason. You were never going to vote in my favor.”
“I was.”
I laugh bitterly, and he must sense I’m about to hang up, because he carries on. “I was, until I really got to know you. I could not, in good conscience, agree to elect you as CEO of Green.”
Well, that’s rude. I haven’t dragged the company into liquidation just yet. “I’m doing fine.”
