Page 25 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

I keep looking at it.

My alarm went off at five forty-five after seven uninterrupted hours of sleep, and instead of immediately checking my email, I got out of bed and made breakfast. Now I'm sitting here eating it while my phone remains facedown beside the fruit bowl.

I finish the eggs in less than ten minutes, which might be the most irritating part.

I've spent years telling myself there isn't time for breakfast, only to discover that apparently there has always been time. I just kept giving it to other people before I could use it myself.

When I finish, I rinse my plate and put it in the dishwasher. I feel embarrassingly pleased about the whole thing, considering most adults can feed themselves without a seven-foot dragon assigning it as homework.

Seven hours of sleep. Breakfast. Say no to one thing.

Two down.

The third one finds me at three forty that afternoon.

I'm thirty pages into fixing the formatting on a presentation that should never have reached my desk when Kim from accounts stops beside me. She has that slightly apologetic smile people get when they're about to ask me for something, although in my experience the apology rarely survives long enough to reach the actual question.

"Margot, any chance you can cover the vendor sync at four? Something's come up, and I'm not going to make it."

Normally, I'd say yes before checking whether I could actually fit it in. I've covered the same meeting four times this quarter, and every one of them has eaten at least an hour of my afternoon before producing a page of notes nobody looks at again.

The yes still gets as far as the back of my throat.

"I can't today. I need to finish this deck for Richard before I leave."

Kim pauses, clearly surprised, and I have the ridiculous urge to explain myself. I could tell her when the deck is due, show her the email, maybe offer to take the next vendor meeting so she knows I'm not suddenly an unhelpful asshole.

Instead, I keep my mouth shut.

"Okay, no problem. I'll see if Dan can do it."

She walks away.

That's it.

Nobody gets angry. Kim doesn't demand proof that I'm busy or remind me of every favor she's ever done for me. The building doesn't collapse. She just asks somebody else.

I stare at my screen for another few seconds while my heart behaves as though I've committed a minor crime, then go back to the deck.

By four thirty, I'm still at my desk.

So is Dan.

The difference is that he's on the vendor call and I'm getting my own work done.

I could get used to this.

My bedtime alarm goes off at nine forty-five. I'm under the covers by ten, convinced that going to bed because a dragon told me to is objectively ridiculous and that there's no chance I'll actually fall asleep this early.

The next thing I know, my alarm is going off the next morning.

Tuesday begins with Richard calling me Margie before I've even taken off my coat.

"Margie, I need you to move my lunch with the Hendricks people, and find out what that place on Fifth can do without dairy. Karen's off it now, apparently."

He says apparently as though Karen has given up dairy specifically to inconvenience him.

"I'll sort it."