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“Gemma,” he calls after me, zipping up his pants. “Fuck. Gemma, wait. It was a joke.”
The elevator doors shut and I let my weight sag against them. My God, I will never fucking learn.
On my last day at Stadler, I was escorted out by a security guard, as if I was a criminal. A group of male partners sat inside a glass-walled conference room watching—men with all the power, who thought nothing of destroying a young female if it made their lives a little easier.
Meg and Kirsten watched too. Impassively, without an ounce of guilt.
I was ashamed and I was horrified, but most of all, I was angry. Fuck all of you, I thought, every last one of you.
And, really, I never stopped thinking it. About them. About everyone.
It was a good strategy.
18
I wake in the morning to find my pajamas missing and the sheets stuck to me. The entire night was basically one long, pornographic dream about Ben. A dream he kept ruining by saying, “I told you you’d beg” at the end.
In my head, he’s now said it a thousand times, and that smirk of his gets a little more smug and evil in each iteration.
He’s texted several times. It was a joke. A stupid, poorly timed one, he said. And then: Fuck. Will you please say something?
Forget about it, I replied. I already have.
Even if it isn’t true, it should be, and that’s the best I can do for now.
I take extra care getting ready for work. I wear my Louboutins with a skirt that shows slightly more leg than normal. “This is not for him,” I tell my reflection as I apply mascara.
It’s solely for me, so I can exude confidence. And if it happens to make him extra regret the way he behaved, that’s okay too.
I call Keeley on the way to work. “I think I sold my soul to the devil last night.”
“You’re a lawyer. You did that a long time ago.”
She may have a point. “Fine. So, I sold him my soul and then I had sex with him on his desk.”
Her gasp is pure drama. “Ben? You didn’t.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I did.”
“But how?” she demands. “You hate each other!”
“I know!” I cry, letting my head fall back against the seat. “But I threw a shoe at him and…”
She laughs. “Are you seriously going to tell me throwing a shoe at him led to sex?”
Someone behind me honks though the light just changed, so I give him the finger. “Well, no. He told me I had to beg to get it back and then he put it on my foot and…”
“Why was he putting it on your foot, Cinderella? Why didn’t you make him hand it to you like a normal person?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her, because I’m too embarrassed to admit the truth: I wanted to see what would happen. I wanted to see how far he would go, and—apparently—I was hoping he’d take it just as far as he did. And it was so fucking good, until he opened his big mouth.
“How did you leave things?” she asks.
I hiccup a sad laugh made of misery and self-loathing. “He said ‘I told you you’d beg.”
Her inhale tells me all I need to know. I didn’t overreact at all. “What. A. Dick.”
“He tried to say it was a joke, but…”
