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“What’s wrong? The fact that you even asked that question is what’s wrong, Jonathan. You know exactly what you did and what you’ve done—to me and other women here. And I’m sick of it.”
The calculated calm slipped from his face. He watched her with a look of startled horror.
Tears welled in Lucy’s eyes, years of frustration threatening to spill over. Just because she was on an honesty train didn’t mean it wasn’t scary.
And the train wasn’t stopping.
She swallowed a fiery gulp of anger and glared at him. “I want my promotion because I’ve earned it, not in exchange for god only knows what you’re offering. And I’m not the only one who knows the truth about you, Jonathan; the things you do and say to women in this office. You think you have control over us, but you’re too arrogant to see that we’re the ones with all the power.” She spun on her flat heel and marched to the door. Her hand shook as she reached for the knob, and she wasn’t sure her knees weren’t going to give out. The terror of what she’d just said rattled every last one of her nerves, but the brazen streak of honesty keeping her spine straight kept her on her feet. She turned and cast one last glare at him. “Your sister is twice the leader you are, and everyone knows she deserves to be in charge of this company.”
She slipped out the door and closed it behind her with enough force to make the nearby assistants jump. Eyes blinked at her from the cubicles like a dozen spiders in a boxy web. She was suddenly center stage under a glaring spotlight.
And she couldn’t stop the tears she’d been damming back.
She held a hand to her face and turned for the bathroom. She felt Oliver’s eyes on her the hottest, probing with concern. He popped from his chair like a prairie dog and watched her all but run down the hall. He’d let her cry into his crisp, pink-not-green shirt no question. He’d console her and condemn their boss with a litany of swear words in a soothing mother-hen voice until she calmed—they’d been through it before.
But she needed to be alone. She needed to get her head straight after what she’d just done.
She’d probably gotten herself fired.
She shoved open the women’s bathroom door and knew it would stop Oliver like a roadblock. He’d barge into her office, sure, but not the women’s bathroom.
J&J kept impeccable bathrooms with shiny granite counters, spotless sinks, a fresh bouquet each day. She’d taken refuge in the fluorescent room with lavender walls on more than one occasion, but to her dismay, it wasn’t empty in that moment.
Annie stood at the sink. She smiled at Lucy in the mirror as she flicked water into the basin from her manicured hands. Her face fell when she registered Lucy’s dismay.
“Are you okay?” she asked with all the concern of a sister-in-arms. Crying in the bathroom was an open invitation to offer a hug, a tampon, maybe to go kick some guy in the balls.
Unlike when they had met in the lobby that morning, Lucy clearly wasn’t okay. She swiped a wad of tissues from the wall and sniffled. “I think I just lost my job by standing up to Jonathan.”
She didn’t mean to say it, but the words came out in a stream like they’d been doing all day, except they were waterlogged and weepy. The ability to try to stop them—the urge to, even—had diminished almost completely, she realized, and it made her wonder if the honesty was getting stronger. If maybe the filter was off, and the truth would just burst out of her body in whatever way it pleased for the rest of the day.
Annie studied her with a guarded gaze. “What do you mean, ‘standing up to Jonathan’?”
Lucy flapped a tissue like a tiny flag of surrender. “Well, he just propositioned me in his most aggressive attempt to date. I shoved him away when he touched me this time.” She took a shuddering breath, thinking that move was the nail in her career coffin. She might as well apply for a job waitressing because no one in Hollywood was going to hire the girl who shoved Jonathan Jenkins.
She looked in the mirror to adjust her eye makeup out of reflex and remembered she wasn’t wearing any. Where she expected twin streaks of mascara, all she saw were puffy pink eyes. She noticed the tense silence beside her. Annie had gone rigid.
She turned and caught the frightened look on her face. She was pale as a sheet.
“Are you okay?”
Annie tucked her hair behind her ear and stared at the floor. She bobbed her head, and Lucy wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. “I’m fine.”
She thought about what she knew about Annie. She was an ambitious twenty-three, fresh from college, and had been Jonathan’s assistant for just shy of a year. She had lasted longer than most in her position, and Lucy wondered if she knew some magic trick for dealing with unpleasant men.
She reconsidered when she noted the way Annie’s thin shoulders hunched, her eyes cast down; how she looked like a Ted Baker–clad building collapsing in on itself. Lucy had figured she wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of Jonathan’s advances. In truth, her comment about other women when she confronted him was mostly a hunch, and confirmation she was right wasn’t satisfying at all.
She reached for Annie’s arm. “Hey. Fuck that guy, right?”
Annie’s eyes snapped up. She blinked her impossibly full lashes, startled.
Lucy had startled herself, but she meant what she said. She squeezed Annie’s arm. “You don’t deserve to be mistreated. There’s a lot of bullshit out there, and you’re early enough in your career to decide you aren’t going to take it.” She huffed a soggy laugh, thinking of her own career and how she’d probably just ended it. “You can make a change before you get to the point of telling off the CEO of your company on the day you’re supposed to get a huge promotion.”
Annie gave her a sad smile, and Lucy wondered if their age difference really warranted sounding like such an old sage. But then, thirty probably seemed ancient to a college grad.
Annie sniffled. She was crying too, but somehow doing it very prettily with just a sheen to her big brown eyes. Lucy wondered if crying, like collagen, got less graceful with age. “You’re right,” Annie said, confidence restored. She threw her shoulders back and nodded. “We don’t deserve this, and we shouldn’t have to stand for it.”
Lucy nodded back, feeling a sweet feminist fire light inside her. At the same time, she was terrified of what would happen. What sense of urgency she woke in Annie and how it might get them both fired.
