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In my thoughts, she had tight coils of hair dipped in black ink. Her laugh was infectious, the kind that made others chuckle just from the enjoyment of her sounds. She danced, too—poorly, like me, but oh, how her body swayed. Sometimes, I pretended she was African royalty and was forced to give me up after an affair with some B-list Hollywood actor. They’d met on a Roman holiday and fallen in lust within days. Then he’d left her behind to pursue his dreams of becoming an A-list star.
At least those were the stories I’d tell myself throughout my adolescence. I didn’t create many stories about her now that I was in my early twenties. Most of the time, I only thought about her whenever a big life event happened, during which I wished to have a mother by my side. I wondered how she would’ve felt about how my life was shaping up recently. I wondered if she would’ve been proud of the choices I was making that afternoon.
Get out of your head, Aaliyah, and pull yourself together.
“You can’t be serious,” Maiv said, staring at me as if I were the most idiotic woman to ever exist in the world. “You’re quitting your job here, atPassion Magazine, a position any sane human would kill for, in order to—I’m sorry, explain your reason again,” she said as she waved her hand toward her head as if trying to recollect my words.
“To get married to my fiancé. I recently learned we’ll be moving to California full-time, and since we’re getting married, I figured it would be best to be in the same location as newlyweds,” I explained as my stomach twisted in knots.
The disapproval of my answer and the way her lips turned upside down made me want to vomit. With one look, she made me feel like a child who’d misbehaved. In reality, the only misbehaving I’d done was falling in love.
Maiv Khang was terrifying. She was one of the most successful women in all of New York, but completely coldhearted and a hard one to read—which was ironic because she ran a magazine about following one’s passion in life. We covered athletes, scientists, politicians, social businesses, restaurants, etc. Anything that had a passion behind it, we were writing top-of-the-line articles on the subject. You would think someone who ran such a business would, oh, I don’t know, be a bit passionate themselves.
Not Maiv, though. She always appeared empty. Bored of life. She did a fantastic job with the magazine, but her people skills were yikes.
Maiv’s hair was gray and always pulled back into a perfect bun. She wore her most expensive jewels on a daily basis, and although she was in her seventies, everyone who worked forPassionassumed she would never step down from her CEO position to pass the company on to her daughter Jessica. She was more than willing to hold on as tight as she could, like Queen Elizabeth, while Jessica was a solid Prince Charles.
“So you’re quitting your job at the top magazine line in the world to go be a housewife for some guy?” she asked, but it came off as more of a disdainful statement.
“Not just for some guy—for Jason, my fiancé.”
“You’re young. What is this, your third fiancé? Fourth?”
I snickered until I saw the seriousness in her stare. I cleared my throat and moved around in my seat. “Um, my first actually.”
She rolled her eyes again and waved her hand in dismissal—again. “Never quit a job for the first man who proposes to you. Not the second or third either. Seventh maybe, but that depends on his status.”
I smiled an uncertain grin and shrugged. “Well, I think I’m going to take this chance with Jason.”
She laughed.
Yup. Maiv laughed out loud—a sound I hadn’t known she was able to create. “How long have you been in a relationship?” she questioned.
“We are going on a year and a half.”
The way she burst into a laughing fit almost made me want to cry. Tact wasn’t her strong suit.
Please go back to the nonlaughing boss I know and fear.
“Well, it’s your life. You’re free to make all the mistakes you want, but remember, each mistake turns into a forehead wrinkle, and Botox is expensive.” She waved me away and went back to reading whatever it was that sat in front of her.
“Um, okay…but I do have one more thing to say.” She looked up from her paperwork and arched an uninterested brow. “I won’t be becoming a housewife when I move out to California in a few weeks. I am in search of another journalist position. I am hoping to ask if you could maybe write me a letter of recommendation?”
“You should probably leave my office now.”
“Okay, right.” I stood swiftly from the chair I’d obviously stayed in a second too long. As I was walking away, I turned back to face her. “I hope you know, Maiv, that I am so honored and thankful for you giving me the opportunity to work for your company. This has been the best job I’ve ever had and the experience of a lifetime, and—”
She held her hand up to silence me, took off her glasses, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“You told me when you came to work here that working atPassionwas your biggest life dream, and you are throwing that away for probably an average-sized dick of a man you’ve known for less than two years. Did he ask you how you’d feel about giving up your dream for him?”
“No.”
“Then don’t expect your dreams to go any further when you’re married to a man who doesn’t even try to come up with a way for both of your dreams to come true.”
I stood there, completely quiet and baffled by her words.
