every morning tramping around the Grans’ land with a handful of her aggrieved and surly cousins looking for wildflowers so her already frazzled mother could make the centerpieces for the tables. Yes, she’d even spent an annoying afternoon with her parents rearranging those same tables that were being set up under the big tent out on Gran Harriet’s bluff that offered the best view down into the valley. And yes, those were outrageous things to ask wedding guests to do, even if they were family. But none of this was about her. It was time she stopped acting like it should have been. Like a spoiled little brat who took it upon herself to remind everyone how much fun she wasn’t having every five seconds.
Like the teenager she ’d been at such pains to claim she wasn’t any longer.
She was ashamed of herself, and that was why she dug into her pocket and pulled out her p hone, so she could marinate in it and keep her face averted for a few more moments while she digested that uncomfortable truth. But she blinked when she saw her phone’s display, because it was filled with a list of texts from her coworkers.
Are you okay? asked one of the art directors on her team.
Are you quitting? queried another. I thought you were just on a vacation?
CALL ME THE MINUTE YOU READ THAT INSANE EMAIL, her closest friend at work and fellow copywriter, Annabel, had texted.
Frowning , and alarmed, Emmy clicked through to her work email account and scrolled through all the messages she’d been more or less ignoring until she got to today’s. There was something about an old ad campaign, the usual annoying memos from the office manager passive aggressively cc-ed to the entire company, two requests for charitable contributions to different causes the CEO liked that therefore weren’t really “requests” at all, and then, at the top, an email from Emmy’s immediate boss, Stephanie.
The power-hungry, two-faced, untrustworthy Stephanie.
Who, Emmy saw when she scanned the email, had taken Emmy’s extended absence as an opportunity to “restructure” the team. She had to read it twice to make sure she wasn’t missing something, and then it was as if a haze of red descended onto her from the soaring high ceilings of the spa. Red and something else, something that connected hard to that clawed thing in her stomach that had made her snipe at her sister. All that dissatisfaction and fury she’d been swallowing back for years, that she would have outright denied until she’d admitted it to Griffin in the shadows of a microbrewery, because she prided herself on her practicality and practical people didn’t walk away from a good job simply because it wasn’t perfect.
She didn ’t text back any of her friends, because there was no point gossiping about this. She’d been gossiping about Stephanie for at least the last two years and what had it solved? She called Stephanie directly instead, distantly aware that she’d sat up straight on her chaise and was scowling toward the nearest delicate flower arrangement.
“ It’s Emmy,” she said when Stephanie answered her phone in her typically clipped, I’m-too-busy way. “I got your email.”
There was a pause. Emmy could see the office in her mind’s eye. Stephanie’s desk in that windowless room that she treated like it was a corner suite in Bank of America Plaza, the tallest building in downtown Atlanta, which it decidedly was not. Emmy’s own cubicle outside of it, where she’d been sitting for five years that seemed very long now, in retrospect. She had more experience than anyone else on their team. She’d been expecting a promotion to Creative Director in the next year or so and really, she was aware, should have gotten it already. Stephanie knew that better than anyone, as she’d been the one to institute what she called “monthly chats” but which all the copywriters and art directors referred to as “trips to the principal’s office”—and because she was the
Like the teenager she ’d been at such pains to claim she wasn’t any longer.
She was ashamed of herself, and that was why she dug into her pocket and pulled out her p hone, so she could marinate in it and keep her face averted for a few more moments while she digested that uncomfortable truth. But she blinked when she saw her phone’s display, because it was filled with a list of texts from her coworkers.
Are you okay? asked one of the art directors on her team.
Are you quitting? queried another. I thought you were just on a vacation?
CALL ME THE MINUTE YOU READ THAT INSANE EMAIL, her closest friend at work and fellow copywriter, Annabel, had texted.
Frowning , and alarmed, Emmy clicked through to her work email account and scrolled through all the messages she’d been more or less ignoring until she got to today’s. There was something about an old ad campaign, the usual annoying memos from the office manager passive aggressively cc-ed to the entire company, two requests for charitable contributions to different causes the CEO liked that therefore weren’t really “requests” at all, and then, at the top, an email from Emmy’s immediate boss, Stephanie.
The power-hungry, two-faced, untrustworthy Stephanie.
Who, Emmy saw when she scanned the email, had taken Emmy’s extended absence as an opportunity to “restructure” the team. She had to read it twice to make sure she wasn’t missing something, and then it was as if a haze of red descended onto her from the soaring high ceilings of the spa. Red and something else, something that connected hard to that clawed thing in her stomach that had made her snipe at her sister. All that dissatisfaction and fury she’d been swallowing back for years, that she would have outright denied until she’d admitted it to Griffin in the shadows of a microbrewery, because she prided herself on her practicality and practical people didn’t walk away from a good job simply because it wasn’t perfect.
She didn ’t text back any of her friends, because there was no point gossiping about this. She’d been gossiping about Stephanie for at least the last two years and what had it solved? She called Stephanie directly instead, distantly aware that she’d sat up straight on her chaise and was scowling toward the nearest delicate flower arrangement.
“ It’s Emmy,” she said when Stephanie answered her phone in her typically clipped, I’m-too-busy way. “I got your email.”
There was a pause. Emmy could see the office in her mind’s eye. Stephanie’s desk in that windowless room that she treated like it was a corner suite in Bank of America Plaza, the tallest building in downtown Atlanta, which it decidedly was not. Emmy’s own cubicle outside of it, where she’d been sitting for five years that seemed very long now, in retrospect. She had more experience than anyone else on their team. She’d been expecting a promotion to Creative Director in the next year or so and really, she was aware, should have gotten it already. Stephanie knew that better than anyone, as she’d been the one to institute what she called “monthly chats” but which all the copywriters and art directors referred to as “trips to the principal’s office”—and because she was the
Similar Books
