Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 91058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91058 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
I chuckle.
She starts to empty her top drawer, picking up the pace with pens and paper clips—shoving it all in with little care or attention. “Anyway, since it doesn’t matter anymore anyway, here’s my two cents. Makayla and Ramona probably won’t last here much longer. Ramona’s trying to get knocked up by her boyfriend who’s some big finance guy. She’d much rather be a stay-at-home mom than schlep to work here every day. And Makayla can barely stay on top of her workload. The girl is dumb as a box of rocks. She told me she got called in for a performance review a few weeks ago and they essentially told her she was on the chopping block.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I doubt she lasts the month.”
I can barely keep up. First Kendra, now Makayla and Ramona too? I sort of thought everyone was settling in the way I was, loving the work as much as me. With everything I had going on, I forgot the warning Bethany gave us on our first day on the job. By this time next year, a quarter of you will be gone. In two years, only half of you will be left standing.
Turns out, she was right.
“Can’t say I’m particularly sad about that news…”
She’s unbothered by my honesty regarding her pseudo-friends. Then she picks up her mouse pad. “Want this?”
I look down at mine. “I’m good.”
She drops it unceremoniously into her box and tosses in her mouse for good measure.
“Did you guys actually hate me?”
“Oh yeah, for sure.”
There was no pause, no hesitation.
Her candidness makes me laugh. “Because of my dad?”
She shrugs. “Eh, maybe at the beginning, but then it just became the status quo. Kind of a brutal necessity. Makayla’s actually pretty annoying when you get to know her and Ramona and I would never be friends in any other setting, so we needed a common enemy to unite us. And honestly, it was pretty annoying that you had everything made.”
“Can’t you see how hard I work though?”
She looks at me for a second as if weighing my question, then she waves it away. “Sure. Whatever.”
She yanks the paper calendar off the wall and drops it in with the rest of her stuff, thumbtacks and all.
All right then, so we’re not really going to have a nice, happy reconciliation. I get it.
She checks her drawers, slams them closed, spins her chair one last time, and grabs her laptop on the way out.
“Good luck in Bali.”
She pauses and looks over at me. Her face has never seemed so open and friendly. “Yeah. Good luck here.” She tips her head, offers a small smile. “Surprisingly, after everything, I’m kind of rooting for you.”
Then she walks out, and to be fair, I give it a full half-hour before I move my stuff to her desk. Oh my god—her chair is so much better than mine. I swivel around in it three, four times before I get ahold of myself. Her desk drawers are way deeper too, and they slide in and out like a dream. So smooth I’ll be wanting to reach in for files every chance I can get.
I call down to maintenance and request they move my old desk and chair out of the office, and then before the man leaves, I ask if he happens to have a hammer and a nail. I want to hang the painting from Hudson’s mom on the wall near my desk.
My dad comes to visit and to eat lunch with me in my office.
He whistles when he walks in. “Look at this place.”
His reaction is unwarranted. It’s as bare and boring as it was on my first day in October. Neither Kendra nor I cared to spruce it up with personal items. Me, because I didn’t want to give her any more ammunition. Her, because…well, maybe she wasn’t planning on staying all that long.
My dad does one of his customary photo shoots where I have to sit behind my desk and smile awkwardly while he exhausts the camera on his phone.
“Pretend you’re talking to a client,” he tells me, giddy with his brilliant idea.
I do it because Kendra’s not here to make fun of me anymore, and truly, it’s not that much effort to make my dad happy. I draw the line at pretending to type an email though. You give this guy an inch, he’ll take a mile.
“Sending these to Mom,” he tells me before taking a seat and proceeding to do it right then and there.
Five whole minutes pass where he studies each picture and picks the very best one. He sends them and then my phone buzzes on my desk. Oh the joys of being a member of the Elwood family group text. Never a dull moment.
“I’m sure she’ll have an interior decorator in here by tomorrow morning, jazzing the place up,” I say wryly.