Page 11 of You'll Love it Here

“Are you talking about Drew?” The literal last guy I was seeing for longer than a few dates was a litigator who was really into this one cheese and meat shop in the NW. He had this hoodie with holes in the sleeves for thumbs, and one time he popped his thumbs through them, and that’s the image of him that’s been burned into my mind ever since. “I stopped seeing him like a year ago.”

“Your problem is you’re very picky.” Her lips flatten. You would think after dealing with a man she couldn’t rely on pretty much her whole adult life, she’d respect my decision never to settle.

Her eyes widen at something off-screen. “Looks like the fake Britney is going to sing again and this time it’s ‘Toxic.’”

She hangs up before I get a chance to give one last warning about the slot machines.

That lady, I swear. Of course she can’t understand making reasonable life choices.

But the hollow quiet that fills the room without her and the casino is thicker now. All I see is space, emptiness, time to fill.

I open my work email, despite their strong recommendations that I log off, but it’s like my inbox has experienced a sudden death. All that’s come in today are some office-wides and an email from my boss, Carolyne, with HR cc’d, confirming I’m basically not to come in while “taking the time to grieve a recent familydeath.” There’s no professional way to communicate that I already grieved—that I already said my goodbyes years before his actual passing.

Now, they’re allowing me three weeks of personal leave, and essentially forcing me to take my vacation time afterward. I’ll be gone for six weeks total, which is a lifetime. It can’t possibly be legal to do this to someone. To cc some guy named Bill Cleg in HR, when we’ve never needed him before.

She said I was under her wing when I joined her department four years ago—that she would help me go far. Now, she’s basically forcing me out and saying that’s what’s best for me.

I once subtly bused a teacup she vomited into during a conference in Banff when a head office guy stopped by our table, because she didn’t want to kill her promotion by letting them know she was pregnant. I can’t look at floral porcelain teacups now without thinking of chunky orange spew, which is a pretty life-altering thing to deal with.

I pace around my clean apartment, Ernest following like a little shadow. I take inventory. I have a bunch of prepped meals and containers in the fridge—I refill them every Sunday at two p.m. So I’ll be set for a while longer before I have to forage for food outside. My closet is filled mostly with professional clothes. I own only three pairs of casual pants. I can’t be on leave; I don’t have the wardrobe for it.

The walls tighten—the whole place feels smaller as the gravity of my situation hits.

I spent years attending to every factor of my life to prepare myself to become a marketing director—building the perfect wardrobe, reading books on leadership, figuring out the optimal shape of my eyebrows. Four years of college, two unpaid internships, years and years years of fourteen-hour days. During the Covid lockdown, I took on additional duties to lighten the load for Carolyne whileshe homeschooled her eight- and twelve-year-old, and her toddler ran free (and topless) in the background of our Zoom calls.

So many complicated and entitled clients. I was drowning in work all the time, but nobody could tell because I kept my emails so chipper.

When I first found out my dad was in the hospital, I was in the middle of designing a PowerPoint for one of Carolyne’s clients who’d asked for a new concept at the eleventh hour. If I’d known how dire his health was...

I swallow the lump in my throat. The point is, I gave the company so much. I was a true professional every single day, except for one.

Still, this also feels inevitable in a way I can’t quite express. In the way all things feel on the brink of breaking when they’re going well.

Ernest starts licking his paws loudly, pulling me from my thought spiral. He’s taken up a place on the floor and is staring at a wall. The peace this unemployed dog must feel all the time.

That sentiment is enough to stifle all the other thoughts that threaten to surface.

Shower. I need to shower. I stumble to my bathroom and crank the tap. As soon as the warm water starts running, the anger loosens. All the things I wish I had said and done differently roll through my mind, and in this version I win every argument and reason with my boss. It’s surprisingly cathartic.

After toweling off, I go through my usual skin routine. A regimen I bought into during the best of times, when each tailored product seemed very important, even though they sometimes also feel pointless (times like these). But I keep going through the motions. I have to have hope that it’ll matter again.

After, I slip into some yoga pants and an old T-shirt from a horrid team-building exercise three years prior—if it meant yesterdaynot happening, I’d even go back to that humiliating escape room and the fuckasses who got way too into it. (We’re not trapped in an actual mine, Josh, please put this same effort into your client research.)

Somehow, Josh is still working in that office today, even though he sucks donkey dick, while I’m stuck here. But I need to not dwell. I need todosomething.

I open my laptop and go to my work’s landing page. It’s not like a website can tell me how things are falling apart without me. But it doesn’t stop me from checking. I just want them to be fucked too. Because in like a month, when they’re begging me to come back, I can be classy and stoic and quietly indignant. It’ll feel even more petty that way.

I navigate to the About Us section. Only my headshot isn’t below Jace Richter’s wide-eyed photo like it normally is.

Instead, there’s a single sentence below the page of faces:

All those being managed by Mona Bucket have been reassigned. Please reach out to Jace Richter or our reception desk for your inquiries, otherwise our team will reach out as required.

I stare and I stare. It’s just gone. I swallow and take a tight breath.

My files are being referred to Jace Richter, and Jace Richter hangs his socks on his office windowsill while he’s working.

And now that very guy is in charge of all the campaigns I’ve put hundreds of hours of my life into.