Page 14 of Mark my Words

KRISTINE

Boston

For the first time in my professional career...I was feeling regret. I’d broken Sam. Gone were the teasing sighs and the tiny barbs he normally tossed in my direction to wind me up. He was the perfect mask of indifference. Approaching each of our interactions with a calm, polite, professional demeanor, often opting for brief emails instead of showing up in doorways and scolding me for being rude.

I should have been in heaven, not having to deal with another male ego, but I found myself formulating ways to get the veneer he’d fastened in place to crack.

I knew I should have given him space when I’d gone down to run that day. He looked like he was concentrating while those long legs of his beat down on that treadmill belt. He was trying to outrun something, and I felt empathy as I often did that myself. I found myself trying to push my body to the point where my brain stopped overthinking.

We didn’t know each other—not well enough to confide in one another—but I found myself wanting to ask what was bothering him. Which only served to piss me off because I never wanted to have small talk with anyone, never mind Sam. We weren’t friends... We were barely coworkers, temporarily thrown together for this project.

Isobel was right. He wasn’t as bad as I’d made him out to be, but now he was broken, and I wanted to shake him out of it. This stoic behavior, in turn, made me angry all over again because I didn’t want to socialize with him; I only wanted to hear his teasing voice instead of the detached one he’d adopted.

“Kristine?” Isobel was working on formatting an e-book at her desk for another author, her eyes intensely focused on the computer monitor in front of her. Usually, we had a department of desktop publishers that worked on that kind of layout and design work, but occasionally, Isobel refused to pass a project off to them.

“Yes?” I’d been trying to get into this new manuscript I was doing a structural edit on, but I couldn’t concentrate. Maybe I’d broken myself as well. I’d already read forty pages, the right side of my tablet screen full of notes, but I couldn’t tell you what the main character’s name was off the top of my head.

“Chase messaged me that she’s going to be out of the office, out of town, whatever you want to call it, for a few days. She’s been dodging my emails. I think something is going on there, but I can’t force her to tell me. Can you check the chapters she sent in a few weeks ago so I have something to give back to her once she’s done with this little break?”

The chapters were already sitting on the shared server, full of my notes, but I was waiting to tell Isobel until I’d seen more of the manuscript. “They’re on the shared drive. I worked on them last week.”

She nodded as her fingers paused on the keyboard, looking up to make eye contact for a few silent, loaded moments. “Would you ever change your professional goals for a relationship?” Whoa. That was some deep material to think about on a Monday morning. She must have sensed my hesitation, waving her hand in the air. “Never mind. Ignore that.”

But I couldn’t. Isobel had been a little scattered the last few days, so I wondered what was going on in her personal life, which was weird because we typically had a distinct barrier between our personal and professional lives. We were friendly, but we weren’t friends, just like everyone else in my life. They only saw what I wanted them to, which wasn’t much.

“Is this for a manuscript?”

She sighed before she leaned back in her chair. “No. Like I said, forget it.”

It seemed everyone in this office was broken this week, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one fucking bit. Isobel was the one I counted on as the solid foundation in this office, so we were all screwed if she faltered.

“You can’t drop a question like that and recall it–that’s just fricked up, Is. Seriously? Has everyone lost it this week?”

“Excuse me?” Her eyebrow arched higher than I’d probably ever seen it rise, her intimidating business-lady bitch face appearing. It made me cringe inside, but she needed to answer for herself. What in the actual fuck was that question?

“You heard me. Don’t ask me shit if you don’t want me to answer it. No, I wouldn’t sacrifice my goals for a man. We work hard to get where we are, much harder than the dicks between their legs will ever get. I would not let some man derail my career to suit his ego.”

She sat back in her seat, swiveling and chewing her bottom lip. This entire day kept getting weirder and weirder. First, Chase missed a deadline—she never missed a deadline. Then Adrian was friendly to me this morning, Isobel was having an existential crisis, and the pod people had captured Sam.

“Seriously, you all have lost your ever-loving minds. I just can’t. I can’t deal with any of you today,” I huffed as I started packing away my laptop and shoving my tablet into my bag. I would find somewhere else to work. This crap was toxic to my mental health. I didn’t have the energy or patience to deal with other people’s problems today. “When you can tell me why you’d ever change your career goals, for Adrian—I’m assuming—of all people, then I will come back into this office. Until then, email me if you need me to work on something.”

“Kristine,” she admonished, and I shook my head. I was not getting dragged into this office romance bullshit. No. No. Hell to the nope.

“I’ll see you in a few hours. Text me if you want me to pick something up for your lunch.”

Swinging my bag onto my shoulder, I started toward the door, halting when I noticed the prominent figure striding down the hallway.

“Oh yay, it’s Dickhead,” I muttered under my breath.

“Morning, Kristine, I wanted to see if I could borrow you for a favor...”

Shit.

“What do you need?” I sighed as I tried to step around him.

“I put in an order at that sandwich shop over on High Street. Would you mind picking it up for me? Sam has something going on and is returning after lunch today.”

Great. Now I was expected to be Adrian’s snack bitch. Why couldn’t he use DoorDash like the average person? “I’ve got things I need to get through.”

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