Page 23 of March

Sophie stared at the file on her screen. Part of her job was owning a monthly spreadsheet. There were systems that existed to do what she was tasked with doing each month, of course, but the company couldn’t afford any of them. Besides, they wanted a human to review the data to ensure its accuracy every month. Her job was to take last month’s data, compare the rows and columns to the current month, and review the metrics from another spreadsheet to ensure the changes from that one were included in the new one.

It was something she complained about each month because the person they’d had doing this job before her had taken three days a month to complete the work. Sophie just ran a quick check on the sheet because she knew how to use Microsoft Excel better than whomever they’d had doing this before, and it took her only about fifteen minutes, including the time it took her to upload the finished file to their shared drive. She still complained about it, though, and pretended it took three days because she knew that if she finished it that quickly, her boss could look at her other tasks and might start to think that maybe they didn’t need her at all. They’d already forced her to let two of her direct reports go this past year, which meant she was down to one person. Her dream of running a department was getting further and further away by the minute.

Sophie would feel bad about pretending to take longer on the spreadsheet each month were it not for how they’d treated her and her team and the fact that they gave her the workload of two people, meaning she had way more work than she had time for already. In recent months, she’d been skipping lunch a lot, arriving home around six-thirty, starving for dinner, and she would just turn on her TV, find a show to keep her occupied enough, and pass out from exhaustion after yet another fruitless job search. That had been her every night for a long time now. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t see a way out, either.

When she got Monica’s text asking her if she wanted to go to lunch, though, Sophie decided enough was enough. She was going to lunch today and not giving this company one more extra minute of her time.

“No Bridgette?” Sophie asked when she slid into a chair across from Monica at the restaurant.

“No. Idogo places without her, you know?”

“You live and work together, so prove it.” She winked at her friend.

“I am now, aren’t I?” Monica asked with a smile. “She has a meeting.”

“Ah… That’s the reason.”

Monica laughed a little and told her, “No. I wanted to go to lunch with you. I love Bridge, but I wanted some friend time.”

“So, you’re already sick of each other?” Sophie teased.

Monica rolled her eyes and said, “You know she’s basically been moved in since I bought the house. All we did was wait until her lease was up to move the rest of her stuff in.”

“I know.”

“It’s nice, though,” Monica added as she picked up the menu. “Having no backup plan, no other apartment to have to deal with, and to finally be able to call our house our home together. I moved in with Lily before we got married, and youknow that didn’t end well, but this is the first time I really feel settled and like it’s her place and my place together.”

“That’s good, Mon,” Sophie said.

“It is,” Monica replied with a soft smile. “I’m going to ask her, you know?”

“Ask her what?”

“To marry me.”

“What?” Sophie said a little louder than she’d intended.

“Not tomorrow,” Monica added. “But soon. I’m going to ask Melinda to help me find her a ring.”

“Damn.”

“She’s the one, and I’m over forty – no time to waste. I want to put a ring on that finger.”

“Good for you,” Sophie said.

Then, she drifted off, picturing Bryce down on one knee with a ring in her hand, asking some faceless woman to marry her. Bridgette and Monica had only known one another for a little over a year, and it had been a year since she’d seen Bryce, so it made sense. It could happen. It could be happening right now.

“Do you want to come?”

“Where?” Sophie asked, trying to put Monica back into focus.

“Ring-shopping. I’m thinking next month sometime. I’m going to make a few appointments. I’d like to get something custom-made for her. She deserves the perfect ring and the perfect wedding.”

“If you want me there, I’m there,” she replied. “But if I’d get in the way, feel free to make it more about Mel. She knows Bridgette way better than I do.”

“My guess is this will spark something in her. She and Kyle are on that track, too. Kyle might already have a ring; I don’t know. We don’t get that much alone time for me to ask. I should have Bridge find out, though.”

“Won’t that tip her off toyourplans?”

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