Ethan
The elevator doors chime in the distance, even though the building has been empty for hours. I look up through the large glass wall that separates my office from the rest of the top floor and see my assistant, Margot Higgins, rounding the corner towards her desk.
My eyes go wide when I notice what she’s wearing: a black dress that hugs her curves and a pair of high heels that add four inches to her short frame. Her dark hair is down in soft curls around her pale shoulders. It’s a far cry from her normal librarian look, but there’s still a distinct Margot-ness to the ensemble. She’s wearing her cat eye glasses, and her giant handbag has an obvious heft to it. She’s probably packing at least two books plus an e-reader in there.
She doesn’t see me until she walks over to her desk and notices the dim light coming from my office. Her eyes flick up to meet mine, and she gives me the saddest attempt at a smile I’ve ever seen.
Margot looks back toward the elevators like she is considering fleeing. I watch curiously as her chest rises and falls with a sharpintake of breath. She hesitates before straightening up a little and walking into my office.
“Hey, Margot,” I say as she enters. “Forget something?”
Neither of us are strangers to working late, but Margot slipped out early tonight for a date with her boyfriend. I can’t imagine why she would come back to the office.
She nods vaguely and stumbles over her words. “Yeah, I forgot, um… I mean, I just needed…”
It catches me off guard. Margot can be a woman of few words, but those words are usually sharp and to the point. She always has some smartass reply ready to dole out.
Then she sniffles.
My gaze narrows, taking in her red-rimmed eyes and the smudged makeup under her glasses.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” she responds too quickly. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
She reaches up and wipes away a tear with her fingertips.
She certainly doesn’t seem fine. I motion to the chair across the desk from me. “Come sit down for a minute.”
Margot and I are friends, as much as a boss and an assistant can really be friends without crossing any professional lines. We laugh and joke in the privacy of my office, but it’s always innocent, nothing I wouldn’t say in front of my own grandmother. Things have always been easy between us, but that’s because we both know how to balance our friendly rapport with a hefty dose of detached professionalism. We steer clear of anything personal and have zero contact outside of office hours. It’s a dynamic that’s served us well over the past two years.
Margot wobbles on her high heels as she walks over to my desk and takes a seat. I pull a few napkins from my favorite lunch place out of my desk drawer—the closest thing I have to a tissue—and pass them to her. She gives me another tiny, weak smile and blots her eyes.
“What happened, Margot?” I ask.
She stares down at her lap and pulls her brows together as she ponders her answer. After drawing a choppy breath, she replies, “Jeremy and I broke up.”
Good. I’ve met the guy a few times and never got a good impression. He’s your standard finance bro: generic, smug, and egotistical. Margot is way too good for a guy like him.
But that’s not what she needs to hear right now, so I opt for a more neutral response. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay.” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“Can I ask how you ended up here?”
Returning to the office is an unusual choice.
“We were down the street at Sapori. I just needed to get as far away from him as possible, and this was the first place I could think of within walking distance.”
A long silence stretches out between us. I’m not really sure what to say. It’s been a long time since I’ve been through a breakup. It was brutal, and nothing anyone said really made any difference.
I slide open the bottom drawer of my desk and pull out an expensive bottle of scotch one of our suppliers sent me for Christmas. Perks of being the new CEO of True North Outfitters, I guess. Ever since I took over running the national chain of outdoor recreation stores that my brother founded, I’ve been swimming in gifts like this. The ones that didn’t get regifted are collecting dust in my drawers.
Margot’s eyes flare slightly when I set the bottle down on the desk. “I’ve never seen you drink at work,” she says.
“That’s because this isn’tMad Men,” I say with a smirk. “I’m going to grab some cups.”
A minute later, I return from the nearby breakroom with two small paper cups and fill them halfway full of scotch. When I pass one across the desk to Margot, she looks at it for a secondthen downs the entire thing in one gulp. Her face contorts and she visibly shivers.