I heard Linh’s fingers tapping on her keyboard and waited for her message to come through.
You’re her supervisor. Say something to her.
Not technically, I typed back.
Arwen was a graphic designer in the in-house marketing department at King’s Creamery, where I was a content strategist in charge of the company’s website, blog, social media accounts, and email newsletter. While yes, I’d effectively been performing the role of content manager since our former supervisor, Jill, left three months ago, I hadn’t officially been promoted into the position. Allegedly it was coming, but we were under a company-wide promotion and salary freeze until at least the end of the year. In the meantime, I was expected to do my former boss’s job and my job for the same money—and without any actual supervisory authority.
I wasn’t comfortable sitting Arwen down and giving her a stern talking-to about the singing. I’d already mentioned it several times, as nicely as I could, but that was as much as I felt empowered to do.
You could ask Byron to talk to her, Linh suggested.
I didn’t like that idea either. Arwen wasn’t doing it on purpose to be a jerk. I didn’t want to complain about her to our creative director, Byron, for something so trivial. Also, I was pretty sure it would make me look petty and ineffective in Byron’s eyes, potentially hurting my chances of ever getting that promotion I deserved. Basically, I was stuck in a worst of both worlds situation.
YOU could ask Byron to talk to her, I typed back.
Linh was a web developer, so technically she was part of the IT chain of command, and Byron was only her dotted-line boss. It didn’t matter if he thought Linh was petty, because he needed her to keep our website running.
That’s gonna be a pass from me, she replied. You know how I feel about lizard boy.
We called Byron lizard boy because he spent so much time playing golf that his face and forearms were tanned and leathery, and his skin pulled taut like a pair of lizard-skin boots.
Anyway, I have headphones, Linh added.
When I looked up, she stuck her tongue out at me and pulled on her cherry red Beats just as Arwen started another cycle of the baby shark song.
Did you know there were nine different verses to the baby shark song? I hadn’t until this morning, but now I’d be reciting them all in my head every day until I died.
Grabbing my favorite So Many Books, So Little Time coffee mug off my desk, I headed to the break room for a fresh infusion of caffeine to dull my baby shark headache. On my way there, I happened to glance toward the elevator, and my heart seized up when I recognized the person stepping out.
Tanner.
I nearly pulled a muscle whipping around the corner in my haste to avoid my ex. Fortunately, he hadn’t been looking my way, so hopefully he hadn’t seen me.
What the heck was Tanner doing on the fifth floor? He worked in sales, two floors up. I almost never ran into him, which was good, because running into him was mega awkward.
We’d broken up six months ago, and every time we’d encountered each other since, Tanner’s spiteful glare had communicated exactly how much he hated me. Which was a lot. I was the one who’d ended it, so I couldn’t blame him for nursing some resentment. But honestly, we’d only dated for a few weeks. It wasn’t like we were even that serious.
Only apparently it had been serious to Tanner—serious enough for him to drop the L-word on me.
That was why I’d had to end it. He’d gotten way too invested way too fast. It was too much pressure. I’d just been trying to have a good time, casually dating a nice guy. I hadn’t been looking to get serious—with him or anyone else.
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t liked him. He was smart and funny and hot in that Clark Kent kind of way that was totally my catnip. I would have been perfectly happy to keep things the way they were: seeing each other once or twice a week, having some fantastic sex, and going back to our separate lives in between.
We’d had a good thing going until he went and got serious on me. Why couldn’t we have kept it casual? I didn’t have room for another commitment in my life right now. Thanks to my family, I already had more obligations than I wanted.
Once Tanner said the L-word, there was no turning back. We couldn’t just hang out and have a good time anymore. Since I had no intention of falling in love with him, I’d had no choice but to bail.
I’d done it in the kindest way I could, under the circumstances. I’d told him straight out that I didn’t feel the same way, and therefore I didn’t think we should see each other anymore.
Ever kicked a puppy square in the face before? Just reared back and let the fuzzy little guy have it right in his adorable puppy nose? I hoped not, because that would be unforgivably cruel. But that was how it felt to break up with Tanner. The hurt look in his eyes still haunted me sometimes when I was trying to fall asleep at night.
Nevertheless, I firmly believed I’d done the right thing. I could have taken the easy way out and pretended everything was cool for a while, then ghosted him at the first opportunity. A cowardly yet effective breakup technique, and one I’d been on the receiving end of enough times to know exactly how much it sucked. But no. I hadn’t done that to Tanner. Instead I’d been honest with him, because I thought he deserved that much. Because I respected him.
Although it probably hadn’t felt like respect from his perspective. He’d looked at me like I’d run over his cat, which was unfair because I’d never hurt a cat. I loved cats, and Tanner’s cat Radagast was very sweet, even if he was a million years old and occasionally slightly incontinent.
Obviously, Tanner had been surprised by my response to his declaration. You don’t tell someone you love them unless you think there’s a good chance of them saying it back. Whatever future he’d been imagining for the two of us—marriage, babies, a white picket fence—I’d blown it to smithereens and thrown it back in his face.
In his defense, he’d accepted it without a fight. You never knew with men, how they were going to take rejection. But Tanner hadn’t yelled or acted out. He hadn’t tried to wheedle or coerce me into changing my mind. He hadn’t argued at all, once I’d explained how I felt—or didn’t feel. He’d let me go and hadn’t voluntarily spoken to me since.
It was just that every time we ran into each other, it was painfully obvious he’d rather be anywhere on earth other than in my presence. Unfortunately, Crowder was a small town, so we couldn’t avoid crossing paths occasionally. Especially since my brother Matt was in a band with Tanner’s brother Wyatt. So if I ever wanted to go hear my brother’s band play, there was a good chance Tanner would be there.
Oh, and also Tanner worked at the same company as me, which bumped up the odds of running into each other even more. Only Tanner didn’t just work for King’s Creamery like I did. His family owned it.
So anyway, that was the saga of me and Tanner. I’d smashed his heart into itty-bitty pieces and now he hated me. What I didn’t know was why he’d just gotten off the elevator on the fifth floor.
Trying to play it cool, I peeked around a fiddle-leaf fig to see where he’d gone. Into his sister’s office, apparently. I could see the vague shape of him through the patterned glass, sitting in one of the chairs across from her desk. They were probably just visiting. Family stuff or whatever. No big deal.