The room felt significantly smaller with him in it.
“Amelia.”
“Zackary,” I mirrored, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms.
“You didn’t mention during your little visit last week that you’d be working for Margaret.”
“I didn’t know it would matter.”
“You knew she was one of the only two marketing directors.”
He was right. It had come up in the interview.
“I didn’t know you were the other.” Again, the truth. I had avoided the topic of Zac with my father like the plague, so I wasn’t aware of his exact position at the company before I applied.
The fact that he was promoted to a director level at his age was an extremely unpleasant turn of events. I would have guessed senior associate or marketing manager at best.
“The big office, personal assistant, and the literal nameplate on my desk with my title on it didn’t give anything away?” he asked condescendingly.
“I’m surprised my father didn’t give you a heads-up. You were so chummy, such great buds, the last time I was here. Trouble in paradise?” I pouted my lips in mocked sadness and tilted my head.
Then, something weird happened. His eyes flickered to my mouth and momentarily glazed over, but then they were back up to my eyes as he caught himself.
It happened so quickly I thought that maybe I imagined it.
What was that?
“Alright, listen.” He ran a frustrated hand through his disgustingly perfect black hair as he stepped closer to my desk. “This changes things. We can’t act like this if we’re going to be working this closely together. It’s wildly unprofessional.”
“I’m being perfectly pleasant,” I said.
“And I’m being perfectly serious. This won’t end well for either of us if we can’t get along… or at the very least, be civil.”
I thought about it for a moment before responding, “What if I say no?”
Still standing, he put his hands on my desk and leaned forward, lowering his voice, “Do I need to explain the concept of the corporate hierarchy and chain of command to you, Amelia?”
I hated the way he kept saying my name.
“Can’t fire me this time, Zac. I don’t report to you.” My smile was bitter.
“You sure you want to play this game with me?” A slow smirk started at the corner of his lips. “I’m giving you an out. We can put all of this behind us and move on like adults.”
“You’re giving me an out? Really? Because it kind of seems like you’re the one asking me for the favor. I’m sure it’s taken a lot of work to build up your reputation here.” I uncrossed my arms and leaned forward, putting my elbows on my desk and resting my chin on my fists. “How unfortunate would it be to watch it all come crumbling down, brick by brick, simply because you can’t seem to get along with the new employee?”
I caught a whiff of his cologne as I leaned in. Why did he have to smell so good on top of everything else?
“And I’m sure your new boss would love to see the termination paperwork I filed for you seven years ago, featuring my extremely thorough and scathing review of your performance. It would only be fair for me to warn her about you, wouldn’t you agree? I certainly would have appreciated a heads-up.”
The two of us glared at each other for what felt like a full minute, neither one wanting to back down. I still almost said no out of spite, but I had to remind myself to think long term. This was a marathon.
“Fine. I agree to be friendly in front of others to maintain professional appearances,” I finally said. “But you’re out of luck when it’s just us.”
His smile slowly widened until it reached his eyes.
“You plan on spending a lot of alone time with me, Amelia?” he teased.
Biting back the urge to tell him to fuck right off, I rolled my eyes and turned back to my computer.
“Be sure to close the door on your way out.” I did my best to mimic his voice as I quoted his parting words to me from last week back to him.
He actually chuckled as he turned around to walk out the door, leaving it wide open behind him.
Prick.
7
Turned out we didn’t really have anything to worry about. The next three months were mostly uneventful as I settled into a new routine at work. I was in at 6:00 a.m. and usually out by 5:45 p.m. to catch my evening spin class, just as I’d done at Yuval.
Zac was the only other person in that early, but we seemed to have a mutual understanding when it came to communicating or even acknowledging each other at work. We simply didn’t. It was perfect.
He now had the staff at the coffee shop downstairs he loved so much bring him his order in the mornings after they opened. It was usually the same girl that came up, and she always seemed more than happy to do it.
But other than that minor interruption of good-mornings and giggles, the floor was entirely silent until everyone else started to trickle in. It was the most peaceful and productive two hours of my day.
Everything else was going just as smoothly. Margaret was a great boss and seemed extremely happy with my work and the accounts I’d managed to sign so far. She hadn’t been kidding when she said the two teams got competitive. There was a giant whiteboard rolled out to the middle of the floor outside of our offices that displayed the newly appointed accounts and the size of the deals each team had won since the last time the numbers were reset. Apparently, the losing team had to buy drinks for the winners at the end of every quarter. They seemed to be really into it.
“This round is a bit of a write-off though,” Margaret had said to me a few days earlier. “Zac has been working on the largest proposal the company has had in years, potentially ever, and it’s due this week. They’ll announce the winner next Friday, so it doesn’t matter how well our team does. If he gets the account, they win.”
I’d heard about this deal through word of mouth. A lot of people in the office were talking about it. Emerson Blu, a large American electric-car company that was looking to expand into Canada. They already had an American advertising and PR agency but wanted to bring in a Canadian firm that was familiar with the market to oversee the expansion.
She was right—the deal was massive. Apparently, Zac had been working tirelessly on it over the last four months. He looked stressed and was constantly frowning over his phone or computer. There were a couple of people who were convinced he never went home anymore and just slept in his office, but Andrew had shut down the rumors pretty quick.
It didn’t matter how he got it done though. If he won, he would probably meet his target for the next three years.
I was tempted to root for the competition.
The actual announcement came the week after in the form of an email from my father to the whole company. He began by dedicating an entire paragraph to congratulating Zac on the win and going on and on about some of his other accomplishments. Then, he went into detail about how big this was for Bloom & Co. as a whole and the doors it would open for us in the future.
I had been in the middle of eating lunch when I read it and lost my appetite pretty quickly, throwing away half of my salad.
The cheers and clapping were almost instantaneous outside of my office as people congratulated Zac, patting him on the back. I could see him celebrating with them through the glass. He wore the biggest smile I’d ever seen on him, and all of signs of stress and fatigue were wiped from his face.