Chapter 1 - The Punchline in Every Meeting
I'd given the same company twelve years of my life.
At Brandt & Cole, I was the one who fixed the spreadsheets nobody else wanted to open — the broken formulas, the totals that didn't tie out, the reports other departments dumped on my desk at 4:45 on a Friday.
A lot of my coworkers were grateful for it. My manager, Brad, thought I was a joke.
The morning everything turned, Brad walked in at eight thirty with a coffee in one hand and a folder in the other.
"Morning, everybody," he said. "Got some news. The company retreat is official."
A few people made polite noises.
"Water park this year," he went on. "Beats another beige hotel ballroom, right?"
Nicole, two seats down from me, went stiff. She wore blazers over her blouses even in July, ever since Brad had asked her out loud whether she was "advertising for a second job after hours."
"Sounds fun," somebody said, without meaning it.
Brad leaned back in his chair and let his eyes drift toward me.
"Attendance is mandatory, by the way. No exceptions. Real team players show up — even the ones who aren't exactly built for swimsuit season."
Nobody moved. Every person at that table suddenly had urgent business in their notebook.
"Right, Diane?" Brad said, tipping his head at me. "You're tough enough to handle it, aren't you?"
I lifted my head slowly. "I'll be there, Brad."
"Great," he said, stretching the word out like taffy. "Because if you can pull it off, anybody can."
One laugh came from the far end of the table — short, nervous. I knew the voice. I didn't give him the satisfaction of turning around.
Under the table, Nicole pressed her fingers around my wrist, just for a second. "He's a real piece of work," she whispered.
"He's consistent," I whispered back. "I'll give him that."
To my left, Walt muttered something about the days when managers actually did their jobs. He'd been at the company longer than anyone in the room.
"This'll be good for you, big guy," Brad said, pointing his coffee at him. "Even fossils need a day in the sun."
Walt's jaw flexed. He said nothing.
None of us ever said anything. That was the arrangement, apparently.
The meeting rolled on. I didn't hear much of it. My mind was three days back, sitting in a phone call that had quietly changed the whole shape of my life — just not in a way anyone at that table could have guessed.
Nicole hung by my desk after the room cleared out.
"You're seriously going to that thing?"
"I am."
"Diane, he's going to be vicious. You know how he gets with an audience."
"I know exactly how he gets," I said.
She held my eyes a beat too long, like she was hunting for a crack. I made sure she didn't find one.
"Just promise me you'll look out for yourself," she said. "If it gets bad, you leave."
"I promise."
That night I pulled out the folder I'd been building for months and read every page again.
May you like
For the first time in weeks, I wasn't asking myself whether I could actually do it.
I was asking what it was going to cost the rest of them.
