Kathryn
The office was quiet. This was my favorite time of the day. Once everyone left, the place felt like it relaxed after a gentle exhale. Nobody ran to and from each other’s desks with notes and requests and urgent messages. No phones rang. No laughter competed for attention against the more important conversations happening in the workplace. No coffee machines hummed.
It was pleasant, peaceful, still.
The only sounds were that of my fingers flying over my keyboard and the occasional bubbling from my water cooler tucked in the corner between my filing cabinets and liquor cart. Jon had given liquor carts to those of us with our own private offices for Christmas last year, insisting nobody could be taken seriously in business if they didn’t have booze on hand for the hard days—or for the celebratory ones. Since that day eleven months ago, I’d touched my stash three times.
All three of them had been hard days.
I supposed this was a day worth celebrating. Perfect Pairings was a massive account and I’d secured it singlehandedly. Jon had been there, poised at the ready like a serpent ready to strike if it looked like Mrs. Pratt wasn’t feeling my pitch. But lucky for me, she had been feeling it, and Jon was able to sit back and watch me work.
I’d done well. I knew that. Hell, everyone knew it.
Even Ethan Collinder.
A smirk curled my lips at that thought. I loved how he squirmed whenever he felt intimidated by me. He and I were both competitive and merciless, so having a leg up on him as we closed in on the end of the year felt incredible.
I leaned back in my office chair. The soft white leather creaked as if reminding me the workday was over and it was tired of hosting my butt. With a sigh, I turned off my computer screen and stood to stretch my back and crack my neck. I’d been at the office since just before eight that morning and we were closing in on nine o’clock. My apartment would be waiting for me, serene and dark, and I intended to return to it with the final paperwork completed for Perfect Pairings so I could hit the ground running tomorrow morning.
At the gold-frame liquor cart, I perused my selection: bourbon, scotch, and vodka.
I’d never been much of a fan of vodka. I chalked that up to a bad drinking experience when I was in high school and thought I could handle my liquor at a party when I most definitely could not. There was something about the smell of it now that still made my stomach churn. I experienced the same thing with Ferris Wheels—the stomach churning. It was the height and the not-so-subtle reminder that all that stood between me and the ground was a metal bucket and a bunch of bolts and screws.
No thank you.
Opting for the scotch, I took one of the crystal cocktail glasses from where it sat neatly stacked by the cleaning crew that swept through the office every night. The glass cork came free of the neck of the scotch bottle with a little encouragement from my thumb and I poured myself about two ounces of the rich brown stuff. I swirled it around and let it kiss the edges of the glass before taking a whiff.
It was sweet smelling with notes of caramel. The first sip lingered on my tongue and teased my taste buds. The second warmed my belly and soothed the aches and pains of the workday. My feet hurt from being in heels for nearly thirteen hours, and upon realizing this, I stepped out of them and tucked them beside the liquor cart.
As I sipped my scotch, I looked out of my own office into the shared office space on the other side of the glass walls. After much insistence, Jon had finally agreed to let me put blinds in my office. How was I supposed to work with people looking in on me all day, or me being distracted by what was happening out in the office? Jon hadn’t understood that. He liked being able to survey his kingdom like a proud lion keeping stock of his pride.
Me? I had no interest in such things. When I was at work, I was at work. There was no room for dilly-dallying or people-watching.
Now that everyone was gone, I didn’t mind having the blinds open. I liked it actually. I could enjoy looking out at the office during this time of night.
Outside my office were neat rows of desks of other representatives who worked for Jon. We were an open-concept office in architecture and culture. Everyone sat together regardless of what department they worked in. Accounting, sales, social media, public relations, and everyone in between sat at their desks outside my office. To my left and out of view were offices of the other top agents, including Ethan’s, whose office was three doors down from me nestled beside the break room. It was fitting because of all of us, he was the most likely to wander over there and waste time with pretty girls like Caroline.
Around the corner from the break room was the lobby that you stepped into as soon as you got off the elevator on our floor twenty-four floors up from ground level. Jon liked a bit of glam in his decor and fashion, hence the burgundy and gold pocket square he’d worn today. So the lobby didn’t at all feel like the waiting room for a marketing agency. Where one might expect to walk into a cool-toned space with simple furniture, they actually found themselves stepping onto a red, green, and blue Turkish rug. Royal-blue velvet chairs sat on the outskirts of the rug with a Keurig coffee machine on one side table. A collection of mugs was stored beneath it that read “JDR” on the side.
We’d lost track of how many people had stolen them. I had a sneaking suspicion Ethan had at least six of those mugs at home in his kitchen cupboards. I’d stake money on it.
Jon was also a big fan of plants. He insisted they breathed life into a space. So naturally, the office was full of plants. Boston ferns hung from hooks in the ceiling in the corners of the lobby, succulents sat in a neat row on the shelf built into the front of the receptionist’s desk. Caroline had needed to be reminded to water them several times over. Calatheas sat in brightly patterned pots all over the place, and diffusers blew steam into the air in every single room, which meant there was always something glowing in a corner and humming quietly as the diffuser changed colors.
My office was a stark contrast to the rest of the space. As soon as it had been deemed officially mine, I’d painted the forest-green walls white. I’d replaced the cherry oak desk and plush rugs with a marble-top white desk. I’d put down no carpets and instead let the grey vinyl remain bare. Minimalist art hung on my walls—only signed originals, of course. Most were done in black and white.
That was my aesthetic. Simple. Professional. Clean.
Jon hated it, but he put up with it.
The snowflakes however? He refused to take no for an answer. So, despite my loud and vigorous protests, there were in fact about a dozen sparkly snowflakes hanging from my ceiling.
They taunted me as I tipped my head back and sipped my scotch. One of them, the one closest to the air vent above the liquor cart, twirled in gentle and incessant circles. I willed it to be still, to no avail.
I sighed.
Soon, the entire office would give way to the Christmas season. Last year, Jon had gone over the top with decor. After coming into the office after the weekend he’d hired professional decorators—yes, professional decorators—to do up the office, I’d stopped in my tracks. It smelled like Christmas. The air even tasted like Christmas.
All my colleagues thought it looked beautiful. They liked the holiday-inspired coffee flavors in the break room as well as the bowls of nostalgic treats like After Eights or Terry’s Chocolate Oranges. Productivity took a bit of a dive but Jon insisted that was what he wanted. He didn’t believe that December should be the busiest month of the year. Instead, he preferred to front load.