Delete My Number (But He Didn't)

The granola bar was from three days ago. Zara knew this because she remembered finding it under a stack of vendor files on Wednesday, telling herself she'd eat it properly at lunch, and then not having lunch. Again. She'd eaten it at her desk at 7 p.m. while reviewing seating charts for an event she wasn't even invited to, just responsible for, and told herself that counted as dinner because the alternative was admitting that her life had quietly become something she didn't recognize. Now it was almost midnight and she was on the last bus home, shoes off, feet pressed against the cold floor of the aisle because her heels had stopped being wearable around hour nine and she'd stopped caring around hour eleven. Her blazer was bunched up against the window. Outside, Hartwell City moved past in wet streaks of streetlight and she watched it without seeing it. Thirteen hours. She'd been at that office for thirteen hours and she'd missed Danny's call again. He'd texted at 7:43 — just checking in, don't worry about calling back — which meant he'd been worried enough to check in and kind enough to let her off the hook, and both of those things made her feel like the worst person alive. Danny was sixteen and he was struggling and he was three states away and she was here eating stale granola bars and reorganizing seating charts for people who didn't know she existed. She pulled out her phone. She needed to vent. She needed Priya to say something dramatic and funny and make her laugh until the tight thing in her chest loosened up a little. She opened her messages and started typing before she even found the contact. I cannot do this anymore. My boss is the actual worst human being alive. Not in a dramatic way. In a very specific, very calculated, completely unbothered way. He looked through me today like I was a window. Eight months. I have worked there eight months and he doesn't know my name. He's gorgeous and horrible and I genuinely think he was assembled in a factory by someone who hated warmth. I hope he steps on a charger tonight. Barefoot. She hit send. Leaned her head back against the cold glass. Closed her eyes. She thought about Luca Voss the way she always tried not to. She'd seen him maybe forty times in eight months, which sounds like a lot until you consider that she worked on the same floor as his conference rooms and he walked past her desk area at least three times a week. He never looked at her. Not in the obvious way that would have been easier to dismiss, where a person scans a room and keeps moving. He looked through her. Like she was scenery. Like the desk and the girl behind it were the same category of object. Which would have been fine, honestly. She hadn't taken the job to be noticed by anyone on the thirty-second floor. She'd taken it because they'd offered and she'd needed, and those two things together made most of her decisions these days. She didn't need Luca Voss to know she existed. She just needed to survive the next eight months and stack enough savings to breathe for five minutes. But god, he was difficult to look at. That was the specific injustice of it. He was the kind of man who made a room rearrange itself around him without trying, tall and dark and completely unbothered by everything including, apparently, the feelings of every person he employed. She'd watched him walk through the lobby once and three separate people had adjusted their posture without realizing they'd done it. Including her. She hated that she'd done that. She was still thinking about his stupid face when her phone buzzed. She assumed it was Priya. Priya always responded fast, usually with something that started with BABE in all caps and ended with a string of emojis that didn't fully make sense together but communicated everything. She looked at her screen. It was not Priya. I know your name. It's Zara Elliot. Marketing, third floor. — L. Voss Zara did not move. The bus kept going. Someone two rows back was having a quiet phone argument with someone about whose turn it was to take out the bins. The city outside was still wet and streaky and Hartwell City had no opinion whatsoever about the fact that Zara's entire body had just gone completely cold. She read the message again. Then again. Then the screenshot notification came through, and something in her stomach dropped so fast she actually pressed one hand flat against her knee just to have something solid to hold onto. He had screenshotted it. Luca Voss, CEO of Voss Enterprises, a man who had looked through her for eight months like she was a piece of lobby furniture, had screenshotted the message where she called him factory assembled and wished a charger injury on him and sent it back to her so she would know that he had it. The bus lurched to a stop. Her stop. She grabbed her bag and her shoes and stumbled off into the cold air and stood on the pavement and breathed for a second, and then realized her mouth was open and closed it. She looked back at her phone. I know your name. It's Zara Elliot. Marketing, third floor. He knew her name. He had known her name. Which meant the eight months of being a window, of being scenery, had been deliberate. He'd known exactly who she was every single time he'd walked past her desk and looked through her. She'd been invisible on purpose. That was somehow worse than if he hadn't known. She pressed her back against the bus shelter and laughed, just once, the kind of laugh that's really a what is happening sound with no humor in it at all. Okay. Okay so she'd sent her boss, the CEO, a message calling him horrible and gorgeous and wishing foot injury on him. Fine. That was fine. She could handle this. She would go in tomorrow and she would quit before he could fire her, because she was not going to let Luca Voss have the satisfaction of being the person who ended her employment. She would walk in there, she would resign with dignity, and then she would figure out the money situation from the other side. She was already rewriting the resignation speech in her head when her phone buzzed again. She looked at it the way you look at something that has already bitten you once. One new message. Same contact. Same cold, efficient, zero-punctuation style. My assistant will contact you about a meeting tomorrow. 9 a.m. Don't be late. Zara stared at the screen. Don't be late. Don't. Be. Late. She looked up at the sky, which offered nothing, and then back down at her phone, and then she put it in her bag and started walking home, shoes still in her hand, the pavement cold and damp against her bare feet. She was not going to be able to sleep tonight. And whatever was waiting for her at nine a.m., she had a very strong feeling that resigning wasn't going to be an option anymore. She just didn't know yet that neither was leaving.