The Boss I Taught to Love

By nine that morning, the office coffee had burned down to sludge and nobody wanted to leave a desk long enough to replace it. Even the loud typists had gone quiet. Julian Cross, our new CEO, had arrived an hour earlier. He was hard to miss behind the glass of the executive corridor. Dark suit, straight posture, eyes that stayed on a speaker until the speaker ran out of excuses. Nobody had heard him raise his voice. That seemed to make the department more nervous. He had crossed the floor once, said very little, and sent two department heads back to redo their reports. Valerie loved it. She stood beside my cubicle preaching her latest phrase, “a culture of consequence,” while adding three people's assignments to my queue. According to her, the extra work was a growth opportunity. I knew one thing about Julian that nobody else on the floor did. Three months ago, I had taken him on as a private project. It began on a niche business forum. A user named ‘J_Cross’ posted that “truly competent people shouldn't need praise to perform.” I was on my third glass of cheap wine and had spent the day fixing another one of Valerie's mistakes. I replied, “That’s the kind of soulless take that makes people hate their jobs and their bosses. Congratulations on being the problem.” I expected a block. The next night, he sent me a screenshot of an apology email to his team and one question. [Better?] After that, he kept coming back. The man negotiated billion-dollar mergers, yet he asked me how to word difficult emails, which tie worked for a hostile takeover, and whether a haircut made him look approachable. I corrected him. I teased him. When he got demanding, I made him wait. His first messages had been terse enough to sound like orders. By the second month, he sent voice notes from hotel rooms and asked whether he had handled a difficult employee fairly. He liked praise more than his forum post admitted. I made him earn it. Eventually, J_Cross started calling me his Queen. I made him set the contact name himself. “Bennett.” Valerie stopped at my desk. “Mr. Cross needs the quarterly performance analysis. Now.” “I thought you were presenting it.” “He wants the raw data. Your data.” She handed me the tablet. “Don’t mess it up.” The glass walls of Julian's corner office gave everyone a clear view of me walking in. He sat behind a black desk, reading something on his monitor, and did not look up. Every step across that office gave me a better look at him. The severe profile from the corporate announcement, the same dark hair from the one blurred photo he had once sent to ask about a haircut, and the watch visible in several late-night pictures. I kept telling myself thousands of men used Cross as a username. “Leave it on the desk.” I had heard that voice through my earbuds after midnight, asking whether I liked the rain outside his window. Hearing it here made my fingers slip against the tablet case. I set the tablet down and clipped a water glass with the side of my hand. Water spread across the desk toward his personal phone. “Shit.” I grabbed for the tissue box. “Don’t touch it.” He caught the phone before the water did. As he lifted it, the screen came on. The banner at the top showed a contact name I had chosen. **My Queen** Below it waited the voice message I had sent that morning, a low tease meant to distract him during a meeting. Julian swiped the banner. The chat opened, exposing three months of messages and the new blue voice bar at the bottom. I could see older lines above it, including one where he had asked permission to call me Queen. His face remained still as he read. He had no reason to connect the junior planner beside his desk with the woman in that private window. His thumb moved over the play button. If he pressed it, my voice would come out of his phone in the middle of his office.