Rainbow

Not a Girl’s Girl

Maya stood frozen, her weight shifted awkwardly onto her good foot while her bruised left ankle throbbed in rhythm with her hammering heart. Her mind spun in a dizzying loop of horror. How many times can one person utterly humiliate themselves in a single sixty-minute window? First, the desk-grabbing fiasco with Mrs. Gable, and now, a literal head-on collision with the sovereign ruler of the entire multi-billion-dollar empire.

She could feel the cold, suffocating weight of Alessia Carter's gaze pressing down on her. Desperate to mitigate the damage, Maya bowed her head slightly, keeping her eyes glued to the red, designer heels Alessia wore.

"I… I am so sorry, Ms. Carter," Maya stammered, her voice sounding small, foreign, and entirely pathetic to her own ears. "My bad. I completely lost my footing. I wasn't looking where I was going, and I…"

"Do you work here?"

The question cut through her rambling like a shard of glass. Alessia's voice was smooth, low, and entirely devoid of human warmth. It carried the crisp, icy cadence of someone who was used to her words being treated as law.

Maya shook her head quickly, her chin practically pressing into her chest. "No. Not yet. I'm just here for a job interview."

"Good," Alessia snapped, the single syllable sharp and final. "Because you would have been fired on the spot if you did."

Maya's head snapped up, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and instinctive defense. But Alessia wasn't finished. The billionaire stepped closer, her imposing frame and the intoxicating, elite scent of her expensive perfume filling the narrow corridor, trapping Maya against the wall.

"How can you possibly do any job properly if you can't even manage the simple, automated task of walking?" Alessia's blue eyes narrowed, flashing with a cruel, elitist disdain. "Are you blind?"

The words hit Maya like a physical slap. Instantly, a hot, stinging sensation rushed behind her eyes, and she had to blink furiously to keep the tears from spilling over. A tight, painful knot formed in her throat. She had done nothing wrong. She hadn't stolen, she hadn't insulted anyone, and she hadn't compromised the company. She had bumped into someone. It was a stupid, clumsy mistake… the kind of mundane, human accident that anyone could make on any given Wednesday.

But, of course, the rules were different for people like Alessia Carter. Maya felt a bitter, familiar wave of resentment wash through her chest. The ultra-wealthy loved nothing more than picking on poor, vulnerable prey. They lived in an entirely different stratosphere, insulated by millions of dollars, looking down from their glass towers just waiting for a chance to humiliate the people beneath them to remind everyone of the hierarchy. To Alessia, she wasn't a human being having a stressful day; she was an insect that had dared to clutter her pristine path.

A sudden, fierce urge flared up in Maya's gut. She wanted to open her mouth. She wanted to lash out, to tear down that icy composure and tell this woman that anyone, including the great Alessia Carter, herself, could trip. She wanted to tell her that wealth didn't make her immortal, nor did it exempt her from gravity. But she bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood.

Maya forced the raging fire in her mind to burn itself out. Lashing out and defending her pride wasn't going to pay the electricity bill sitting on her counter. It wasn't going to buy groceries or keep her landlord from knocking on her door at the end of the month. If she spoke up now, she wouldn't just lose this job; Alessia might ensure she was blacklisted from the entire high-fashion district. She needed this job. She needed any job.

"Do you hear me?"

The sharp reprimand shattered her internal monologue. Alessia was staring at her, her dark eyebrows drawn together in a look of profound disgust, as if Maya had completely lost her mind right in front of her.

"If you like to live inside your head and indulge in your little imaginations, you can very well stay in your house instead of being a public nuisance out here," Alessia said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, mocking whisper. "And you should forget about ever working here, too. Angels have no use for people who can't even navigate a straight hallway."

Before Maya could even process the finality of the rejection, Alessia moved. She didn't just walk around Maya; she brushed past her with aggressive, unyielding force. Her shoulder slammed into Maya's, a deliberate, heavy shove that caught her completely off guard.

Maya gasped, her heels giving out once more as she quaked violently to the side, her hands scrambling against the smooth drywall to keep from crashing flat onto the polished floor.

Before she could even attempt to push herself up against the wall, another woman rounded the corner, completely ignoring her struggle. She was a striking brunette with sleek, bone-straight brown hair that cascaded perfectly over her shoulders. Clutching an iPad tightly against her chest along with a chaotic heap of design papers and fabric swatches, she didn't even pause. Instead, she swept right past Maya without offering a single hand of help, a subtle, mocking smirk playing on her lips. It was clear that in the cutthroat halls of Angels, empathy was a luxury no one could afford.

By the time she stabilized herself, the only thing left in the corridor was the fading click of Alessia's designer heels and the lingering, mocking scent of her perfume.

…

The moment Maya unlocked her front door, she didn't even have the energy to turn on the lights. She stumbled into the dimly lit living room, let her handbag drop carelessly onto the floor, and collapsed face-first onto her couch. She lay there, fully dressed in her interview attire, not even bothering to unbuckle the cheap, traitorous high heels that had initiated her downfall.

She pressed her face into the fabric of the sofa cushion, a long, exhausted groan escaping her lips.

Today had been an unmitigated disaster. She had embarrassed herself thoroughly, but as the initial shock began to fade into a dull ache, the humiliation transformed into a profound sense of disappointment. Maya was a girl’s girl through and through. She believed in lifting other women, in building communities, and offering grace because life was already hard enough. She could never, under any circumstance, understand how a fellow woman could so effortlessly and callously belittle another woman, all because she happened to be wealthy and successful.

Was it really that easy to lose your humanity once you acquired a few commas in your bank account? Alessia Carter had everything… beauty, power, status, and an empire built on celebrating the female form. Yet, she had used that same power to trample on a girl who was clearly already down. Maya would never downgrade her fellow girl, but today was a harsh reminder that the world was not populated by people who thought like her.

Maya rolled over onto her back, staring blankly up at the cracked plaster of her ceiling. The silence of her apartment was heavy, punctuated only by the distant hum of traffic outside.

One thing was certain: her dream of working at Angels was dead. There was no way Mrs. Gable would hire her after the desk incident, and even if by some miracle she did, the big boss had explicitly told her to forget about it.

Maya let out a slow, steady breath, forcing the tension out of her shoulders. She would give herself a day or two to rest her bruised feet and her even more bruised spirit. She would wait, just in case a miracle occurred, but if she received no phone call by the end of the week, she would permanently cross Angels off her list, bury the memory of Alessia Carter's piercing blue eyes, and resume her relentless job hunting.

She was broke, but she wasn't broken.