Happily Never After

“SO WE’RE REALLY going to need talent development’s buy-in,” Stuart said, forwarding to the next PowerPoint slide.

Buy-in. Why couldn’t the jackass just say support or help? His constant use of business buzzwords drove me nuts. It was just so him.

Also, why did I have to have a role that required me to sit through so many of Stuart’s presentations? I sighed and looked at my watch.

“There will be extensive deliverables from a reporting standpoint,” he started, and I sighed again. Deliverables. What a douche.

Stuart kept talking, but his gaze went to me and he swallowed, as if he knew he was irritating me. Good, I thought. You deserve my disdain, you jargon-vomiting assbag.

I glanced to my right, at Edie, and gave her a commiserative smile; surely she was suffering as much as I was from this worthless presentation.

I swung my leg back and forth, watching the man who’d once tearfully confessed that he loved me too much as he laid out his team’s sales forecasts. His fashion sense was as flawless as ever, and he was clearly still running; Stuart Lauren was a beautiful man and wore a suit very well.

The prick.

I remembered that suit—the navy Calvin Klein. He’d bought it at Macy’s a few months before we got engaged, and I went with him when he got the pants tailored.

It was weird, but I used to love shopping for his clothes and picking up his dry cleaning. There was just something about seeing the clothes when they weren’t on his body that felt intimate—domestic, even—like I was a part of Stuart’s behind-the-scenes life.

I told him that one Saturday, as I gathered the clothes from his closet to drop off, and he’d called me “painfully sweet” and made me promise to love him forever.

“Promise me, Soph,” he’d said, taking the clothes from my hands and wrapping his arms around me. “Promise you’ll always love me, because I don’t think I could live without you.”

“I’ll always love you,” I’d said, smiling, wrapped in a cocoon of soft emotion. “You’re my person, remember?”

“That’s right, I am.” He’d given me a half smile, the one that told me I was charming him, and said, “Your person. And you are mine, Sophie Grace.”

God, the way he used my middle name.

“. . . really looking forward to the results we’ll obtain as we synergize our ideation and workflow.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I didn’t mean to, but I groaned.

Out loud.

Edie’s eyes shot to me and she whispered, “Are you okay?”

I nodded, heat flooding my cheeks as Stuart glared at me.

Everyone else in the conference room was looking at me like I’d just burped the alphabet, like they were horrified and amused, all at the same time.

“Sorry,” I said, waving a hand and pushing my lips into what I hoped was a smile. “It was about something else. Not you. An, um, email. That I got. Carry on. So sorry.”

I heard nothing else, no other buzzwords, because I had died of embarrassment.

—

“Sophie, can I see you for a second?” Edie asked as she walked by my desk and went into her office.

“Of course,” I replied, glad there was no one else in the area at the moment because they would know—just like I did—that I was about to be called out for my childish behavior. I took a deep breath through my nose, pushed back my shoulders, and stood.

I went into her office, and she gestured for me to take a seat. I knew I should apologize, but before I had a chance she said, “How are you doing, Soph? Are you okay?”

Was that a trick question? “Of course. I’m fine. Great, actually.”

“Really.” Edie sat down in her chair and stared at me with a tilted head, like she was thinking hard. About me.

“Yes, really,” I said, giving her the most reassuring smile I could come up with.

“Here’s the thing. We talk about work-life balance, but are we actually carving it out in our life? That’s a question we all have to ask ourselves,” she said as she clasped her fingers in front of her face.

“Yes,” I agreed. “For sure.”

“It’s important for our creativity, and for our holistic well-being.”

“Agreed,” I replied, wishing she’d get on with it.

“Since your breakup, Sophie, you’ve been working nonstop.”

“No, I haven’t.”

She put on her readers and looked at her computer screen. “Friday, three twelve a.m., an email from Sophie Steinbeck about rebranding. Saturday the fourteenth at two thirty p.m.—an email from Sophie Steinbeck about benefit renewal meetings. On Easter Sunday, at ten a.m.—an email from Sophie Steinbeck about a potential new payroll vendor.”

I blinked and tried to remember what I’d done on Easter. “I mean, do I sometimes send after-hours emails? Sure. Does that mean I have no work-life balance? I don’t think that’s accurate.”

“Pardon my French, but that’s bullshit and you know it.”

“I’ll start making it a priority,” I said, desperate to convince her we were on the same page. “Because I really do believe it’s important.”

“Sure you do.” Edie took off her readers and leveled me with an I-see-you stare. “The other thing here is that everyone in this department—in this building, in this company—knows that you hate Stuart Lauren.”

“I don’t hate him—”

“And who can blame you? But the closer I get to retiring, the more you need to be seen as professional, charming, and well-rounded. No one is going to think you’re ready for this job if you can’t stop yourself from growling at Stuart every time he talks.”

“It wasn’t a growl, it was a groan,” I clarified, still mortified by my childish reaction.

“It was a goddamn cry for help, Soph.” Edie gestured toward me with both hands and said, “You know that I want to recommend you, but how can I do that in good conscience if you aren’t behaving like a vice president? If everyone knows you still have issues with your ex in sales?”

Well, shit. I didn’t say anything, because what the hell was there to say to that?

“Let me ask you this, as a friend,” she said. “Have you even left the house, socially, since the breakup?”

I wanted to say, None of your business, but that wasn’t going to help my case. “I actually went to a wedding a few weekends ago.”

She didn’t look impressed. “That doesn’t count.”

“But I went with a guy.” I got out my phone and quickly scrolled to the selfie. “See?”

I held it out, suddenly desperate to convince her that I had a social life.

“That is one hell of an attractive man.” She moved her face a little closer to the phone, then raised her eyes to me. “Dear God, Sophie—is that the guy who crashed your wedding?”

Oh, shit. “Yeah, um, funny story,” I blathered. “We kind of became friends after that.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, her mouth dropping open. “And now you’re dating him?”

“Not really,” I said, but when her face fell, I added, “yet.”

Two dark eyebrows shot up, and she sat back in her office chair. “Is that right?”

I didn’t have to fake the smile that appeared when I thought about Max, because I’d spent hours replaying that almost kiss. I still wasn’t sure what to make of the sudden rush of chemistry, that white-hot spark that’d come out of nowhere, but I also wasn’t too worried about it.

“I’m actually going to another wedding with him in a couple weeks,” I said, still grinning, and that made her face transform into an expression of relief.

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear this,” she said, looking more like a friend than a boss. “Because I really do think that if you get your personal life on track—and people around here know it—there’s no way you won’t be a VP in the very near future.”