Page 2 of When in December
I smirked as I sat down and settled in for my takeout. The place we got the food from was always the best since they were nearby, and somehow, the food was always hot. I could feel the warmth seeping through the plastic container into my palms. “Thisisthe fun of it.”
“Only you would say that.”
I pointed with my fork back to her headset.
She shook her head. “Still talking.”
I twirled my noodles. At my pause, Hannah reached up to click back on her headset. Soon enough, whatever story the person on the other end was telling her about their holiday plans would come to an end.
I took it as my chance to murmur, “Michelle also sent out an email, asking if I would be in the office tonight. She’s leaving with some of the other senior staff for their retreat tomorrow. She said she had something important to tell me.”
“She what?” Hannah gasped before realizing her headset was no longer muted. “No, I apologize. Not you, ma’am. What was your question again? No, of course, I’m not judging your question about vegan options to make this season. We have a whole section on our website categorized by occasion. A coworker of mine came in and—oh, yes, there’s tea.” Her eyes flicked to me, sparkling. “Verbal, not herbal.”
When she said it like that, gossip truly sounded like a disease.
“Do you think it’s about the … you know?” Hannah whispered toward me, covering up her microphone this time.
The promotion?I had to think so. It was the only thing that made sense.
I smiled down at my food, feeling the rush of giddiness that hadn’t left me since I’d opened the email this morning, asking me to stick around.
Unlike during my first year, when I had constantly felt like I had one foot out the door whenever I accidentally Replied All or tripped over the pointy high heels I couldn’t wear to save my life and spilled senior interior designers’ coffee, I knew that Michelle wasn’t going to call me into her office anymore to show me the door.
Though I didn’t want to sound full of myself, once I’d gotten the hang of things, I was good at my job. Enough so that for thepast year, Michelle had been teasing me with the fact that my work and seniority over the other entry-level staff meant I was a shoo-in for a promotion to senior interior designer once the budget turned for the year.
And it was almost the end of the year.
The promotion in title, along with what felt like my first-ever big-girl salary at the ripe age of thirty, was another reason I didn’t mind putting in the extra hours at work the past few weeks. Months.
Hannah grinned as she talked through her recommendations to the woman on the phone. She went over the pros and cons of spaghetti squash over butternut and how pomegranate seeds could bring a festive aesthetic into your holiday meal.
In between breaths, she took a bite of a spring roll. As she chewed, she put her hands together as if in prayer to silently thank me.
Hannah might have had the best and worst job at Home Haven, yet she never complained about the hours she spent attached to her computer and headset. I almost envied the way the perky twenty-six-year-old was able to slip on her fluffy slippers under her desk, twirling the cord as if she were a teenage girl talking to her crush about his favorite color instead of the perfect temperature to cook a turkey and how to make your own cranberry sauce.
Almost.
I couldn’t handle talking to anyone for eight hours a day, if not more with the amount of voluntary overtime Hannah picked up. I could barely handle more than two meetings in a day with the rest of the Home Haven staff—consisting of interior designers, bloggers, and event planners—whose mission was to make the everyday in your home a little more special.
It was the idea of romanticizing your life that had first drawn me into Home Haven.
Once I, a devout DIY renovation admirer, had found out a woman-owned business of my dreams existed, there was one place I desperately wanted to work, even if it wasn’t far from home, like I’d always thought I would end up.
No matter what, I was proud of myself.
I’d done it. I’d made it. Not to mention, I was pretty sure I was in the minority of the world when I said how much I loved my job and meant it.
Pulling off her headset, Hannah dropped it on her desk. She took a huge bite of noodles and didn’t bother fully chewing before she spoke. “Look at you. Going to have a big promotion before New Year’s. I feel like a proud mother. Seriously, are you going to leave me? You totally are. You’re going to be put in one of the fancy side offices now and forget about the sad little administrative assistant turned Home Haven call girl.”
“Don’t call yourself a call girl.”
She barked a laugh. “Now, all we have to do is get you a man, and Poppy Owens’s fantasies will have come true.”
“I don’t need a man.”
“No one said you needed one, but take it from me.” Hannah looked up toward the ceiling, as if remembering her last online dating rendezvous, which she normally saved to tell me about on Monday mornings. Sometimes, the stories she had were the only things that made me pull myself out of bed and into work with something akin to pep in my step. “It’s nice once in a while.”
“I don’t need someone to be nice to me.”