Page 3 of When in December
“Why not? It’s great. And if anyone needs someone to take them out and treat them like a lady, it’s you. Don’t let your assbag ex ruin things for you.”
Of course, she’d had to bring him back up again. We both remembered the eventful day nearly two years ago. It was one of Hannah’s first days at Home Haven. It was also one of the only times I’d cried in the office.
Luckily, it hadn’t scared her away.
“Assbag?” I questioned.
“Yes, it sounds right.”
“You didn’t even know him.”
“I don’t need to in order to preach the cold, hard truth. I saw him that one time when you asked him to pick you up from work,” Hannah insisted with enough force that she had to swat away a piece of copper hair that had flown forward into her freckled nose, which scrunched in indignation. “He made a big deal about it. Plus, what kind of non-assbag without masculinity issues leaves you all of a sudden because?—”
A head popped around the corner of our cubicle. “Am I interrupting?”
As if on cue, Hannah’s computer monitor lit up behind her. The hotline rang its steady trill.
She grinned brightly up at Michelle as she turned around to affix her headset back into its proper place, where her hair had a permanent indent from her wearing it all day. “Not at all.”
Michelle chuckled.
“Home Haven Holiday Hotline, this is Hannah.”
Now that Hannah was back to work, Michelle turned toward me.
I started to put away my food, putting the lid back on and sliding it back into the bag. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize. Tomorrow is the big day. You start your first large-scale solo project on the ground, correct?” Michelle asked.
I shifted in my seat. Should I get up or sit down? I knew most of the other designers had a comfortable rapport with Michelle, but for some reason, I still could never stop seeing her as the person I’d looked up to for years before I got my job here.
When I compared myself to Michelle, I always fell short. It was kind of hard not to. Michelle Maven was elegant andconfident. She was a home designicon. She wore crisp, fitted blouses in cool winter shades that didn’t wash her out and defined what it meant to style something versus just wearing clothing, like I did.
Every day, I showed up to work in what I knew looked nice enough on me. It usually included one of my multiple pairs of patterned dress pants and loose blouse combinations, which might’ve been more appropriate for a fifty-year-old librarian than an up-and-coming contemporary home aficionado.
“It’s always an exciting thing to sink your design teeth into a whole new palette,” said Michelle with a bright smile, stretching her lipstick, but never smudging. “I know the overview of your first big project, but I can’t wait to hear more about what you’ve come up with when we have a chance to talk more. Would you mind coming back to my office with me for a moment?”
“Sure.” My flats squeaked on the floor as I followed her toward the back corner of her office, illuminated by the soft glow of Tiffany lamps.
Surrounding Michelle’s wide desk were various mood boards for the larger important projects she was working on with the senior teams. Aside from that, it was just Michelle now who was about to talk to me and … Alison.
Wait a second. Alison was here?
Alison, another junior interior designer who had started a few months after I did, sat in a chair across from Michelle’s desk. Her leg crossed over the other, making her pleated maxi skirt flare toward her sleek leather boots.
I might’ve stood staring at her for a second too long.
“Have a seat.” Michelle waved for me to make myself comfortable.
I sat on the edge of the second chair stiffly, turning toward Alison with a short smile. She appeared completely at ease with her long, silky brown hair twisted up into a simple knot.
Michelle sat back in the leather chair behind her desk, cluttered similarly to my own with paint chips and molding corners, yet everything was stacked neatly in its proper place. “I wanted to meet with the two of you before the holidays got into full swing. Let’s get right down to it.”
I didn’t think she was going to fire me. She couldn’t. If anything, Home Haven had taken off in the past year and a half to new heights that even Michelle had admitted she never foresaw. I wasn’t going to second-guess myself now, but if Home Haven had to let some people go … firing me and Alison made sense. We were both junior interior designers, preparing for news before the budget changes for the next year.
But was it good news? It had to be good news.
“Both of you are up for a promotion at the start of the new year. As you know, we have a biannual evaluation for promotions when they are being considered. However,” Michelle prefaced with a deep breath, “our wonderful human resources director, Tabitha, has informed me that since we started the Home Haven publication division, only one promotion from junior to senior interior designer is possible.