Chapter 28

As the dropping elevator feeling that makes me feel like the soles of my feet are up around my armpits fades, so does the eye strain from watching over 6 hours of movies and my urge to pee. Weird.

I mean, I knew that pre-existing conditions got erased when the loop re-started, hence me not having a case of being dead, but for some reason the pee thing really throws me. Where did that pee go?

I think on this until the shattering of a window interrupts my thoughts.

“How good were those movies?” he practically yells. He does a half-flick with his hand and all the shattered glass zooms across the room and into a pile. He’s getting better with his control.

“They were good.” I go to take a step towards the file room, but then I pause. While I’m technically no longer fired, I have zero inclination to work.

“That’s all you have to say about them? They were fine?”

I shrug and start walking towards Dominic’s office. “Maybe I would’ve said more, but you were stopping the movie every five minutes to add additional commentary.”

“Ah—I just really wanted you to like them,” he says, grinning like a kid on Christmas.

“And you thought stopping the movies constantly was the way to get me engaged?”

Grant laughs. “Usually I stop it more. I only toned it down because a part of me thought that you were serious when you said you’d punch me in the nose if I kept pausing the movie.”

I was serious. It’s good that he’s finally getting it.

On a whim, I grab the list of office team bonding ideas off Beth’s desk as I pass. Even though I got a one-on-one explanation of her ‘shorts’ idea yesterday/today, I’m not sure I get it. Still, good on her for trying.

“Here’s one thing with the movies. So, the little green guy is all like ‘There is another one’ and he means the sister, right?”

“Right.”

“But then, nothing ever comes of that.” I walk into Dominic’s office. Back in elementary school, I had fantasies of sneaking into the teachers’ lounge, just to see what it was like. Get to walk around when no one was around and act like I belonged. This is what I imagine it would feel like. It feels powerful.

Fuck that noise.

I knock his stupid picture frame of him shaking hands with Prime Minister Brenner off his desk and it shatters. Good.

Grant watches me and nods along like this is all perfectly normal.

“I wouldn’t say nothing comes of it. They’re siblings and—”

I wave him off. “But nothing ever comes of it for her. They’re like, ah if the boy doesn’t work out, we can always train the girl. Then he does work out, sort of, so they just don’t bother training her. Or even offering to train her. That’s some sexist bullshit right there.”

My very astute argument is punctuated by the sound of me trying to force open the bottom drawer of Dominic’s desk. It’s locked.

“Would you mind…?” I ask, gesturing to the drawer.

“Yeah, sure,” Grant says absently. Suddenly, the cover of the drawer finds its center of gravity on the other side of the room. It smashes against the wall against one of Dominic’s framed degrees. “I think that it needs to be noted how incredibly hard it is to train them at such an old age.”

“They’re the same age.”

“Right. Twins… That is pretty sexist.”

I nod, just as I find my personnel file in Dominic’s drawer. I figured it’d still be in there since I had my review with him last month and he’s absolute shit at returning files. I usually have to return them for him like the world’s most overpaid mail courier.

“If I were her, I’d sue.”

Grant laughs, falling back into one of the uncomfortable chairs in Dominic’s office. I always thought that they were purposely uncomfortable so that the other person would feel awkward and intimidated.

Genuis ideas like that are why he’s my mentor—was my mentor.

Not that the chair technique seems to be working on Grant. He’s draped across the chair with his legs dangling over the armrest and his head and arm against some art on the wall.

“Just when I think I couldn’t fall for you any harder, you say you’d sue the Council.”

I shrug. “Maybe just the green guy. Depends on if I could prove it was systemic sexism or not.”

Grant just keeps on smiling at me like I hang the moon. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. I’m talking about wanting to go after the patriarchy embedded in his beloved childhood films. Even I’m a bit exasperated with myself.

And, apparently, I’m not the only one who sees my own shortcomings. As I open up the file, I get to read about all of them in detail. It’s interesting stuff.

Wait—did I say interesting? I mean fucking awful.

As soon as I open it, words like ‘not a leader’, ‘poor people skills’, ‘lacks a certain quality’, ‘incessant need for validation’ all jump out at me, but it’s the ‘not a consideration for future candidate for partner’ in Dominic’s sloppy handwriting that cuts to my very core.

Betrayal flushes through my body, stopping my breath and sending my heart into overdrive. And, truly, there’s no better word for it than betrayal. Just a little while ago, I sat in Dominic’s uncomfortable chair while he told me that he tried. He tried. He made a pitch to the partners for me to start taking on more of a prominent role and it just wasn’t the time. He said that if I kept working hard, maybe next time. He said that he’d let me in on a couple key cases of his to help me out, help me make an impact with the other partners.

He let me in on a couple of his cases and I worked my ass off on them. I carried those cases and got him wins. Which is probably exactly what he wanted.

Why would he ever want me to get promoted? To rise up? Why would he ever want to lose his little work gopher who did everything for him unquestioningly.

Just as the tears threaten to spill out (seriously—who am I with all this crying?), Grant’s hand is soft on the top of my back where my neck meets my shoulder.

“Once you’re done all your legal stuff in a galaxy far, far away, you can always sue these fuckers,” he says in a gentle voice.

I snort out a laugh.

I know I should love that idea. I should be filled with a righteous anger that makes me want to bring down the punishing blade of the law, but I don’t.

For the first time since I became a lawyer, I don’t want to litigate. I don’t want to argue, convince, sway, prevail, or persuade. I don’t want to be me.

Grant’s other hand, the one not rubbing light circles on my back, plucks a cigar up from the desk.

“Cigars? Really? Could this guy be any more of a cliché?”

“Oh, you don’t even know. Dominic asked Beth to buy some fancy Cuban cigars so he and the other partners could celebrate. Instead, she bought the cheapest ones she could find at a local smoke shop. The cheapest of the cheap. At the Christmas party, they all sat around, talking about how they could tell these were quality.”

Something twitches inside me like a snake raising its head from a lazy nap. I remember when Beth told me about what she’d done. My first instinct was to tattle on her to Dominic, but then I walked up to the office where they all sat. Just the partners. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, I could see them as they lounged on the different chairs, away from the rest of the party, and smoked. They looked like a tableau of white, male privilege—the first supper of opulence and greed.

It was a scene I somehow knew I’d never be a part of. I could win case after case, but I’d never be a part of the celebratory smoke afterwards.

“I like Beth,” Grant says with a chuckle.

“You know, I think I do too.”

The building gives its first shake. Let it be a testimony to how messed up Grant and I are becoming that we don’t even flinch.

The rest of the cigars fall off the side of his desk. When it does, something snaps inside me. A scream unleashes from somewhere deep inside me. It’s the scream that I wanted to scream every time Dominic called me ‘kiddo’ in front of the partners. It’s the scream I wanted to scream when he accepted congratulations on his latest win and didn’t mention that I did nearly all the work. It’s the scream I wanted to scream when I got passed over for my own office again and again, while Felton’s nephew got a prime one after only a couple months.

The building continues to shake as I scream, but I don’t care. In one fell swoop, I knock everything off Dominic’s office, even as the world shakes around me. I knock off his computer and keyboard. I knock off his phone. Unfortunately, the bulk of his desk items—his own little personal museum of pictures of him shaking hands with big wigs—is gone. Still, I smash the picture of him with his family.

I pause.

That last one didn’t feel too good.

It doesn’t matter though. As the building roars its discontent, so do I. I take my personnel file, no all the personnel files I can find and start tearing them into chunks that I throw onto his now empty desk.

I know I’m just tearing up paper, but it feels like so much more. Some opinions, some words should have been destroyed long ago. I keep tearing until the pieces are tiny, the building is frantic, and my chest is panting its way back towards control.

“It seems pretty irresponsible to have fire around all this paperwork,” Grant offers, floating a lighter in front of my face.

I don’t even hesitate. I snatch the lighter out of the air and flick it open. The flame dances in front of my eyes, answering the part of myself that’s calling out for vengeance. Or maybe for closure.

Besides, time loop.

The blossoming flame unfurls into sweeping lines of destructive beauty when it hits the ugly words on my employee file.

I smile. Let it burn. Let it all burn. Let it burn and then let it crumble.

“Anything else you’d like to smash?” Grant asks as the building revolts around us.

With a smile, I realize that we’re floating about an inch off the ground and all the dislodged objects whirl around us, like we’re in the eye of a tornado. Dominic’s desk is aflame while every single part of his office crashes and breaks.

It’s chaos and destruction.

It’s everything he deserves.

It’s enough.

For now.

“No, let’s just get out of here.”

Grant’s arms are the ultimate juxtaposition of gentleness amid the raging ruination around us.

We fly out of Dominic’s now shattered window just as the building takes a respite before it inevitably falls. This time, I don’t stop and watch it crumble. I don’t even give it a backwards glance.

“So, I chose what we did yesterday,” Grant says softly in my ear as the building roars in defeat behind us. “You can choose today.”

I don’t answer him right away. I can’t.

Instead, I nestle my head against his chest and listen to the beating of his heart. In between the steady thumps, I consider what it is that I want to do. For the first time in far too long, I don’t want to work. I certainly have no desire to bust my ass for a company that finds me dispensable, among other lovely adjectives.

It’s been a long while since work wasn’t the driving factor in what I wanted to do with my day. Or with who I am.

It’s interesting, but within the confines of the time loop, I actually have more freedom than I ever have. I can do anything. I can do all the things I never had time to do before. I can do all the things I never had anyone to do them with before.

I can maybe even try not being so… me.

“I do have one idea,” I say slowly. “It’s a bit of a weird one, though.”

“As someone who has an entire closet dedicated to Comicon costumes, I can assure you that I love weird.”

In the background, sirens wail, bemoaning the loss of a place I once loved. But instead of mourning the place, I’m smiling in the arms of a handsome man as we fly among the tips of the city’s skyscrapers. I’m smiling, I realize, because I think I’m starting to like weird, too.