Chapter 5
Payday was Friday and I was already short before the direct deposit even hit. I stood in the break room with my phone in one hand and the paycheck advance form in the other, and the math wouldn't change no matter how many times I did it.
Rent was due Monday. Eleven hundred. My checking account showed four hundred and twelve dollars after the second payment I'd sent to the caller on Wednesday. I'd told myself that one would buy me quiet. It didn't.
The form on the clipboard was simple. Name, employee ID, amount requested, reason. There was a line for manager approval and a line for HR. I could hear the copy machine humming behind me and Maya from accounting heating up soup in the microwave. Normal office sounds, and my hand was shaking.
I wrote: $600 requested. Reason: car repair — transmission. It was a lie I'd rehearsed in the mirror that morning. Transmission sounded expensive enough to justify the amount and boring enough that no one would ask a follow-up. I signed my name and dated it and my signature looked wrong, too hurried.
I slid it into Daniel's inbox tray on my way back to my desk. His door was closed. He was on a call, voice low and even. I didn't knock. I left the paper face down and went back to my computer and pretended to work until my pulse stopped thudding in my ears.
At 2:14 my phone buzzed against the dark wood of my desk.
I shouldn't have looked. I knew I shouldn't have looked during work hours. But my body reacted before I could think, fingers already unlocking the screen.
No words. Just a photo.
It was our building. Taken from across the street that morning, I could tell by the light. Glass and steel, the fountain in front, the revolving doors. A red circle had been drawn around the eighth floor. Our floor. My floor where the desk lamp still sat from that night he found me crying.
My breath stopped. Then came back too fast.
I stood up without meaning to and looked toward the windows. From my desk I couldn't see the street eight floors down, but I kept staring anyway, as if I'd see him standing there holding his phone up. The city was just bokeh and glare in the daylight, cars moving far below.
The text underneath the photo said: Nice view. Don't be late again.
I deleted it. I deleted the photo and the thread and then I went into deleted messages and deleted it again. My thumb slipped twice, sweat making the screen streak. When it was gone I locked my phone and set it face down and kept my hand on top of it, pressing hard, like I could keep it quiet.
Maya's voice said, "Emily? You okay?"
I hadn't realized she'd come to the filing cabinet beside my desk. She was holding a stack of invoices.
"Yeah," I said. "Just tired."
She looked at me a second longer, then nodded and walked away.
I tried to work. I had a stack of vendor invoices that needed to be logged and filed before end of day, numbers I normally entered without thinking. But my eyes kept jumping back to my phone, even though I knew the photo was gone. He knows the building. He knows what floor. The thought looped louder each time.
I typed 4,800 instead of 8,400 on the Whitmore invoice. I didn't catch it. I hit save, printed the filing copy, and slotted it into the completed tray with the others. My hands were still cold.
At 4:40, my computer dinged. An email from accounting, subject line: FLAG — Whitmore invoice discrepancy.
Maya had CC'd Daniel.
The message was short: Emily — Whitmore shows $8,400 past due, system shows $4,800 entered. Can you check? Might be a typo.
My stomach dropped. I opened the entry and saw my mistake instantly, the 4 where the 8 should have been. A $3,600 difference. I corrected it fast, my fingers fumbling the keys, and hit resubmit. I typed back: Fixed, sorry — typo on my end!
But the error had already pinged Daniel's approval queue. The advance request was sitting in the same queue.
At 5:02 he walked out of his office with the form in his hand. He didn't look angry. He looked concerned, which was worse. He stopped at my desk, his silver watch catching the overhead light. He glanced at my screen where the corrected invoice was still open, then down at the paper.
"Do you have a second?" he asked quietly, so Maya wouldn't hear.
May you like
I nodded. I couldn't speak.
He didn't say anything about the photo I'd deleted or the lie I'd written about my car. He just held the form and the printout of my correction, and the space between them felt like a trap I'd built myself.
