Page 47 of New Girl in the City
“Hell.”
She nodded. “Yeah, he’s a recent transfer from San Francisco. Looks like he’s got his hooks into her. She got assigned to his team to learn how to do the books. He’s in accounting, thinks he’s a big shot,” she rolled her eyes, making a mock gagging sound, “like get over yourself. We work in PR and he’s an accountant. What the fuck.”
“Yeah, what the fuck.” I looked over my shoulder and down the hallway. “So no one’s going to say anything?”
“She’s not underage, so what can we say?”
“Oh, I dunno, that it’s an abuse of power and position?”
She winced. “Yeah, there's that. But it’s tricky, you know that. Everyone involved is an adult. We can’t really say anything unless she does, and she's an intern. Technically she isn’t on payroll, either so we can't bring it up that way.”
I pursed my lips and then looked back to her. “You think we should ask her? That didn’t look...great,” I pointed out. It was true, the couple had looked tense, and she’d looked sad. I remembered what it had been like to be in her shoes. When it went south, and it would go south, things were going to get messy.
“We could try,” Lydia said finally. “But you know how it is, Mel. We all have an older man, an office romance that turns messy, when we were her age. It just happens.” I looked at her sharply then and felt my stomach twist when I saw the same haunted look in her eyes that I’d seen in the intern’s. The same look I knew had been in mine at that age. I pushed away from her desk with a shake of my head.
“Someone has to do something, because that shit isn’t right.” I set off down the hallway looking for them. I had only walked for a minute or two when I heard crying.
Shit. Shit. Shiiiiiit.
I sucked in a deep breath and located the source of the crying. The women’s room. I paused outside the door, knowing what I was going to find inside. After a second or two, I went in.
The intern was in there, bent over the sink, face in her hands and shoulders shaking. She jumped when I came in and scrambled to grab tissues from the counter as she turned her face from mine. “I’m sorry, I didn’t--” she began, but I stopped her, closing the door gently behind me.
“Hey, it’s okay. Are you alright?” I asked making sure to keep my voice soft. She looked back towards me then in surprise. I could see it plainly on her face. She hadn’t expected me to ask that.
“I, ah, I mean,” she began, trying to play it cool. A second later her composure broke, and she shook her head, “no, I’m not okay.” She burst into tears, the tissue in her hand clenched in her fist while she said again, “I’m not okay.”
“Hey, wow, okay, okay, shhh,” I started forward, not sure if I should hug her or just offer an ear. I opted for grabbing a wad of tissues and holding them out to her. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Okay, why isn’t it?” I asked, and again she went silent, looking surprised at my question. She hadn’t expected that either. I gave her a kind smile and prompted her to keep speaking. “Why won’t it work?”
“He doesn’t love me,” she whispered, eyes going down as she started to cry once more. “He never did.”
I nodded in understanding and leaned back against the counter, the cool marble of it at my back and grabbed more tissues. On second thought, I grabbed the whole box and held it out to her. She grabbed a fistful and blew her nose while still sobbing. We were going to need the whole box, alright.
“That happens.”
“But he said that he did and that-and that we were going to get married.” Her voice cracked, and I felt my heart squeeze. I knew this type of pain, even though I had married the idiot. “I believed him.”
“It’s not your fault that you did,” I told her, keeping my voice soft. “Happens to a lot of us.”
She looked at me when I said ‘us’ and gave me a curious look. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not the first young woman to fall for an older man with a little power. You won’t be the last. I know where you’re at, and what you’re feeling.”
“This happened to you too?”
“Yeah.” I nodded as I gave a bitter smile. “It did.”
“What’d you do?” I shrugged, eyes on the ceiling.
“I did what I could do. Move on and forget the asshole that had me wrapped around his finger.” I lowered my gaze to hers before continuing on, “It’s not going to be easy to get him out of your system, but you can do it.”
“But I have to keep seeing him. I need this internship. I can’t just, I can’t just leave. He isn't going to make it easy for me to get him,” she waved her hands in the air tissues trailing in the air as she did so, “get him out of my system.”
I clenched my teeth because she was probably right. She knew him better than me, and from what Lydia had told me about him, it tracked. I had to do something. The best thing was that this time, I could do something.
