CHOOSE WISELY

ANNA

The ice had worked its magic on her puffy eyes.

She had spent Sunday night doing two things: crying and pressing zip lock bags of ice against her eyes with a methodical focus. She had decided that puffy eyes were the one indignity she was not walking into Monday morning with. By six AM the damage was manageable. By seven, with concealer and the specific determination of someone who has something to prove, it was gone.

She stood at her mirror and looked at herself.

Then she went to her wardrobe and reached past everything sensible and pulled out her structured emerald green dress. She had bought it four months ago on impulse, she was glad she did. The dress hugged her figure and complimented her skin so nicely.

The heels came last. Six inches, nude, reserved. She had worn them twice in five years. Once to a pitch meeting, once to a gala where Jack wanted her on his arm and she wanted to feel like someone worth looking at. Today they were purely for herself. She put them on, stood up straight, looked at the woman in the mirror.

Yes. Her.

She did her makeup intentionally and eventually left the apartment at nine forty-five without rushing. She was not going to work. She was going to collect her things, leave a letter, and never set foot in that building again. She was going to do it in green and six inches and she was going to be so composed that not one person in that office could say she fell apart.

Not one.

Several colleagues looked up when she entered the building and greeted her with an unremarkable warmth.

Janet said, morning, you look great. Someone else did a small visible double-take at the dress. A third person started asking her about a client file and she smiled and said she'd get back to them and kept walking.

She could feel the room adjusting as she passed. The slight recalibration of people encountering someone who looked different than expected. She turned the corner to her desk.

Mia was sitting in her chair with settled ease. Her coffee was on Anna's coaster, her Christmas gift from her only friend in the city, Maya. Her cardigan was draped over Anna's chair back. The monitor had been shifted two inches left.

Anna's cactus, which she had kept alive through sheer stubbornness for two years, had been moved to the windowsill.

Mia looked up. Her expression moved through surprise, then reached for composure.

"Annabelle." She said with an air of authority she was faking. "You really have no shame."

Anna looked at her cactus on the windowsill. Then back at Mia.

"Coming from a slut?" she said pleasantly.

The word landed exactly where she aimed it. Hurt flickered across Mia's face briefly and unguarded. She recovered quickly but not before Anna saw it.

"I would think," Mia said, selecting her words with care, "that you would never want to see Jack again. Or this place. But I was obviously wrong."

"You can have him." Anna set her tote bag on the desk. "I don't take leftovers." She looked at Mia in her chair, on her coaster, beside her relocated cactus. "Please get out of my seat. I need to pack my things."

Mia stood with her tight-shouldered energy. She took her coffee and her cardigan and left, and Anna turned to the desk and began to take back what was hers.

The photograph of her parents. The cactus, retrieved from the windowsill. The coaster. The notebook from the filing cabinet. Her book. A spare charger. Her mother's birthday card was still pinned inside the drawer.

She heard the footsteps before she heard the voice. She should have known that Mia only left to bring reinforcement.

Jack crossed the floor in the navy suit wearing the expression she had once found disarming and could now read in under a second.

"Ann." He stopped at a careful distance. Conscious of the room. "You came in."

"For my things."

"You don't have to do this." His voice was low and private. "Whatever you think you saw isn’t true"

"Jack." She tried to save his spit.

"Mia doesn't mean anything to me." He said it with conviction. "She never did. It was nothing. We have five years. You can't throw that away over a mistake."

Anna tilted her head to the side to look at Mia who gasped behind Jack after hearing herself being referred to as a mistake, then turned back to look at Jack who hadn’t known that Mia followed him inside her office. She suddenly felt an urge to laugh at the drama. What a couple, truly she was just a third wheel, they suit each other perfectly.

Anna didn’t want to waste more time. she produced the envelope from her bag. She held it out to him. He looked at it and refused to take it. So, she set it on the desk between them and picked up her box.

"I'm not accepting that," he said. "I don't accept it."

Anna looked at her box. She had everything. She was certain. She turned toward the door.

Jack reached for her arm.

She stopped. She did not pull away nor did she flinch. She turned her head and looked at the stretched hand about to reach her arm, and whatever he found in her face made him go very still before she even spoke.

"If you touch me," she said, quietly and with complete evenness, "I will scream assault. Loud enough for every person on this floor. And I will mean it. And you will spend the next several months explaining to clients and investors why your former employee filed a police report on company premises." She met his eyes. "I'm quite sure you don't want a lawsuit on your hands."

His hand dropped.

She walked.

The floor parted for her. She was aware of this without looking directly at it. She kept her eyes forward. Her heels on the floor, each step came with a powerful click. She was almost through the main doors when she heard him again. She realized she would no longer hear his voice like she used to. All that would be left would be memories, and would fade. She hoped they do fast enough

"You're really leaving." Jack's voice from behind her, carrying now, the reasonable layer gone. "After everything I did for you. If you walk out that door, we are done for real Anna. Are you sure about what you are doing"

She stood in the lobby doorway with her box and her cactus and the street three steps away, and she turned around.

The lobby had an audience. Colleagues crowded the office doorway, visible through the glass. Jack stood in the middle of the space, his expression showed he had calculated this moment. He followed her out here specifically because out here there were witnesses and witnesses meant the story could be told from his position.

She stared at him blankly.

Annabelle had things she could say. The full inventory, all of it, everything she knew. It was not worth it. They can believe whatever they choose to believe.

She turned back to the door, she didn't care what they thought.

The street received her with the specific indifference of a city that does not care about your private victories, which felt exactly right. She stood on the pavement in her green dress with her box and her cactus and she took one long breath of outside air and then she took out her phone and booked a storage unit because she had packing to do and a flight in two days and she was done standing still.