Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 133878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Ami shrugged. “Everyone knows when you’re a junior designer you keep your mouth shut and do your job.”
“No.” She wasn’t completely naïve. “Everyone knows the boss will take most of the credit for the work, but the designer’s name should be somewhere. He should have given me some credit and introduced me to the owners. Instead, he told me I was lucky he thought I had something worth putting his name on and maybe if I…”
She didn’t even want to say it. She could still feel the humiliation, the opening in the pit of her stomach. She’d felt so small in that moment, like nothing she did would ever matter. Like if she wanted to move up she would have to pay for it with her body, and that would take something from her soul.
Ami’s lips quirked up. “Not gay, huh? They’re the worst. So did he offer you a promotion if you let him in your panties?”
He’d told her if she gave him a blow job then and there, that he’d think about mentioning her helping him with the designs in the Vogue interview he was doing at the end of the week.
She’d walked right out and headed to HR. She’d filed two reports and been told they would take the situation seriously.
She should have known it would all go wrong when Mark walked by her smirking.
A week later she’d been called in and fired. The reason given was that she wasn’t fitting in with the company’s culture, and it was causing people on her team to feel uncomfortable. They’d brought up all the times she talked about her brothers and the fact that they were both married to the same woman. She’d never hidden that her brothers were in an unconventional relationship, and everyone joked about it. She kept a picture of her brothers and their wife Rachel and their three kids on her desk. Her niece and nephews. She missed them. Her colleagues always asked for stories about them and the quirky town she’d grown up in where threesomes were a thing.
Then they used it when she became inconvenient.
She’d walked out with her head held high, vowing legal vengeance. “I intend to make sure everyone knows what kind of a boss he is. I’ll sue the hell out of the company and him personally.”
Ami winced. “You might want to think that through. You’re already going to have a tough time finding another job. You don’t accuse a man like Mark Hallway without receipts, and I’m not talking about him stealing your designs. No one will give a shit that he took credit for your clothes. You’re nobody. He’s… Well, he’s been a top designer for twenty years. Bianchi was lucky to get him.”
“He’s been a top designer by stealing ideas.” Brooke couldn’t believe what she was hearing. No one would listen to her. They acted like it was the fifties and Me Too never happened. “And he acted unprofessionally. He tried to force me into a sexual relationship.”
Ami’s eyes rolled, and she took a sip of her kombucha. “Brooke, if you wanted to be pure and shit you should have picked another industry. You should have stayed in that rural, backwater town and like answered phones and stuff. This is the big leagues. It’s not fair, but that’s the price we pay. Do you know how many photographers I’ve had to handle? I’ve had to make some decisions I’m not necessarily proud of, but that’s what you do. You never were cut out for this life, and this proves it. The first time something goes wrong, you’re whining and crying.”
Ami was a model. She did catalog work right now but was absolutely certain her big break was coming. At twenty-five. She was also highly judgmental of everything Brooke did. From her clothes to the way she talked, Ami had always made fun of her. But she owned this rent-controlled apartment, passed to her from her mother.
How was she going to pay rent? Even with the controlled rent, she paid a couple grand a month for her tiny room. It was probably highly illegal that Ami charged her roughly the same amount for the sublet room as she paid in rent, but given the location it was a steal.
She would have to move. Could she afford Brooklyn? Probably not. Queens was getting expensive. Maybe the Bronx. Of course she needed a job. It wasn’t like she had much savings. She lived in Manhattan. Every dime she had went to rent and food and survival. She had to dress well because of her job.
She didn’t have a job.
Suddenly she could smell the pine of Colorado. Feel the way the wind moved through the forest and over her skin, the cool water of the pond where her brothers had taught her to swim. She could smell beef stew in the Crock-Pot and know there would be cornbread.