Free Five Things I Can't Live Without by Holly Shumas

I’d stayed so long because of my boss, or my coworkers, or the good work I’d done. I’d stayed because the older I got, the more times I performed this dance, the less sure I was that something great was waiting for me on the other side. I definitely wasn’t sure now. Just click this button—and then what?

    Full minutes passed. It was now after five o’clock. I’d cleared out my desk the day before, had my good-bye lunch with everyone, and now all I needed was to post my ad, get my purse, and walk out the front door.

    You can’t sit here all night.

    It was starting to look like maybe I could, when I heard footsteps. I hurriedly clicked, turned off the computer, and looked to see who it was. Oh. The one coworker it wasn’t hard to leave behind.

    “Hey, Nora,” Estella said. “I guess this is it, huh?”

    “I guess it is.”

    “Denise told me you’re going to do something on the Internet … ?” she asked, pushing back her hair and resettling her bag on her shoulder.

    Just to clarify: I didn’t hate Estella for being gorgeous. I didn’t hate her at all, in fact. I simply didn’t care for her, because her every gesture seemed calculated to underscore just how good-looking she is, and that’s just annoying.

    “I am,” I said. I didn’t want to say more, especially since I was still feeling raw about the ad I’d just sent into cyberspace, but she kept looking at me expectantly. I gave in, and went on. See, she always got what she wanted. “I’m going to help people work on their Internet dating profiles.”

    “Huh.” She nodded, considering.

    “Yep.” I wondered if I had to wait for her to walk away, or if I could just announce that I was leaving.

    “So you’re going to help people write their profiles?”

    “I can help with writing, editing, whatever they need.” I sped up as I spoke, hoping to give the impression that I needed to get going.

    “What if they need a makeover? Then what will you do?”

    “Nothing. That’s not my job.”

    “Because some people, it doesn’t matter what they write, they’re going to have problems.” She bobbed her head solemnly, as if in sympathy for those less fortunate.

    I shrugged. I hadn’t had many nonwork conversations with Estella, and hadn’t seen her elitism on display before. It wasn’t pretty.

    “I mean, men only care about the pictures.” She leaned in like she was going to reveal a secret. “A ton of guys write to me, and it’s so obvious they didn’t even read what I wrote. I’d say men are dogs, but that’s just an insult to dogs, you know?”

    I was assimilating the fact that Estella needed an ad, just like the rest of the proletariat, when Maggie came down the hall. My anxiety about the ad momentarily abated, replaced by sadness that I wouldn’t be seeing Maggie five days a week anymore.

    She was holding a small pastry box, which she set on my desk. “Open it,” she said, smiling.

    “Oh, Maggie!” I lifted the lid, prepared to coo. Inside was a cupcake, with its icing shaped into the figure of—a Dalmatian. Maggie had brought me a dog cupcake. Well, no one at any other job had ever brought me baked goods on my last day. I stanched my disappointment. “That’s so sweet, Maggie. Thank you.”

    I stood up and hugged her.

    “You’ve meant a lot to us,” Maggie said. “I wanted to do something—”

    Estella cut in, “You got that at Gorman’s, right?” She glanced at me. “That’s where she gets all of them.”

    I wasn’t really surprised by that. Everyone sensed that Estella was Maggie’s least favorite staff person; she had to feel at least a little slighted. Maggie would never be rude or mean; she just wasn’t as warm toward Estella as she was toward the rest of us. Which was strange, since Estella was phenomenally gifted with animals and I was someone who ran away at the first sight of drool.

    “I did get it at Gorman’s,” Maggie said, not looking at Estella. “So what will you be