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S ophie stared at the file on her screen. Part of her job was owning a monthly spreadsheet. There were systems that existed to do what she was tasked with doing each month, of course, but the company couldn’t afford any of them. Besides, they wanted a human to review the data to ensure its accuracy every month. Her job was to take last month’s data, compare the rows and columns to the current month, and review the metrics from another spreadsheet to ensure the changes from that one were included in the new one.

It was something she complained about each month because the person they’d had doing this job before her had taken three days a month to complete the work. Sophie just ran a quick check on the sheet because she knew how to use Microsoft Excel better than whomever they’d had doing this before, and it took her only about fifteen minutes, including the time it took her to upload the finished file to their shared drive. She still complained about it, though, and pretended it took three days because she knew that if she finished it that quickly, her boss could look at her other tasks and might start to think that maybe they didn’t need her at all. They’d already forced her to let two of her direct reports go this past year, which meant she was down to one person. Her dream of running a department was getting further and further away by the minute.

Sophie would feel bad about pretending to take longer on the spreadsheet each month were it not for how they’d treated her and her team and the fact that they gave her the workload of two people, meaning she had way more work than she had time for already. In recent months, she’d been skipping lunch a lot, arriving home around six-thirty, starving for dinner, and she would just turn on her TV, find a show to keep her occupied enough, and pass out from exhaustion after yet another fruitless job search. That had been her every night for a long time now. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t see a way out, either.

When she got Monica’s text asking her if she wanted to go to lunch, though, Sophie decided enough was enough. She was going to lunch today and not giving this company one more extra minute of her time.

“No Bridgette?” Sophie asked when she slid into a chair across from Monica at the restaurant.

“No. I do go places without her, you know?”

“You live and work together, so prove it.” She winked at her friend.

“I am now, aren’t I?” Monica asked with a smile. “She has a meeting.”

“Ah… That’s the reason.”

Monica laughed a little and told her, “No. I wanted to go to lunch with you. I love Bridge, but I wanted some friend time.”

“So, you’re already sick of each other?” Sophie teased.

Monica rolled her eyes and said, “You know she’s basically been moved in since I bought the house. All we did was wait until her lease was up to move the rest of her stuff in.”

“I know.”

“It’s nice, though,” Monica added as she picked up the menu. “Having no backup plan, no other apartment to have to deal with, and to finally be able to call our house our home together. I moved in with Lily before we got married, and you know that didn’t end well, but this is the first time I really feel settled and like it’s her place and my place together.”

“That’s good, Mon,” Sophie said.

“It is,” Monica replied with a soft smile. “I’m going to ask her, you know?”

“Ask her what?”

“To marry me.”

“What?” Sophie said a little louder than she’d intended.

“Not tomorrow,” Monica added. “But soon. I’m going to ask Melinda to help me find her a ring.”

“Damn.”

“She’s the one, and I’m over forty – no time to waste. I want to put a ring on that finger.”

“Good for you,” Sophie said.

Then, she drifted off, picturing Bryce down on one knee with a ring in her hand, asking some faceless woman to marry her. Bridgette and Monica had only known one another for a little over a year, and it had been a year since she’d seen Bryce, so it made sense. It could happen. It could be happening right now.

“Do you want to come?”

“Where?” Sophie asked, trying to put Monica back into focus.

“Ring-shopping. I’m thinking next month sometime. I’m going to make a few appointments. I’d like to get something custom-made for her. She deserves the perfect ring and the perfect wedding.”

“If you want me there, I’m there,” she replied. “But if I’d get in the way, feel free to make it more about Mel. She knows Bridgette way better than I do.”

“My guess is this will spark something in her. She and Kyle are on that track, too. Kyle might already have a ring; I don’t know. We don’t get that much alone time for me to ask. I should have Bridge find out, though.”

“Won’t that tip her off to your plans?”

“Shit… You’re right,” Monica realized. “Do you think I should take her somewhere?”

“Bridge?”

“Yes. For the proposal. Should I do it on a vacation or something? A nice beach, maybe, where it’s just the two of us. No, that’s not Bridge.” Monica shook her head. “By the water, though. She loves the river.”

“You’re planning it in your head right now, aren’t you?” Sophie asked with a smile.

“Yes, sorry. I’ll stop. It’s just hard. We’re pretty much always together, so I can’t exactly look up rings when I’m sitting at my desk because she’d see the screen, and when we’re at home, we’re all over each other.”

“Okay… Don’t need to know that.” Sophie waved her hands in front of her face.

“I don’t mean like that,” Monica said with a laugh. “We do that, obviously, but I meant that we just like to snuggle up on the couch and talk about our days, or we’re lying in bed doing the same.”

“But you spent your whole day together.”

“In the same office building, but not always together. She has meetings with her teams, and I have some with mine. Sometimes, she’s also in the field with her dad, so it’s nice to just catch up.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Sophie said, wishing she had someone to catch up with every night.

“So, what’s going on with you?”

“I hate my job,” she blurted out.

“What?” Monica asked, looking up from the menu.

“Yeah. Hated it since I got it, really, but I can’t seem to find another one.”

“Soph, you hate your job? You’ve been there for five years.”

“Five years of awful,” she said. “I’ve been applying and interviewing, but I can’t seem to get anything else.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve helped.”

“I tried. I was going to tell you last year and ask if you could help me get on at Arnette. I knew you guys were still big on employees being in-office, and I was actually prepared to move back to Brooklyn if I had to, just to get out of this company, but Jill told me you were leaving. Then, you and I talked about that and how you were struggling to let go, so I didn’t want to add one more thing to your plate. I didn’t want to use you for your connections when you were trying to move on.”

“Soph, I would’ve helped. Whatever you needed. You know that. Do you still want Arnette? It’s one phone call.”

“No, I can’t move,” she said.

“Not that I want you to, but why not?”

“Because I–” Sophie swallowed. “I love it here.”

“I can understand that.” Monica nodded. “I’ve fallen in love with this place and the girl that used to make fun of me for being too big-city.”

“Yeah, it gets its claws in you, and it’s hard to give it up,” she told a half-truth. “When I left for college, that made sense. It gave me a chance to experience another world in a way. So, while I’m grateful for that and for the job I got at Arnette, I think I need to be here.”

“We’ve opened up some remote positions since. Were you thinking about the same role you had? I don’t know if that one is available, but maybe another. I can make a call and see what they’d consider and if it could be remote.”

“I don’t want to put that on you. I can find something. It’s just taking longer than I thought it would.”

“Soph, you’re my best friend. You know that, right?” Monica said. “I love you like a sister. I’ll call.”

“If you want to, sure. I just…” She sighed. “I thought I’d find something, but the only things I’m seeing require me to be in-office and not in New Orleans or close by. I found something in Baton Rouge last night, which wouldn’t be too horrible, but the commute would kill me if I had to do it every day. I hate driving by myself. I hate traffic. Road rage. Maybe if I had someone to carpool with, it would be fine, but–”

“But we’d still get to see you, so you’d still have us.”

“It’s not just that,” she finally decided to admit. “It’s… Don’t laugh, okay?”

“Why would I laugh at you?” Monica asked.

“It’s Bryce.”

Monica nodded and said, “What about her, exactly?”

“It’s my family, too, but it’s really Bryce, if I’m honest with myself. If I move…” she said without needing to finish the sentence because Monica would understand.

“She couldn’t find you,” Monica replied.

“Do you know that I found zero food blogs with the name Bryce on them based in Tennessee or anywhere else in the world?”

“Maybe she doesn’t use her name for security purposes or something.”

“Probably. I also make my social profiles public for a few days a month before I shut them down.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, I can only risk it for a few days. Being fully public puts all your stuff out there, and that’s dangerous. Not to mention the comments and messages I receive every time I do it. None of them are from Bryce. Most of them are from men who see that I have ‘lesbian’ on my profile and, apparently, want to ‘do me’ and make me come with their–”

“Okay, I got it,” Monica interrupted, holding up her hands. “Gross.”

“Yeah. Why do they do that? I get links to porn and ten dick pics within about an hour after I make profiles public. I take them back to private after a day or two. I haven’t done that the past few months because it’s exhausting and, sometimes, just plain gross, but I thought that she might try to find me, and if she did, she’d go online. I wanted to be there if she did, but I can’t keep doing that, can I?”

“Do you want to keep getting dick pics?”

“God, no,” she replied. “Just say hello. What woman is going to tell you to come on over when she gets a close-up shot of your wang?”

Monica laughed and replied, “Soph, I know that night meant a lot to you, but no, I don’t think you should keep opening yourself up to unsolicited penis pictures or anything else that comes from public profiles. It’s really not about that, though, is it? It’s been a year, and she hasn’t found you, and you haven’t found her. Maybe that means something.”

Sophie nodded and said, “I’m sure you’re right.”

“It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still think of you or that it didn’t mean anything to her.”

“But it was one night, and it was a long time ago now,” Sophie added. “Time to really stop comparing other women to a woman I’ll never really know.”

“I hate to say it, but I think so.”

“You’re right,” she said. “Anyway, let’s get back to the whole ring conversation. What are you thinking for Bridge?”

“Well, I’d get her something huge, but that’s not her style, so I’m thinking simple but visible from at least ten feet.”

“Ten feet? Damn. That’s big.”

“I can afford it. And I want her to have something to show off.”

“Mon, she doesn’t seem like a woman who needs a big ring to show off. I’ve seen her look at you. You’re all she really wants. Melinda might know better, but for my money, I’d go simple. Bridgette will say yes regardless of what’s in the ring box. I bet if you gave her a piece of grass tied in a circle, she’d wear it every day for the rest of her life.”

“I think it would fall apart.”

“She’d just put it back together with glue,” Sophie said with a smile. “She wants the marriage, not the jewelry it typically comes with.”

“I know.” Monica looked back down at the menu. “But I love the idea of her walking around with my ring on her finger. Is that old-fashioned?”

“No,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s not. Let’s just talk to Mel, and we can help however we can.”

Monica nodded in response, and they proceeded to order their food when the waiter approached. After he was gone and they were alone, though, Monica stared at her for a second.

“What?” Sophie asked.

“I just realized I’m mad at you.”

“What? Why?” She laughed.

“It’s been over a year since you and I reconnected, and you never told me that you hated your job.”

Sophie shook her head and replied, “I’m working on asking for help, okay?”

“I’ll call Darius. He’s the new CEO.”

“CEO? No, Mon. I’d be a director, at most. No CEO needs to be involved in that.”

“He owes me. I’ll get you an interview. I’ll ask him for the jobs he hasn’t posted online for leadership that he’d be willing to do remotely and let you know what they are. If you want one, I’ll get you in, and it’ll be up to you to get the job. I can’t guarantee anything, but at least it’s something.”

“Thank you,” she said genuinely. “I really appreciate it.”

“I’d hire you on with Bridge and me, but we’re running lean right now until we can get everything back in the black.”

“No, it’s fine,” Sophie told her. “I’m not looking for a handout. Just a chance.”

After they finished their lunch and said their goodbyes, Sophie returned to the spreadsheet awaiting her and pretended like she was fully focused on it while she was actually thinking about Bryce down on one knee again and that faceless woman holding her surprised hands to her mouth as she said yes to Bryce’s proposal. Bryce’s arms would wrap around her, and they would hug before they’d kiss to celebrate their moment.

Sophie closed out of the spreadsheet at five o’clock, not giving this place another minute. She grabbed her jacket and purse and headed out the door, trying to remind herself that it was time – time for her to put Bryce out of her mind and stop making that one night rule her entire life.