Page 1 of September

CHAPTER 1

“She’s just so…” Molly said.

Juliet looked up, but she didn’t need to; she knew who Molly was talking about. She was certain she’d always know who Molly was talking about because Molly only talked about one woman in that wistful tone.

“You havegotto move on,” she replied.

“I know,” Molly said and grunted at herself, tearing her eyes away from Finley, their IT person, who was only on this floor once a week unless there was some kind of IT-related emergency.

Sometimes, Finley would be there twice or three times a week when they needed more regular work done, but she was shared throughout the corporate office, which was seven floors, so they were lucky they got her for one full day a week. Her office was in the server room on the floor above them, so whenever she wasn’t moving around fixing things, she was in there. Juliet half-expected Molly to transfer to the marketing department one day because they were on that floor, and she could’ve ridden up in the elevator with Finley when they both arrived at work in the morning and had a nice view of her whenever she left the server room.

“She has someone, Molly,” Juliet reminded.

“I know. But they’re always on and off. I mean, when will they be off for good?”

“Maybe never,” Juliet suggested. “Sometimes, on-and-off-again couplesdomake it work, Molls.”

“But India?”

“What’s wrong with India?”

“Nothing. She’s nice. She’s just not who I thought Finley would go for.”

“They’ve been together longer than you’ve worked here. I think India is nice,” Juliet said.

“She is. I just–”

“Have a major crush on her girlfriend?” Juliet finished for her.

“They’re off right now, I think,” Molly said. “So, she’s single.”

“I just heard from India yesterday that they’re not off. They’re very much back on.”

“Well, fuck,” Molly said and stared at her monitor. “I missed my shot, then.”

“You’ve missed a few of them. Why don’t you just tell Finley how you feel? Get it all out on the table and let her decide what she wants?”

“Because I’m in HR, Jules.” Molly shook her head at her. “I’m the person she would complain to about that sexual harassment.”

“No, she’d go to her own HR business partner. You support sales and operations.”

“She’s in operations.”

“She’s in IT.”

“They reorged IT under operations last week. Where were you?” Molly asked.

“I was at the stores all last week,” Juliet reminded. “They announced a reorganization?”

“Yup. Via email. Guess you’re behind on those, too. You know that Jordana left, right?”

“What? No,” Juliet said and pushed her rolling chair a little out of her cubicle to see Molly more clearly. “When?”

“Last week. She got fired.” Molly lifted her eyebrows. “Of course, you didn’t hear that from me. They sent the email to everyone else that she was no longer with the company, but you know what that means.”

“What did she do?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Molly replied. “Not here, at least.” She winked.