Page 81 of The Player Next Door
Clare knew she could go to Human Resources, but saying “my boss is being a jerk” was probably just going to result in a bunch of awkward meetings and no real change. It wasn’t outright harassment, or didn’t look like it anyway, and Craig could easily say she was underperforming and he was just trying to get her up to the right level. It would be a huge battle, and Clare was sick of fighting.
But still. Something needed to change, and fast.
It felt like the meeting dragged on for an eternity, but in reality it was just another fifteen minutes. A handful of the Elfborns, including their team lead, Natalie, were waiting in the hallway as the Mages filed out.
Craig looked over his shoulder at Clare. “Why don’t you type up a summary of how far we’ve gotten and send it out to everyone?” he suggested.
More out of habit than anything, Clare began to nod and moved aside to let one of the Elfborns into the conference room. But then she stopped and raised her chin. “No,” she said, loud enough for Craig and everyone else in the hallway to hear. She was blocking the door to the conference room, and she could feel half a dozen pairs of eyes on her, but she kept her gaze directly on Craig.
He had the gall to look honestly puzzled. “No?”
“No. I am not the team secretary. If you want someone to be an administrative assistant, hire someone. I’m a writer, and you don’t make anyone else on the Mages take notes, or wash the coffee cups, or any other bullshit job you give me because I’m thegirlon the team, and I’m not going to do it anymore.”
Craig rolled his eyes. Herolled his eyes, and started to turn away. “Don’t make it a sexism thing,” he chided.
But Clare stood her ground. “I will make it a sexism thing, because itisa sexism thing. When was the last time you made Noah take notes? Or Derek? Have youevergiven any of them extra assignments because you think they can’t understand something unless they do it first?”
Craig shrugged. “They’re just better writers than you.”
“Bullshit,” she spat. She had probably just argued herself out of a job anyway, so she decided she might as well go all in. She had finally merged her home-self and her work-self, just in time to get her whole-self fired.
Logan would be proud, she thought briefly, before shoving that to the corner of her mind. “Bullshit,” she said again, even more loudly. “I’m every bit as good as them, you just get off on ordering me around.”
Craig tried another angle and fixed his face into a look of faux concern. “This is not the place to be having this conversation,” he said quietly, although by that point you could hear a pin drop throughout the entire building. Everyone was watching them with bated breath.
“Why? So you can pretend it didn’t happen? Like when you told meI needed to have a one-night standto write a fuckingcharacter?”
There was a collective intake of breath around them. Craig’s eyes flashed with worry, but his tone was casual. “You must have misunderstood me, because I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he tried.
This was the part Clare had been worried about. She didn’t technically have anyproofhe’d made her sex life a condition of her employment, and he had been very careful about his wording. She probably couldn’t make an official case for it, but if he was going to fire her—and he was going to, after this—the least she could do was go down swinging. Maybe damage his reputation in the process.
“I do,” said a voice off to the side. “I know what she’s talking about.” Clare stared in amazement as Noah—Craig’s golden boy—stepped forward. “You did tell her that. In front of all of us.”
Craig stared at him too, mouth ajar. “I never—”
“You did. I suppose technically you just implied it, but then that weekend during Call of Duty you asked us if we thought she’d have the balls to follow through. And you do all the other stuff too,” Noah said, and Clare could not have been more surprised if Golgath the Destroyer himself burst out of the ceiling and devoured them whole. Noah looked at Clare. “I should have said something sooner,” he said, and it was the damnedest thing, but he sounded genuine. “I’m sorry.”
“I—thank you,” Clare stammered.
Natalie broke the silence. “Hey, Elfborns, we’re going to postpone our meeting,” she said in a surprisingly cheerful voice. Her straight brown hair was severely pulled back, and her navy pantsuit made her look more like an accountant than an employee for a company that made money off nerds imagining they were fighting dragons.
The smile she threw to Clare was nothing but friendly, but when she turned to look at Craig there was ice in her eyes. “How about we take a walk to Leadership?” she suggested to him. “They’re going to hear about this sooner or later, so they might as well hear it from you.”
Craig’s face curdled. “You’re not my boss.”
“I’m not,” she said, still chipper. “But you’ve been pulling this shit foryearsand I, for one, am sick of it.”
Apparently, today was the day of surprises. Clare blinked, and Natalie lifted her voice for the rest of the crowd—which was now much larger—to hear. “For a decade I’ve been watching you hire women only to immediately declare them substandard and in need of yourguidance. Remember Thea? And Katie? What about Amanda, or Brit, or Laura?”
“They were—” Craig started, but Natalie shook her head.
“All of them were perfectly qualified when we hired them, but you felt the need to send them on stupid, pointless exercises until they quit. I’ve never had enough for a formal complaint, even though it was obvious what you were doing. This should do it, though,” she said, and looked at Clare again. “If that’s all right with you?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Should I, um, come with you?” Clare asked, uncertain of how to handle this massive paradigm shift. She had started this thinking she would get fired, but now it seemed Craig might.
Natalie cocked her head at Craig like a dragon queen examining her prey. She was utterly terrifying, and Clare loved it. “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary. He’s going to admit everything and face what’s coming to him, aren’t you, Craig?”
Craig didn’t nod, but he didn’t shake his head, either. Natalie turned on her heels and tipped her head down the hall, Craig shambling behind her like a corpse reanimated by dark magic.