There was a knot in my sternum, right below my neck. Miles was right. What was I thinking? Those investments were long gone, but still, it could very well look to the average observer that I was trying to line my own pockets. I closed my notebook gently and wondered if I might have to excuse myself to throw up. “Student loan forgiveness,” I said.

“Already been said.” Miles quit his clicking, placed the pen in the crease of his notebook, and shut it. It didn’t make a noise, but I winced nonetheless. “Everyone out, please, except for Daisy and Bo.”

They followed his order and left the room. You’d think I was radioactive, the way they avoided my chair as they filed toward the door. Only Bo had mercy and inched his seat closer to mine.

“I’m disappointed, Daisy.” Miles spoke as though these words tasted awful. “This isn’t good work.”

“I hear you,” I said. “You’re saying that I’m not on top of my game.”

“This isn’t therapy; I don’t want you to just repeat my words back to me. Furthermore—” This was the type of man Miles was. He spoke with transitions. His sentences had semicolons. I felt outgunned. “If you had heard me, on your very first day back in the office, when I told you to lay low, be careful, we wouldn’t be staring at pictures of you smiling with Melinda Darley all over my socials.”

“If you look at them, though”—Bo wore glasses for reading; today, as he studied the aforementioned pictures on his phone, I noticed they needed a cleaning—“we can tell it was Daisy’s campaign trail smile, not her real one.” He braved a glance at our boss, gauging his reaction, as did I.

“Stay in your lane.” Miles raised his finger at Bo, and my friend’s valiant stand was over before it started.

“The optics aren’t great,” I conceded. Above us, one of the fluorescent light tubes in the drop ceiling hummed and flickered; I really hoped its death rattle wasn’t an omen.

“I was forgiving after all this shit with your father. Because that was him. That wasn’t you. However, now your sister is dating a Darley and you’re both caught hanging out with his mother.” Miles’s finger focused on me now. “I can’t be linked to that woman, Daisy. I can’t be near enough to smell her perfume.”

“I get that.” If only I had a picture of my eyes that morning, red-rimmed, dark purple half-moons underneath, maybe I could prove to him that, yes, I get it.