She shook her head. “You’re getting three months’ severance.”

I was gobsmacked. I leaned back in the chair, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I had devoted thirteen years of my life to this company. Yes, I knew that magazines were merging staffs and recycling content, that media jobs were fewer and farther between, that for everything the Internet had given us, it had also taken away something really big. And you couldn’t help but see the irony: McCann Media.

Nanette handed me a letter. “I wrote you the most glowing, most amazing recommendation I have ever written. I will do anything for you, and any publication would be lucky to have you, Amelia. You know that. You are the girl wonder. You took this company by storm. You’ll do it again.”

I was on the verge of tears. And furious. And I knew exactly who to take my anger out on.

As I thundered out of the magazine, I knew I was overreacting. But I’m not a fully rational human—no one is, really. Every now and then I’d get a nasty comment online and feel like quitting my job, throwing everything I’d worked for out the window. Or a friend wouldn’t text me back for a couple days, and I’d decide she hated me for some perceived slight. My mom would say something snide about my heels being too high or my face looking a little round, and I would fume that I wasn’t going home for Christmas.

I never let it show at work, though. I was the consummate professional; I kept everyone in line. I picked up everyone’s slack. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but Nanette wasn’t half as good as I was at actually putting out a magazine. She was the Google think tank. I was the assembly line.

My layoff, all the layoffs, were probably not Parker’s fault. Probably. I looked at my watch. Eight ten. The high-and-mighty boss of McCann Media wouldn’t be in yet at 8:10. This was what happened when companies got too big and quit caring about the peons that made it all possible. Greer would never have stood for this.

“Parker!” I screamed, as I banged on the back door, realizing that maybe, just maybe, a small part of my freak-out had to do with the fact that I had run out of the hormones I took every day to make my body not think it was in menopause. He emerged at the door, bleary-eyed, in his boxers.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said sleepily.

“So you’d just open the door to any stranger off the street in your underwear?” I crossed my arms, trying to not think about how hot he was practically naked and barely awake.

He yawned and gestured for me to come in, saying nothing.

As I followed him inside, I said, “Well, this is rich. By now, I’ve usually already been at the magazine for an hour preparing for the day, making lists, putting finishing edits on articles. You haven’t even gotten out of bed yet, and I’m the one who’s fired?”