I strolled away from his door, leaving him looking bewildered and irritated. Yay, me. Let him wonder exactly what had been said between Miguel and me. It was a small victory but it was mine. I continued on to my office, remembering exactly why office work hadn’t suited me. I would have quit right then and there, but Carson had made the mistake of making it personal. I wasn’t going to leave my friend in the lurch, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him drive me out.

Unfortunately, the meeting with Miguel set the tone for the day. There was a typo found in an ad that had already been sent to the printer. It took all my powers of persuasion to get it reprinted for free. Basically, the owner of the print company managed to get me to agree to some pro bono design work by me for his company. Whatever. So long as the final product didn’t reflect poorly on my team or blow our budget.

Another client was unhappy with the color scheme they had chosen and we had to do a mad scramble to come up with new colors and get them approved so that we could stay on schedule. This took six phone calls, several spins of the Pantone color wheel, and one thump of my forehead on my desk before it was resolved.

None of this was very different from the same sort of stuff I dealt with when I had worked for myself, but here there was a heightened sense of urgency. There were more careers at stake, more money on the line, and the reputation not just of me as a designer but of the company as well.

By quitting time, I could not wait to get out of there. I didn’t see Soph all day, and when I did, she seemed distracted. I wanted to talk to her about my conversation with Miguel, but I hesitated because I didn’t want to behave like Carson had, tattling to the boss about a coworker’s behavior. I decided to wait until tomorrow. I was just not in the mood at the end of a long Monday.

When I arrived home, I was immediately comforted by my little house with its newly acquired red accents. The pops of color eradicated the monotonous shades of black, blue-gray, and white, and gave the place a homey feel.

I opened one of the French doors that led to the backyard to let in the evening breeze and alleviate the stuffiness. I set to work making myself a tuna salad sandwich, and switched the radio on to the local evening jazz station and tried to shake off my aggravation with the work situation. Carson West was not going to get the better of me.