would calm down once again.
But I was wrong.
Derek wasn’t just hostile toward me, but indifferent. He didn’t speak to me at all, acknowledge my presence, or make me feel human. It was like his super brain had scratched me from his existence and made me invisible so he didn’t even know I was there.
It hurt…badly.
Every time we drove to work, he ignored me. Whenever I brought lunch, he never said thank you. When I told him about a new project, he wouldn’t even address me. He completely disappeared from my life, and that was when I understood how big a component he’d been of it before. There were no more text messages, no more deep talks when he stayed at work late, no more anything.
We were right back where we started.
It was my first day on the job all over again. But in this case, I was doomed to repeat it for eternity.
I walked into his lab with a stack of paperwork that I’d found in his corporate office. I’d turned the place upside down and made it into a well-organized space. Now that I was keeping track of his paperwork, I knew what to bring him that required his attention. But getting him to look at anything I brought was challenging. His anger made my job a million times harder to complete. “Derek?”
He sat at the table and wrote something out with a pencil, his hand moving across the page quickly like he was trying to get something down.
I waited a minute, let him finish up his final thoughts.
But he just kept going.
“Derek?”
He continued to ignore me.
Jerome stood a few feet behind him, and when he looked at me, he shook his head, as if he were telling me to run for it.
I approached his table and set the paperwork down. “Derek, I just wanted to bring this to you because it was supposed to be filed—”
He snapped, like a volcano that switched from dormant to active instantaneously. “You think I give a fuck about this?” He lifted his gaze from his paper full of equations and shoved my papers off the surface and onto the floor. “What I’m doing actually matters. This is just a bunch of bullshit. Your job is to handle this bullshit. Don’t fucking bother me again.” He turned back to his work like he hadn’t just screamed at me and ripped me to pieces in front of his colleagues.
I stilled for a moment, so much rage and hurt packed inside me that I didn’t know what to do with it. My hand shook slightly at the pain his outburst caused me, and my body didn’t know how to react to the cruel way he’d just treated me. I wanted to scream in retaliation, but I also wanted to cry…and I never cried. I bent over and gathered the papers before I walked out of the lab. I entered his office and set everything on his desk before I grabbed my purse and left. I was able to keep my composure until I got outside and let the tears fall.
I wasn’t just hurt by the way he’d torn me apart. I was hurt by what I’d lost.
The man I adored was no longer here.
Whenever Derek took it too far, he apologized. Last time he had an outburst, he reflected on his actions and apologized entirely on his own.
But the apology never came.
I used to enjoy my job, but now I dreaded it. We sat in the car together in absolute silence, and whenever I had paperwork that required attention, I tried to take care of it as much as possible just to avoid speaking to him. I started to reject him as much as he rejected me.
It took away all my joy. I used to love serving him, making his life easier, getting to know this man even better.
But now he was just a ghost.
Ronnie pulled up to the building so Derek could get out and go into his penthouse. Derek returned his papers to his satchel and put his phone in his pocket in preparation to depart.
We hadn’t spoken in days, not once since he screamed at me. I decided to say something and hoped it would smooth things over. “Have a good night, Derek.”
He flinched at my words, just for a second, and then he opened the door and got out. He ignored me…like always.
Ronnie pulled away from the curb and drove me home. “Fucking asshole.”
Derek’s behavior was disappointing, but I still stuck