The Wedding I Almost Missed
The fluorescent lights above my desk hummed their familiar tune of exhaustion, a low buzz that had become the soundtrack to my life over the past two years. I rubbed my eyes, feeling the gritty sensation of someone who’d been staring at spreadsheets for far too long. The numbers on my computer screen blurred together—profit margins, quarterly reports, budget analyses—all demanding my attention with the urgency of a fire alarm.
Outside my office window, the city had transformed from its daytime bustle to evening calm. Streetlights flickered on in sequence, creating pools of amber light that stretched down the empty sidewalks. The sky had deepened to that particular shade of indigo that meant I’d missed dinner again, missed the evening news, missed another day of what people called “living.”
I reached for my purse, fingers already searching for my car keys, when the sound of approaching footsteps made me freeze. The measured, deliberate pace was unmistakable. Michael Rodriguez, my boss, appeared in my doorway like a storm cloud that had been gathering all day.
He was the kind of man who commanded attention without saying a word. Mid-fifties, with silver threading through his dark hair and eyes that seemed to catalog every detail of a room before settling on you. His shirts were always perfectly pressed, his tie always straight, his manner always maddeningly calm. Even now, at nearly eight o’clock on a Friday evening, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a business magazine.\
In his hands was a stack of reports thick enough to choke a horse.
“Alice,” he said, setting the papers on my desk with the kind of careful precision that made my stomach drop. “I need these reviewed and summarized by morning.”
I stared at the mountain of paperwork, then at the clock on my computer screen. 7:47 PM. I’d been at the office since seven that morning, surviving on vending machine coffee and the stale bagel I’d grabbed during my five-minute lunch break.
“Michael,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “it’s almost eight o’clock. I’ve been here for nearly thirteen hours.”
He paused in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame. For a moment, something flickered across his face—was it regret? Uncertainty? But it vanished so quickly I might have imagined it.
“The Morrison account is our biggest client,” he said simply. “This can’t wait until Monday.”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell him that I had a life outside these beige walls, that I had groceries to buy and laundry to do and a mother who’d been asking me to visit for weeks. Instead, I nodded like the good employee I’d trained myself to be.
“Of course,” I said.
He lingered for another moment, and I caught something in his expression—like he wanted to say more. His mouth opened slightly, then closed. He shook his head, almost to himself.
“Never mind,” he muttered. “Some other time.”
And then he was gone, leaving me alone with the reports and the humming lights and the growing certainty that this job was slowly eating me alive.
I’d been working at Meridian Financial for two years, ever since graduating with my business degree. It was supposed to be temporary—a stepping stone to something bigger, something that would make use of the ambition that had carried me through college. Instead, I’d become Michael’s go-to person for everything he didn’t want to handle himself. Late nights, weekend work, impossible deadlines—if there was an unpleasant task to be done, it somehow found its way to my desk.