My Bestie Reported My Fake Degree, But My Real Identity Terrified Her Chapter 14

My Bestie Reported My Fake Degree, But My Real Identity Terrified Her Chapter 14

I placed my phone on the desk.

Sunlight came in through the window, catching the oily sheen floating on the surface of the cold coffee.

I had worked at this company for three years.

I had sat in the core project area and at a temporary desk. I had been locked out of my computer, had my access downgraded, had integrity slogans posted about me, and been treated like a fraud by the entire

company.

Gemma’s pearl ring had dug into my wrist. She had held her coffee cup out to me. Her smile, sometimes real

and sometimes fake, had hovered across from me for more than a thousand days.

I thought our friendship was real.

It had been real.

Until that thorn began to grow, it had all been real.

But one thorn was enough.

My phone rang again

It was not Gemma.

It was the director.

“Lynn.”

Two days earlier, he had called me Ms. Hart. Now he had gone back to Lynn.

He was probably trying recover some sense of hierarchy between a manager and an employee, but his tone was different now.

“Do you have time to come to my office?”

“Yes.”

“There’s one more thing. Gemma just submitted her resignation.”

I paused.

“She didn’t even use all three days.”

“What three days?”

“Nothing. I’ll be right there.”

I stood, picked up the cup of cold coffee, and poured it down the sink.

The cup was white.

Gemma had bought it. Two little cartoon figures holding hands were printed on it.

She had bought two of them, one for herself and one for me.

That had been during our first year at the company.

I washed the cup clean and set it upside down on the drying rack.

Then I picked up the card, put it into my pocket, and walked out.

There was no one in the hallway.

The eighth floor was so quiet it seemed as if nothing had ever happened.

But on Gemma’s workstation, the pothos plant was still there.

She had brought it when she moved in, planted in a white ceramic pot.

Its leaves were thriving.

I wondered who would water it from now on.