She tweaked her resume for the fifteenth time that morning, eager to make it modern without screaming desperate. After twelve years with the same company, she wasn’t sure what an employer looked for anymore.

Were LinkedIn profiles necessary?  She added hers, making a mental note to update it. She should probably consider a new email address, but it’s hard to let go of a job and married name in the same week.

The new director walked into the building, the air conditioning escaping in a great whoosh into the muggy sunshine of a late Florida morning. Business hours only apply to the hourly. He greeted her with a wave and genuine smile; Kate had always been his favorite. She had trained him last year, before the affair.

Her life could now be easily separated into two distinct categories: pre-and-post affair. The great milestone had shifted the axis of her world just enough to bring Orlando a few inches closer to the sun, to coat her skin in a continuous sheen of sweat and make her doubt the validity of her prescription-strength deodorant. Pre-affair, she relished any stolen moment in the sun, but now it seemed intent to light her on fire in those rare moments she slipped outside.

The affair even predicated the arrival of this man, her new millennial boss, who leapfrogged a decade’s worth of seniority right into the golden office she’d spent years working toward.

She smiled back and hit send.

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Thanks for reading,

~ Victoria Elizabeth