“Sorry about the wait. You know how some people think HR has the answers for everything.” She chuckled with bitterness. “Even for things like New York City Council deciding to repave the part of the road right outside their window.”

Any other day, I would have laughed too. Perhaps make a joke about how only the fittest could survive the city that never slept and always closed some road to keep you awake at all times. But I simply couldn’t muster the energy for that.

“I’m sure it makes up for a few awkward conversations.”

Sharon’s eyes scanned my face, something like understanding dawning in her features. What exactly she found or understood, I had no idea.

“All right, let’s cut to the chase.”

Good. I liked that. Just like I had always liked Sharon too.

“I’ve called you here in light of some serious allegations that have been made, which directly involve you.”

Something dropped to the bottom of my stomach, and I felt myself blanch.

“Oh … okay.” I cleared my throat. “What do you want to know?”

The woman inhaled deeply through her nose, as if she was readying herself for something.

“Lina,” she said, using a tone that I had heard from my own mother—comforting but also admonishing—“we both are aware that Gerald knows the right kind of people, and frankly, I will never understand how someone so horrible manages to make so many good ‘acquaintances.’ ” Her fingers air-quoted that last word. “But as much as he has remained untouchable so far, that doesn’t mean that he can’t be knocked down. For that, however, we must do something. We should at least try.”

I felt myself nod, still trying to process what Sharon was telling me. She was admitting to being on my side. Not only that, but also she wouldn’t remain a silent bystander.

“If that’s something you want to do, we can work together on an employee formal complaint. I can help you. You’d need to sign it and submit it to us, and after that, I’d try to push for a thorough investigation. I know many complaints are ignored, but more than a few people having your back will make a difference.”

More than a few people?

“What …” I trailed off, shaking my head. “What people? I don’t understand.”

She flicked her nails on the table, tilting her head. “After the altercation in the coworking floor, a number of people came by my desk to inform me of what had happened. Half of them wanted to file the complaint themselves, but just like I told them, it has to be you.”

“I … I just …” My gaze fell on my hands, resting on my lap. I felt my heart expanding with gratitude. With something else too. Realization. “So, they are on my side? They have spoken on my behalf and not Gerald’s?”

“They are, Lina.” Sharon smiled. “And they have. I know people like Gerald often go unpunished; it’s how the world works sometimes. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying to change that, does it? Doesn’t mean that we stop fighting.”

Her words reminded me of the ones someone had told me, begged me to believe, only a few days ago. Words that I had chosen to ignore.

“You can think about what I just told you. Okay? Take your time to decide what you want to do.”

“Yeah, I will.”

There was so much to think about. So much to process. To anybody else, this might have been nothing more than a bureaucratic process I should have thought of before, but to me? Learning that my colleagues—those who had witnessed everything—were actively taking my side, it meant something. Although it didn’t change what I had done. How I had thrown away everything I could have had with Aaron. How I had denied him of the one thing he had asked of me. My full trust. My faith in us. And over what? He would have given me that much, and I had just given up without a fight.

“And please,” Sharon said, “if you could tell Aaron to come by as soon as he’s back. I can’t seem to get ahold of him.”

As soon as he’s back?

“Oh, erm, I don’t … I just …” My words tumbled out of me, mixing with the questions spinning in my head.

“It’s all good, Lina. He was very clear about your relationship. Came here first thing this week to ask if there was any kind of company policy or contract clause that would perhaps complicate things.”

The heartbeat that had flattened, accompanying me during these days without him, came back to life, peeking out. He had come to HR to be sure that all fronts were covered. To reassure me. Because he’d known that I’d need exactly that. Because he had wanted me to feel safe.

Tears that hadn’t been there before were in a rush to get to my eyes.

“Hey, it’s okay, Lina. There aren’t. There’s no reason for you guys to worry. No stones in the way.”

No. The only one taking those possible obstacles on our way and turning them into impediments we couldn’t get over was me.

“Okay,” I muttered, willing my eyes to hold tight a little longer. “That’s good.” Nothing was good. Not a single thing because I had ruined it anyway.

“All right, good.” Sharon’s blonde head bobbed, her motherly eyes warming up. “But please, do tell him to call me back, yes? I know these are hard times, but it’s about his promotion.”

Hard times. Those two words echoed through my mind.

Sharon’s earlier request bounced right back. “Tell Aaron to come by as soon as he’s back.”

“Did … did Aaron leave? Did something happen?”

Sharon’s eyes widened, confusion mixing up with shock. “You don’t know?”

I shook my head, feeling my skin pale. “No.”

Her head shook. “Lina, this is not my place—”

“Please,” I begged, now desperate to know what was wrong. Need clawing at my skin. “Please, Sharon. We had a fight, and I just … messed up. It doesn’t matter. But if there’s something wrong, if something happened to him, I need to know. Please.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

“Darling,” she finally said, and that alone made all the alarms in my head go off, “he had to fly home. His dad is … he has cancer. He has been in a critical state for the last few weeks.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

There was this show I’d loved when I was a teenager. It was an American TV series we got on one of the Spanish national channels—naturally, dubbed. I absolutely loved it. High schoolers with big dreams and bigger egos—or hearts, depending on who you asked—angsty plot twists, and a level of drama someone at sixteen shouldn’t have been experiencing, at least not in a small town somewhere in North Carolina. Or in the north of Spain for that matter. Which was perhaps why it all resonated so much with me.

There was this one episode in particular that had somehow stuck in a way others never did. It started with a voice-over narrator who asked something along the lines of, “what’s the minimum length of time with the power to change your life? A year? A day? A few minutes?”

The answer to that question had come to be that when you were young, one single hour could make a difference. It could change everything.

And I … wholeheartedly disagreed.

One didn’t need to be young for their life to change in the span of an hour, a handful of minutes, or nothing more than a few seconds. Life changed constantly, wickedly fast and terribly slow, when one least expected it to or after a long time of chasing that change. Life could be turned around, inside out, backward and forward, or it could even transform into something else entirely. And it happened regardless of age, but most importantly, it didn’t care for time.

Life-altering moments spanned from a few seconds to decades.

It was part of the magic of life. Of living.

In my twenty-eight years of life, I had experienced few but very different life-altering moments. Some had lasted seconds, no more than glimpses or moments in which a realization dawned. And others had lasted minutes, hours, even weeks. Either way, I could count those moments with both hands. Recite them from memory too. The first time I’d dipped my feet into the sea. The first math equation I’d solved. My first kiss. Falling in and out of love with Daniel. All the terrible months after. Boarding that plane to New York to start a new life. Watching my sister walk down the aisle with the biggest, happiest smile I had ever seen on her.