Amy H. was the type of woman whose desktop icons were color-coded and aligned to a grid like obedient soldiers. Thirty-four years old. Two indoor plants. No pets. One ex-girlfriend in Portland who still occasionally popped up in her dreams like an error message. She wore her headset like a crown and answered customer calls in a voice two tones warmer than she felt.
She had a streak of grey in her hair that she'd started to like. Hair always up. Neutral eyeshadow. Sleeves rolled exactly two cuffs. She brought soup for lunch in a little thermos she washed immediately after use. She did yoga at night, except when she didn't. Her apartment overlooked a parking lot. She'd stopped noticing.
Amy P. was thirty-six and on her third pair of insoles this quarter. She had soft features that never quite seemed to relax, like she was always thinking about the next thing she had to do. Her hair was thick, black, and usually in a low ponytail that frayed by mid-afternoon. She dressed in layers. Long cardigans, soft fabrics, deep colors. Lipstick sometimes, mostly when she needed courage.
She handled billing issues. Her job required a tone of infinite patience and the ability to sound apologetic without ever admitting fault. She was good at it--too good. The kind of good that gets you left alone to drown because you make it look easy.
They both worked on the 6th floor of a nondescript building in a bland part of Seattle, in a cubicle farm designed by someone who deeply misunderstood how color affects human psychology. Pale yellow walls. Buzzing lights. Air that always felt recycled twice too many times.
They saw each other in meetings. Daily syncs, weekly metrics, quarterly reviews. Amy H. sat on the left side of the conference table, Amy P. on the right. They never sat next to each other. That would've been too much. Too obvious. Too fast.
But today--today there was a glitch.
Maybe someone was out. Maybe the seating chart was rearranged. Maybe the universe hiccuped. Either way, Amy H. ends up in the chair next to Amy P., too close, their elbows almost brushing. The room smells like dry-erase markers and stale coffee.
The manager is talking about customer retention strategies. Something about reducing friction in the user experience. No one's listening.
Amy H. shifts slightly in her seat. Amy P. feels it like a live wire. Their knees are almost touching. Almost.
Amy P. says, softly, not looking at her, "You ever feel like we're just... running scripts?"
Amy H. doesn't answer right away. She's too busy trying not to breathe too hard.
Finally, she murmurs, "Only every day."
Their eyes meet, just for a second. Not long. Not dangerous. Just enough.
Then they both look away.
But it's already started.
Amy H. didn't even remember the rest of the meeting. It blurred into that corporate slurry of buzzwords and click-rate charts, her body there but her soul fogged somewhere else. Afterward, she returned to her cubicle like a prisoner to her cell, sat, and stared blankly at her monitor.
Forty-six unread tickets. All customer escalations. One flagged with "URGENT -- I WANT TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER" in all caps.
She closed the window and stood up. Just like that. No plan. No sense of ceremony. She grabbed her water bottle, left her headset hanging on its little hook, and walked toward the stairwell like it was a lifeboat.
Down five flights, her boots thunking too loud on the emergency steps. Out the back door. Into the cold bite of downtown air, breath blooming in front of her like steam off a machine about to break.
She walked three blocks. No direction. Just movement.
Pho Queue: You'll line up for our soup!
And somewhere near this pho place with the windows all fogged up and the smell of broth haunting the sidewalk, she stopped and thought, I could just quit.
Not in a dramatic way. Not a slam-the-desk, fuck-you-all explosion. Just... disappear. Submit a tidy email. Two weeks' notice. Or no notice. Just vanish. Find something else. Something where she didn't feel like a cog in a machine designed to wear down its own parts. Something where she could sleep at night. Where she wouldn't cry brushing her teeth and not remember why.
She leaned against the side of the building and let her head fall back, eyes closed. Rain misted her cheeks. She exhaled through her nose, hard. Twice.
And then--
Amy P.'s laugh.
It wasn't real, just memory. The one from last month, during a fire drill, when someone had made a joke about evacuating for fake fires while they all quietly burned alive inside anyway. Amy P. had laughed so hard she snorted, and Amy H. had stood frozen for a second too long, stunned by the raw joy of the sound.
She swallowed.
No. She couldn't quit.
Not while Amy P. was still there.
She was the only color in the whole building. A deep burgundy in a beige landscape. Quiet resilience disguised as gentle competence. And Amy H. didn't even know what it meant, this feeling--but she knew it was the only thing keeping her anchored.
She turned back.
She walked faster on the way in. Five floors. No elevator. The kind of stupid, desperate choice that made her feel alive. She got back to her desk, flushed, breath shallow.
Amy P. wasn't at her cubicle.
For a second, it knocked the wind out of her. Panic. Like she'd missed her. Like she might've left for good.
Then--
There. Conference room C. Amy H. caught a glimpse through the glass: Amy P. alone, papers in front of her, lips pursed. She was tapping one finger absently against her mug. Her shoulders were hunched like she was carrying something no one could see.
Amy H. stood just outside the frame of view.
Watching her like an addict watches a locked cabinet.
Wanting. Needing.
She didn't knock. She didn't go in.
But something had shifted.
The idea of quitting had become something else entirely.
A dare.
Amy P. hated this room.
Conference Room C had no window. Just that awful rectangle of fluorescent ceiling glare and a whiteboard smeared with half-erased metrics from some forgotten Tuesday. The table was always sticky near the edges. Someone--Gary?--chewed pens and left little blue crime scenes behind.
She was supposed to be working on a churn analysis. The kind that required tight formatting, neat numbers, controlled logic. She was good at this kind of thing. Her mind could cut clean through the fog, normally.
But not today.
Today, she kept staring at cell D14, unable to remember if the number was supposed to be red or green.
She tapped her mug. Tap. Tap. Tap.
And then she felt it.
That tingle at the back of her neck, like the air had changed. Like someone had stepped into a space that shouldn't be occupied. She glanced up, quick. Reflexive.
The glass wall of the conference room gave her a perfect view of the hallway.
Empty.
Except--maybe not. For a fraction of a second, she thought she saw a shape there. A woman. Amy H.?
No. Couldn't be. Wishful thinking. Or the start of another headache. Her head had been tight all day, like someone had cinched a belt around her temples.
She looked down again. Pretended to read.
But her heart had started doing that dumb flutter-thing. Like it knew something before she did. Like it remembered the meeting earlier--the shared breath, the barely-there brush of elbow against elbow.
She hadn't stopped thinking about it since.
She'd wanted to say more. Had almost said more. Had wanted to ask if Amy H. ever felt like she was wasting her one and only life on customer complaints and auto-replies and diet ginger ale.
But the words stuck, like always. She was good at restraint. Excellent, even. Her therapist had once said she was "very self-contained." Which was code for emotionally constipated, but said nicely.
Still--she sat there now, in Conference Room C, holding her mug like a shield and wondering if she was just imagining that shadow of someone watching her.
She thought about getting up. Just... walking out. Not to follow the shadow. Not to check. Just to move.
But she didn't.
She stayed.
Still as a held breath.
Amy H. was halfway through answering a ticket about a billing discrepancy when the system logged her out.
Not just frozen--fully logged out. Screen went black. Her headset beeped twice, mournful and vaguely judgmental.
She blinked at it, disbelieving. "Cool," she muttered. "Yeah, why not."
Her password didn't work.
She tried again.
And again.
The third time, she was locked out entirely.
The helpdesk line gave her a ten-minute wait and a cheerful hold tone that sounded like someone's idea of music for an intergalactic spa.
She hung up.
Stood up.
Stretched her back with a groan and a hand pressed to the small of it. The floor around her cubicle hummed with activity--calls, typing, occasional sighs--but her little slice of it had gone quiet. Dead. Unplugged.
So she did something she never did.
She wandered.
No mission, no destination--just movement. Just her legs carrying her somewhere because they couldn't keep sitting. The air smelled like printer toner and someone's instant noodles. The overhead fluorescents hummed with the subtle hostility of a room that wanted you gone.
And then she heard a voice--familiar, low, tinged with frustration.
Amy P. was by the copy machine. It had jammed, obviously. Her brow furrowed as she peered into its guts, one hand braced against the machine, the other holding a half-printed presentation like a corpse.
Amy H. didn't think. She just walked over.
"Feeding time again?" she asked, nodding toward the machine.
Amy P. startled slightly, then laughed. "This thing hates me."
"Have you tried gentle praise?" Amy H. offered. "Maybe whisper that it's the fastest copier in the building."
Amy P. shot her a look--amused, warm--and stepped aside slightly. "Be my guest."
Amy H. crouched, tugged a tray, reached inside like a surgeon. The paper came free, only mildly singed.
"You've done this before," Amy P. said.
