I was walking home one evening when I saw a guy bothering a girl. It was one of those late October nights in London where the fog feels like a wet blanket and the streetlights have that weird orange glow. She was backed up against a brick wall near the Tube station, looking smaller than she probably was, while this guy kept leaning into her space, blocking her path.
I’m not exactly a tough guy—I work in IT and spend more time with keyboards than people—but something about the way she was clutching her bag made my stomach knot up. I didn’t think about it much; I just puffed out my chest and walked right up to them. I put my arm around her shoulder, looked the guy dead in the eye, and said, “Hey, sorry I’m late, Sis.
You ready to go?” The guy blinked, looked at me, then back at her, and finally muttered something under his breath about her being a “waste of time” before taking off down the alley. The girl let out a breath that sounded like a balloon deflating, her hands still shaking as she thanked me. I walked her to the bus stop, we chatted for a minute about nothing in particular, and then we went our separate ways.
I didn’t even catch her name, and honestly, I didn’t expect to ever see her or that jerk again. Life moved on, I got made redundant a month later, and I spent the next few weeks frantically polishing my CV and applying for every software engineering role in the city. Eventually, I landed an interview at a high-end tech firm in Canary Wharf that offered the kind of salary that changes your life.
Months later, I showed up to a job interview, and that same guy was sitting there! He was behind a massive oak desk, wearing a suit that probably cost more than my car, and his nameplate read “Vance Miller, Senior Director.” The second our eyes met, I saw the recognition flash across his face, followed by a slow, smug grin that told me he remembered every single detail of that night. My heart sank into my shoes because I knew right then that I was done; there was no way a guy like that was going to hire the man who had embarrassed him in an alleyway.
Vance leaned back in his chair, tapping a pen against my resume like he was deciding how best to shred it. “So, Arthur,” he said, his voice dripping with a fake sort of corporate politeness. “You have quite the background in ‘problem solving,’ don’t you?
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