I knew Marissa Hollings would find the letter within minutes of stepping off the elevator, but I still wasn’t prepared for the sound of her heels cracking down the tenth-floor hallway like a fire alarm.
By then I was already outside, standing at the edge of the parking lot with a cardboard banker’s box tucked against my hip. The morning was cool and damp in that familiar Portland way, the air smelling like wet concrete and burnt coffee from the café across the street. Six years of my life fit inside that box: a chipped mug, two notebooks, a navy cardigan I kept for over-air-conditioned conference rooms, and a small framed photo of my father smiling with one hand around a tomato he had grown in a bucket on his apartment balcony.
I heard the lobby doors slam open.
“Cain!”
Her voice cut across the sidewalk so sharply that a man in a rain jacket turned his head.
Marissa came toward me with my resignation letter clenched in one hand like a citation. Her face was tight, glossy, and pale with anger, the same face she used in quarterly meetings when someone else made her look unprepared.
“You cannot be serious,” she said. “You think you can leave a letter on your desk and disappear?”
“I didn’t disappear,” I said.
My voice surprised me by how steady it sounded. “I left my letter. You read it.”
She lifted the paper higher, as if the words might rearrange themselves in public and make me ridiculous.
“Effective immediately?” she said.
“After everything this company has done for you? After everything I’ve invested in you?”
I looked at the page fluttering in her hand.
“You invested nothing in me,” I said. “Not even five percent.”
That was the first time her mouth actually went still.
She glanced toward the building, maybe aware of the faces behind the lobby glass, maybe aware that her usual volume would not help her now.
When she spoke again, her tone dropped into the icy register she used when she wanted to sound reasonable in front of witnesses.
“You are still upset about that? Cain, you need to manage your expectations. People do not get raises just because they ask for them.”
“I asked after six years,” I said.
“And I asked for five percent.”
She gave a short laugh, but it sounded thinner than it had the day before.
“And I told you—”
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
