Quite Quitting

Now what...

As predicted, Alex snapped back to his usual self. No more pancake tower cakes, early morning surprises, or nice kind words. It was not like this happened often– or ever– but all it took was that one time for me to expect it again.

I had tried talking to him all week to clear up any misunderstandings. Still, whenever I brought up our personal relationship, he assigned me something new to do.

Finally, I thought I had a chance during our office Halloween party, which everyone in the building was attending. I figured I could get him alone by the dessert table filled with black spider cupcakes and green ghoul punch and talk about what had happened since my birthday, but no luck. As soon as I followed him to the table, secluded away from the partying crowd, he got on a call.

"You landed okay? Dad's driver should be there. Just go where he takes you. If I hear you dilly-dallied anywhere else..." Alex threatened someone. Okay good! Mom and Dad don't know what happened here, so don't mention anything." This decoded that he was talking to Glenn. Sounds like Glenn had just landed in Australia.

Alex hung up, looking stressed, when I plucked up the courage to approach him. First, picking up the nasty-looking cupcake to make sure I had a reason just in case he ignored me. I didn't want to look like an idiot.

"Glenn made it to your parents okay?"

"Yup, did you update my afternoon calendar, block off 6:00-6:30. I won't be available." He instructed business as usual, head buried in his phone.

"Sure. Do I need to be available to you at that time?" I pried. A half an hour meeting at a random time usually meant he was going to see someone, typically at the hotel, the same thing he accused me of doing with Ben.

"Nope. I'll be out for something personal." He simply said. "Legal got some notes from dad's lawyers, so I need you to sit with them and iron out what we can and can't comply with. Also, can you provide a summary to Dad's lawyers, cc Eric and me from the legal team and Daniel from the IT team? I think a guy named Shawn will join today's call from my dad's team. Once the email is sent, monitor any responses you get. I don't want this to be a bottleneck from moving forward with the Vcard team. You let me know as soon as both the teams agree."

"Sure," I sighed.

"Unless you have plans with someone?" He asked, still not looking up. "If that's the case, I can ask the intern to take a look. David?" He called our tall and lanky intern, who was chatting up the IT girl from the office a floor above ours.

"No, it's fine. I didn't say no, did I? This is too big of an assignment for him, plus he'll call me anyways. I can do it."

"Great, thanks." And that was it. He walked away.

Two things were certain from our last few interactions; one, he was still pissed. He wanted nothing to do with me and was keen on ignoring the fact that he had asked me out. Two, he was already moving on. Something personal? Yeah right! He was going to the hotel room to see someone. He gets to celebrate his Halloween, no doubt, with some chick dressed as a slutty nurse while I deal with the not-so-sexy lawyers, some with Australian accents–great!

So even though it was the Halloween weekend, after the party, I stayed another hour extra and took meeting minutes while a bunch of Lawyers argued back and forth. I was not smart enough for this. Nor did I get paid enough for this. I noticed our lawyer, Eric, had the same vest-collar shirt combination as the asshole who got Glenn drugs on my birthday. Dug or Duke or something. A lot of the nonsense he spewed that night started coming back, but one specific term kept popping up as the Lawyers argued, "We do know Vcard wants to reduce the final cost on their end by 5%..." I tuned them out and focused on the term Quiet Qutting. I knew what the words meant individually, but what did they mean together?