Quite Quitting

Sugar and Spice

I expected the weekend to be a quiet one. Alex was gone. Sugar was mainly at work or Cal's place, and the apartment was all mine. Alex, as always, however, had other plans. He called three times on Friday, urging me to get on the next flight available in the next hour. I didn't give in. I had decided that to make sure our professional and private lives didn't merge, and I was going to follow the mantra of quiet quitting.

Starting now, I was not going to work weekends. I was not going to work off hours. No more looking at emails or answering calls from Alex at five unless he was calling to talk about nonsense. So I was on strike from 5 pm to 7 am on weekdays and both days on weekends.

It did not seem Alex caught on. When he wasn't calling to update me on the flight schedule of the JKf airport, he was calling to ask questions. "Do you think a 12 by 18 room is enough for 3-5 people?" "Do you think it's worth getting a bigger office in case I want to expand the team?" "Which property should I go see first?" "Can you look over the lease when I decide on a place?" My answer to all of it was, no, no, no, no, nooo.

Finally, at 11 o'clock at night, he called, and we talked about nonsense. We talked about Jennifer from accounting and her very short skirts. We both decided they were inappropriate, but I was the only one who agreed someone should say something to make her stop. We discussed our high school relationships and why they didn't work out. I had every little experience with just one boyfriend at the end of high school, who I dated briefly in college.

"I remember him. His name was something girly, wasn't it? Lesley or something?" Alex said over the phone.

"No, it wasn't. That was the last guy I dated."

"No, this was like seven years ago or something. You were still in school, I think?" He pondered.

"Nope, 5 years ago. I was working full-time for you by that point." I clarified.

"Wow, that was the last guy I remember. So you haven't dated anyone since then? Or have you just been hiding him?" he asked.

"You never gave me a chance!" I accused.

"Thank god for that! You would have been married with kids by now if I had." He said. The irony was that I cried at this fact just a week or 2 ago, and he was now celebrating it.

"So that's why you kept me working, huh? Because you didn't want me getting scooped up?"

"Maybe. Partly? I am not sure, actually. I decided a long time ago you were off limits because you were a good worker, and I didn't mess anything up with you. Plus, we have the whole dynamic power issue–I was your boss." He offered.

"When did you decide I was off limits?" I inquisitively asked. This I needed to know.

"Probably when we first kissed all those years ago."

"We didn't kiss. You kissed me!" I informed. "What were you thinking if you weren't going to pursue me?"

"I wasn't. I was drunk out of my head. You and I, at that point, had spent 14 consecutive days and nights together working on the proposal for my father." He said as if he was reciting facts from a book. "You were on my brain!" He added in a spooky voice.

"So you didn't like me then?" I questioned, already slightly disappointed because I knew what the answer was.

"Nope."

"Oh..."

"But to be fair, I didn't know when I started liking you. Maybe I always did? Maybe it was the fact that you threatened to leave, and suddenly I had to imagine my life without you, and I just couldn't." He sighed.