Since We're Alone

Part 2

"I don't know why I did it," Phoebe sighed, keeping her voice low. The break room was always a setting for warmly welcomed gossip, but not when it revolved around her own pseudo-romantic relations with an A-list celebrity.

"I just knew, fuck," she spoke, catching the eyes of a nosy member of the cleaning staff as he mindlessly wiped one of the round tables. Her voice was barely a whisper, "his reputation is really clean, and he was having an off-moment, and the only thing on television was literally his pissed-off face."

"So," Phoebe's co-worker, Sophie, was an interesting being. Good advice, terrible ideas. Phoebe kept this in mind as Sophie spoke, "you thought kissing him on national television would," she paused, "fixit?"

"I don't know," Phoebe's head lowered into her dry hands, "I knew it was gonna be bad, and I knew it would be the cover of every snapchat-and-whatever-else news story, and I knew I'd be right there in the photo, sitting right be-fucking-side him."

"Right," she nodded, "so you thought it would be better to be on the cover of every snapchat-and-whatever-else news story right on-fucking-top of him. I see."

Phoebe rolled her eyes. It was no use. The logic wasn't all there, but something had told her to just do itin the moment. So, she did. And as annoying as the influx of backlash was, she had a hard time denying that she was enjoying herself.

"Would you just drop it?" Phoebe questioned with a sly grin, popping the last bite of her turkey sandwich into her mouth, "it's over now, anyway."

"Don't speak so soon," Sophie muttered, nodding her head in the direction of their boss, Margaret.

Margaret Adams. She was the bane of Phoebe's existence. She was needy. She was demanding. She was everything a boss was supposed to be—and everyone hated her for it.

"Bray!" Margaret called from only a few feet away, causing Phoebe's attention to leave her picked-at cuticle and land on Margaret, red-faced and flustered.

Phoebe didn't have the chance to answer before Margaret began speaking—speaking about exactly what Phoebe did not want to talk about.

"Why the hell are you on Twitter moments?"

Phoebe took a deep breath. This really wasn't going away anytime soon.

____________________

Remaining low-key had always been the goal. Letting them know what she was thinking—whoever "them" may have been—was never an option for Phoebe Rose. Silent but deadly. A wallflower, perhaps. She was a shark.

With a double-major in philosophy and English lit, Phoebe was a shoo-in for her position with Toronto Life Magazine. Unfortunately, the only opening was with Margaret's department, which took pride in covering celebrity news stories. It made Phoebe sick.

It was invasive. It was greasy. Toxic, even.

But a position was a position, and anything was better than waitressing at Joey's, a higher-end restaurant at Yonge and Dundas that was home to pretentious late teens and margarita-sipping wine moms.

As if on cue, Phoebe caught the 504A streetcar at 6:03. It was packed. It was always packed at this time. Especially on a Tuesday.

They stood like sardines holding onto the germ-ridden handles and she peered between the heads of two older women, mesmerized by the cookie-cutter financial buildings. They were all different. But the same.

They buzzed with the same aura, radiating stress and poise and money in the way each window stretched from floor to ceiling. Phoebe wondered what it took to become somebody in this grey, cubic city, miserable as that somebody may truly be. The bankers seemed to really hate it.