friendswdetriments
For 3 years, Tia's idea of work life balance was keeping her office job completely separate from her life outside of it. Her dreams of photography and filmmaking were left at the door every Monday morning.
However, with the way that her 9-5 consumed her time and energy, her life was not like it once was. Previously a rambunctious woman and seductress, she navigated nightlife through her collection of camera lenses, where no evening was the same. She slowly morphed from a creative indulging in chaotic all-nighters, into someone who packed a lunch and woke up before her 6:30am alarm, next to her stable and caring long term boyfriend. She presented herself at the office as a gentle-spirited admin assistant, shy but eager to help with a constant smile on her face.
When Ezra, a single dad somewhere in his late 30s-early 40's, joined the team 2 years ago, she made it a point in her mind to avoid him at all costs. This timid, customer service version of herself did not know how to act in front of conventionally attractive people, and she was weary of his confident bravado that seemed to charm every other woman in the office. She wouldn't allow him to get to her. She had her own relationship to focus on. And since then, her plan stuck.
Until an unexpected shared moment between the two unravels something in her mind, reaching deep into the woman she once was, begging to reemerge.
Simply put, Friends with Detriments is a slow burn office romance affair, where the lines of different realities existing in separate places become blurred. An identity built around the character she created for the office, the person she had become in her day to day comfort, and the woman of her past who dared to dream, with die-hard bad habits. Tia is at a crossroads of navigating how to reconcile these versions of herself into one person.