Grace had missed Charles when he first transferred to her department. He’d been on vacation, then she’d been on vacation. They were in a few meetings together, but he was quiet and reserved. The first time he talked directly to her, he managed to offend her. It was early in the morning, when only a few people were in the office. She hadn’t really talked to him before then, but she was complaining to another colleague about people using AI to write copy. As a writer, it drove her mad.
“I don’t think we should be encouraging our executive team to use it, and not just because it’s my job as a writer to handle their communication,” she said. “There are ethical concerns as all AI does it take stuff that’s already been written before on the Internet.”
Charles overheard and chimed in.
“Isn’t that what writers do anyway? Just come up with different combinations of the same words?”
Grace rolled her eyes and tried hard not to quip back in anger.
“I’d like to think what I do is more complicated than that,” Grace said. “As a writer, when I do my job well, I make people feel things.”
Charles shrugged.
“I used it AI once to write a summary of a presentation I had to give at a conference and it worked pretty well.”
Grace wanted to tell him that she had played around with a chatbot once and she was pretty sure it was trained by horny 15 year olds for how frequently it brought up boobs. But she didn’t say that. Instead she said, “I guarantee I can bring more nuance to your communication than a robot.”
When Charles asked her for help on an email to his team the next week, she couldn’t keep her sarcasm in.
“I’ll try my best to be as clever as ChatGPT,” she said.
He just laughed.
“I’m sure whatever you write will be great, Grace.”
She couldn’t tell if he missed her annoyance or if he was too polite to address it.
She drafted the email, he reviewed it and was gracious to receive her help.
But Grace only heard the echo of his words, comparing her to a chatbot.
“Isn’t that what writers do anyway?”
Grace didn’t like Charles, with his perfect grooming and his shiny dress shoes. She was always suspicious of people who dressed too well. She knew at least one or two of her previous bosses had judged her for her looks, for her wavy, wild hair and her too curvy body, as though she could tame those things. She looked at Charles and assumed he was vain and judgmental, just based on his tailored suits.
In September, when everyone returned from summer vacations, Grace was assigned to gather images of a company picnic for social media and a company newsletter.
“Ride around with Charles and get photos of him and the other executives with employees,” her boss told her.
She wasn’t looking forward to it, but she begrudgingly followed Charles out to the parking lot, where a golf cart awaited to drive them around the sprawling county park near their office.
Grace climbed into the backseat of the golf cart and Charles slid in from the other side. She scooched over as far as she could to the left, self-conscious about the sweat collecting under her arms and the wrinkles in her blouse. Charles was slim and impeccably dressed, like always, even though at the moment he had a t-shirt on over his navy trousers and his tan brogues. He never smelled like anything except the occasional coffee on his breath, and Grace worried that after running around the office in prep for the afternoon festivities that the animal scent of her body was no longer hidden by her deodorant.
The driver of the golf cart, one of the guys from the mailroom trained to use it, rolled up the vinyl sides of the cart around the front seat.
“It’s hot and stuffy if you don’t,” he said. “You might want to roll yours up, too.”
Charles unzipped his side and pinned it up quickly, while Grace twisted awkwardly in her seat, trying not to bump Charles while she rolled up her side. When she got it to the top, the bundle of vinyl was too loosely rolled to fit through the small loop with the snap. She had flashbacks to her inability to bundle tie up a sleeping bag back when she’d been a Girl Scout. The driver shot her an impatient look.
“Sorry, I’m having a little trouble.”
And then Charles leaned in her direction, both his arms stretched out around her, and took both ends of the vinyl. He didn’t touch her, but she felt a charge at having him so close, at his breath a whisper just past her left ear. If she leaned back just an inch, it would almost be like he was hugging her. He rolled up the vinyl and snapped it easily, then settled back on his own side of the cart.
In that moment, his willingness to be so close to her, wiped away any offense, real or imaginary, Grace had felt from Charles.
The next morning, she looked through the photos on her phone from the party. She uploaded some to the cloud for the newsletter, posted a few on social media, and deleted a bunch. She kept the ones of Charles in his company t-shirt over his dress pants, smiling for the camera. Or maybe he was smiling at her.
Melissa Flores Anderson (she/her) is a Latinx Californian and an award-winning journalist who lives in her hometown with her young son and husband. A three-time Best of the Net and one-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her creative work has been featured in more than 40 literary venues and anthologies, including swamp pink. She is a reader/editor with Roi Fainéant Press. She has co-authored a novelette, “Roadkill,” (ELJ Editions) and a chapbook, “A Body in Motion,” (JAKE). Follow her on Twitter and Bluesky @melissacuisine or IG/Threads @theirishmonths. Read her work at melissafloresandersonwrites.com.