Dear Declan

Josie breathed deep and gripped the door handle, focusing on the bright splash of color in her drab days. She recited the words. "Wanna grab drinks after work?" Just five words. Today was the day she'd ask.

Her stomach was a washing machine spinning nerves, threatening to overflow. But she squared her shoulders and pushed through the door. Coming into work and seeing Declan standing at his desk, one hand holding coffee, the other scrolling through emails, made her dream of things she shouldn’t.

But as she steered down the grey hallway toward her cubicle, she scanned the desks. Her colleagues were astir with whispers and sideways glances. As she passed Declan’s desk, the churning nerves turned to cement in her stomach.

It was vacant.

She checked her phone. It was 9:05 a.m, the same time she always arrived.

“The office looks empty today,” she said, settling down in her cubicle.

Lydia, her neighbor on her left, scowled. “Does it?”

Josie leaned over the low wall separating them. “Did you see Declan come in yet?” Lydia snorted and shook her head.

Josie booted up her laptop and scanned her inbox. A cold pool of doubt began to form, droplet by droplet.  Several minutes went by with no sound of his voice.

A sloping shape appeared in her peripheral.

“Did you hear?” Grace, who managed company communications, was at Josie’s desk, dunking a tea bag in steaming water. Grace’s role gave her classified privilege to company news, and Josie was glad to have a friend like her in the office. But her presence this morning left a heavy, sick feeling in Josie’s throat. That pool of doubt swelled.

“Hear what?”

The older woman pulled up a chair and leveled Josie with her kind eyes. She hadn’t noticed how warm people’s eyes could be until she’d seen Declan’s. The way his brown eyes looked lit from within when he spoke about his work in meetings. The way he laid them softly on her, watching her with reserve. It made her shiver to think of when she was alone. Yet she had not figured out how to ask him out for drinks, how to take things from coworkers to … something more.

Grace mouthed out some words that Josie didn’t follow.

“I’m sorry—what?”

The two leaned in together. “Today is Declan’s last day with the company.”

  Josie jerked. Of all the secrets Grace had shared with her, this one felt like betrayal.

Her eyes shifted to Declan’s desk. His sweater vest hung on the back of his chair, and a photo of him smiling while being licked on the face by his golden retriever was still pinned to the wall beside his computer.

“What do you mean?” Once in third grade, a boy in her class punched Josie in the stomach as a joke. She’d remained stoic, not letting him see how much it hurt. But it was a horrific sensation that left her feeling hollow and nauseous at the same time, with tears stinging her eyes.

That’s what Grace had just done to her.

Grace shrugged a shoulder and slurped her tea. “Apparently we’re restructuring the sales and marketing organization. He’s not the only one being laid off.”

Laid off.

Josie watched his empty chair, willing him to appear in it. He should be there to commiserate with her now. They'd hear about the layoffs, and she'd turn to him and they'd share a glance that said a million things. And he'd give a wry, one-word response that aptly summed up how he felt. "Confused."

And she'd reply in kind. "Sad." Then they'd continue until their answers could no longer be summed up in one word.

“I’m kind of busy now. Can we talk later?” Josie knew she sounded curt, but she didn’t care. She turned away from Grace and pretended to read an email until the woman walked away. A salty, fat tear splashed onto her desk.

“Don’t take it personally,” Lydia’s voice came from over the fabric divider. “Declan's just another cost center in the company’s eyes. Be thankful it’s not you.”

Josie scanned the screen idly, not comprehending the pixelated words on it. A tidal wave of panic crashed through her mind. Her thoughts climbed over one another, scrabbling for attention. There was one she wanted to examine further, but she couldn’t quite see it beneath the murky depths of her panic. Everything threatened to be washed away by one roaring wave: Declan was gone. She would never get another chance to greet him in the morning, or make eyes at him over a funny comment from their boss. She may never see him again. If only she had been bolder, asked him out for drinks or exchanged social media handles.

There it was. The thread she wanted to pull. She had no way of contacting Declan, of seeing him again…  Except for his company email. She knew his email address. If today was his last day, how much longer did she have to reach out to him before he would blink out of her life forever? Or was his email already suspended?

Josie clicked to open a new email and her fingers flew over the keyboard. Please, please, don’t let it be over like this. She couldn’t say exactly what it was about Declan. Perhaps that he listened when she talked, gave elaborate answers to her questions and generally made time for her. Or the energy that pulsed between them whenever they were in the same room. Whatever it was, Josie wasn’t ready to lose that.

But before she could hit send, footsteps approached from behind. She quickly navigated to a new window and wiped her eyes.

“Good morning,” she chirped. Her pulse leapt for a different reason as her boss Greg stormed past her cubicle.

“Morning,” he grunted, thumbing out an email on his phone. “We have a team meeting in five minutes.”

Josie looked over her shoulder instinctively. An empty desk looked back.

Her heart ached as she headed into the meeting.

***

Everyone had questions about the lay-offs. Josie stumbled out of the meeting hungry and anxious about her own job security.

How many more layoffs would there be?

“I don’t know, but this is the start of a companywide restructuring to meet shifting market demands,” Greg had said.

Empty words. All it really meant was “We can’t afford to pay you anymore so we’re cutting you off to save the company.” Josie felt like she’d aged a lifetime in a day. She saw through the bullshit.

Declan was a victim of that bullshit. As she walked back to her desk, she was filled with an urge to burn it all down. To smash her company laptop and quit on the spot, in solidarity with Declan.

But reality was cruel. She had three times her salary in student loan debt, and her mother’s hospital bills. If she quit, or was fired, her mom would be back in the hospital with another heart attack from the stress of it.

It was just another day at the office.

Her stomach ached but there was no time to eat. There was one thing she could still do for Declan.

Moving quickly, she dug a cardboard box out of the supply closet and set to work.

Declan’s cubicle smelled of him. Josie clenched her jaw to hold the tears in as she packed first the heavier items—framed photos and a glass marketing award he’d earned the year before she joined.   As she piled loose notes and pens in and closed the box, she checked her phone and saw the email she had been working on earlier. It was addressed to Declan. But Josie felt foolish now for typing it up. Declan had just lost his job, along with dozens of others. People with bills to pay, families to feed, responsibilities and dreams of their own. 

Would he think of her?

If she had been let go, she wouldn’t want to hear from anyone at work, wouldn’t want to think about it at all. A stone settled in the rushing waters of her stomach. Josie was probably the furthest thing from Declan’s mind now. What difference would it make if she could reach out to him or not?

At two p.m., a shout burst from over by the elevators. “Hey, man!” One of the sales team members stood abruptly and rushed with his arms up to the doors. Josie turned.

Declan walked through the door. Josie lurched to her feet, before realizing she didn’t have a reason to be standing at his desk. Her face heated, but her heart soared. In casual clothes, he looked… vulnerable. His friend from sales embraced him with a hug and an extra pat on the shoulder. Every cell in her body yearned to do the same.

Though his shoulders sagged, his eyes gleamed with that characteristic excitement. And as he neared his desk, his eyes settled on her.

There was that look. Delicate, as though if he looked at her too hard, she would evaporate.

“You’re here,” she blurted.

His lips tilted up to one side. He lifted something tucked under one arm. His laptop. “Returning this.”

He leaned against the wall of his cubicle, a question forming in his eyes. “I also came to grab my things. Figure I’ll get it over with today and be done with this place for good.”

She looked down at her hands. Don’t take that personally, Josie had to coax herself. This is not about you.

“Oh, uh, here.” She pushed the box toward him. “I just… had some extra time on my lunch break and thought I’d help out.”

He scooped up the box, peered inside. “Wow, thanks Josie.” He reached out an arm and pulled her into a half-hug, but she turned her face the wrong way and ended up smooshed stiffly against his chest. She pulled free a heartbeat too soon.

“I—I was sorry to hear… about you…’

“Being fired?”

She giggled. “Yeah, I guess. For what it’s worth, I think it was a mistake.”

Lydia glanced at her, shook her head. Declan made a face, one she could not describe but could read easily. It said “So do I, but we don’t make the decisions here.” And it said so much more. They held eye contact for a heartbeat too long.

“Well, I better get this back and head out before security comes after me.”

As he turned to go, she felt the word coming up like vomit. But it was out before she could stop herself. A statement... and a question.

"Sad."

He paused, swiveled back to her. He blinked a few times. "Crestfallen." He frowned comically to emphasize it.

She smiled. He always had better words than her to describe his feelings. But then he was gone before she could say anything else. Before she could offer her number to stay in touch.

Josie listened to his voice grow distant as he greeted, and bid farewell to, colleagues he had worked with long before she'd joined his team. She ran her finger along his desk, now cleared of any mementos of his time there. A shiver ran over her skin, and tears once again pricked her eyes.

Would she feel this cold vacancy in her heart every time she saw his empty desk? She could not imagine facing another day at the company without her teammate, her friend, her...

With a renewed urgency, Josie returned to her email, but it wouldn’t do. Declan had just returned his laptop--what if he couldn't check his emails anymore?

There was someone else who might be able to help.

By now it was past four p.m. Josie found Grace’s desk in the far corner of the fifth floor, by Human Resources.

“Hey, sorry about earlier. I was just… overwhelmed.”

Grace leaned back in her seat and folded her arms over hear chest. “I knew you would be.”

Josie did not have time to unpack that, though it sounded like Grace had figured out her office crush.

“If someone is let go from the company, how long can they access company email for?”

  “Hmm,” Grace clicked open a series of folders on her screen. “I would think he’d have access for at least 24 hours, if not longer, just to tie things up. Especially with marketing, when he may have important customer emails that need to be answered.”

Josie held her breath, pressing her fingers tightly against each other to calm herself while Grace searched for whatever document held the answers.

“Oh, nope. I’m wrong. He has until midnight tonight. Then his emails will be auto-forwarded to his boss.”

Midnight.

But something else hit her. “What if he already returned his laptop?”

Grace shrugged one shoulder. “He should have access on his phone until midnight too. If he installed our app.”

Another big if.

***

She waited until after five, when most of her peers trickled out. Then she waited past six p.m. until Greg marched home.

Just six hours left. Her heart felt both lighter and heavier than it ever had.

Alone, with darkness pressing against the windows, Josie typed Declan’s name in her email search bar and scrolled through their history.

She knew it had to be in here. An email thread that could be proof he’d installed the app on his phone. Because if he didn’t, and if she emailed him, then after midnight tonight Greg would be the one to open it, not Declan.

Come on…. She scrolled two months into the past, then three. Going way back to her first week at the office. She had not realized until now how often they’d communicated. They may not have exchanged many words face to face, but as she scanned the subject lines of these old emails, she felt something in them that gave her heart wings.

Some of them were time-stamped past six p.m., way beyond normal working hours. Some of them had text-like headlines, like the one that started with “OMW in, running late. What's Greg's mood today?”

And her favorite. In response to some background research she’d delivered to Greg on a new market, Greg replied-all that it was sub-par and she could do better. Declan had replied to her alone, and simply written back “For the record, I love this. I’m glad you’re on my team.”

Josie wanted to spend hours re-reading these emails. They were like a secret thread stringing her and Declan’s tenuous relationship together. But she didn’t have time now.

She scrolled more.

There! The email she was looking for, stamped 9:43 p.m. They’d been editing a blog, going back and forth with revisions. Josie clicked on one of his emails that night. And there, at the bottom of the email, a standard signature read “Sent from my iPhone.”

He’d sent it from his phone.

For the first time all day, she let hope trickle in. Josie was surprised to see it was now past eight p.m. She opened a new email and started typing. Then she erased and re-wrote her message. After several revisions, she still wasn’t ready to hit send.

So she drove home first, took a warm shower, and managed to get down a bowl of pasta. By then it was after eleven. Time was short. Even if she sent the email now, he could be asleep already. No matter what, there was a chance he wouldn't see it.

But there was still a chance he would. At least until midnight.

If she was willing to risk potential rejection.

Josie chewed her lip. She thought of how he would video call her when he needed something, rather than just send demanding emails like the rest of the team. And how he took her aside to gently ask if she understood whenever new words or concepts were tossed around in team meetings.

She closed her eyes. Summoned him in her mind. His voice, his eyes, his excitement and patience and his goodness, in an office where people were expected to act logically and ruthless.

Then she typed:

Dear Declan,

           I’m sorry again about what happened. It’s our team’s loss. You’ve been an incredible mentor to me at the office, and I can’t thank you enough. Would it be wrong to think of you as a friend as well?

          Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything, even if it’s just to commiserate. I’m always here for you. You can reach me at the number below.

          Hopeful.

XO, 

Josie

At five minutes to midnight, she bit her lip and pressed send.

A wave of relief was quickly followed by a rainstorm of nerves as she realized how terrible she would feel if he never responded.

But that didn’t matter anymore. She had put herself out there, made her feelings known. If he didn’t return them, then she could at least have closure. Better than wondering “What if” for the rest of her life.

Josie held her phone to her chest, grateful that she had the chance to work with Declan at all. Happy for the mere fact that he was in her life, even if for a short time.

Then her phone buzzed and the screen lit up.