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keyboard.
    It was so normal that she sank deeper into despair.
    Jenn went through the motions of checking her email. There were hundreds after her vacation, although most of them seemed to be follow-ups to emails she hadn’t responded to—nobody seemed to believe that she, Jenn MacLennan, would have actually gone on vacation.
    Of course, a vacation wouldn’t have shattered her heart so thoroughly.
    There was a new assignment from Oscar. She skimmed the specs and shook her head. The deadline was in two weeks, but Jenn could do it in two days.
    By the time office staff started filtering in with the morning sunlight, she was taking her first coffee break. The espresso machine in the break room tasted like it hadn’t been cleaned in months.
    A few people tried to talk to her. Jenn smiled and nodded and heard nothing. All she could feel was a gaping hole inside her chest, as though her heart had been dug out with a gardening spade.
    She worked quietly, but she kept catching herself staring out the windows along the far wall. Golden sunlight glinted off the mirrored side of the office building across the street, reflecting the drifting clouds. The sun inched higher and higher in the sky, and after a while, she gave up trying to work entirely. Jenn gazed at the sky’s reflection with her chin on her hand, drumming a pen against the desk with her other.
    Jenn checked the clock on her computer to discover it was already noon. She locked her workstation, stretched her arms over her head, and went to see if her supervisor wanted to get lunch.
    But Peter’s chair was empty. All of his personal belongings—the photos of his family, the dancing hula girl, the demotivational posters tacked to his cubicle walls—had been stripped away, leaving nothing but a blank monitor and a company mouse pad.
    “He quit while you were gone,” said a voice behind her.
    Jenn glanced over her shoulder to see her boss, Oscar, leaning against the half-wall of Peter’s former cubicle. He was wearing a red tie and an insufferably smug grin. Of the few things she had missed on vacation, her boss was not one of them.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “His resignation letter had a few colorful things to say about the work environment,” Oscar said. “He didn’t even give two weeks’ notice. Frankly, we won’t be missing him—although his exit does leave a vacuum in management. On that note, I think I see a lot of leadership potential in you, Jennifer.”
    “Do you, now?” Jenn didn’t even try to sound enthusiastic.
    “Have you ever considered becoming a manager?”
    No. Not even once. She didn’t care about money, and Jenn liked getting things done. Having to attend meetings and wear pantyhose was not what she considered productive.
    She chose to keep her opinion to herself. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
    That ended the conversation… for now. But Oscar didn’t forget.
    The hours sped by, and the days and weeks followed not far behind. Jenn’s urge to live in the office disappeared while she was on leave, and she never signed onto the open source forums.
    While she was home, Bowser only left her lap when she got up to make herself a pot of Top Ramen—nothing else sounded palatable—or go to kickboxing class, which had been her New Year’s resolution for five years in a row. Frankly, kickboxing was just as interesting as working and eating cheap, salty noodles, but she had too much energy to hold still.
    Jenn was restless. Unhappy. And no matter how hard she tried to think of something, anything, other than Ryan, he was always at the back of her mind.
    She wasn’t sure how much time passed. It could have been weeks or months or even a year before Oscar visited her desk again. Her productivity had shot through the roof since she returned, and he seemed to find an excuse to compliment her on it at least twice a day.
    “We’re looking at filling Peter’s position soon.”
    “Yeah?” She didn’t even look up at him, chewing her