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was very good at it. However, she was also terribly unhappy with a lot of things about her life. Not being able to experience certain things that many women her age already had weighed heavily on Stephanie, things that she always wanted and always thought she would have by now, it left her feeling very lonely and bitter. Since the breakup, things had gotten much harder.
    Stephanie buried herself in her work. She spent most nights by herself, staring into her fireplace. She read a lot and usually had her coffee alone every day. She rarely spent any time with her friends and had all but turned her back on dating again. She was only 27 years old, but she felt much older than that sometimes. She felt unattractive and unwanted, which was not the case, but it was still how she felt. She had almost no one outside of her parents, her brother and his family, and the few friends that were still around. It was just her and her dog Shadow, who was a large 3-year-old female Husky. Stephanie and Shadow would spend a lot of time walking through the woods by her home, or the beaches along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Sometimes they would just sit and watch the sunset together and stare out across the wide expanse of water with far away thoughts.
    Stephanie looked at the clock on the radio and tried to calm herself down, drying her eyes off with some tissues she had in her hand. A few minutes later, she was driving down the highway on her way to work. The radio was helping her put the events of the night before behind her, at least for the time being. She picked up her cell phone and dialed the number for her office.
    “Hey, Karen, it’s Stephanie.”
    Karen Barns was 33 years old, married with two kids. She was the secretary at the company’s corporate headquarters and one of Stephanie’s closest friends. Karen was almost like the older sister she never had and always wanted.
    “I’m running a little late, Hun, but I’m on way. I’ll be there in about 20 minutes if I get any calls in the meantime forward them to my cell phone please.”
    “Stephanie, are you okay? You sound upset,” Karen asked over the phone.
    “I’m fine. See you in a few, okay?” she told Karen, hanging up the phone, trying not to come off too upset and bitchy but still fighting back some tears.
    Mondays were always busy and stressful for Stephanie at the office. There were company meetings, phone calls, paper work, complaints that had arisen over the weekend from angry employees and managers. Paper work and follow up phone calls for those complaints. Questions about insurance benefits, and the occasional interview kept her very busy. Stephanie looked at the clock on her desk; it was 12:45 pm. Her back hurt already from sitting hunched over in her chair for the last few hours working. It was almost lunchtime but she probably would not eat today, at least not until later. Stephanie stood up and stretched her body. She took off her heels that squeezed her toes together and that made her height 6’1” as opposed to her actual height of 5’11” and walked barefoot around her office. She turned up the music on the computer that she was listening to while she worked and just walked around her office a little bit. She walked over to the large entertainment center that was against the wall, which housed a 27-inch flat screen TV and a DVD player that was supposed to be used for training videos, but sometimes she watched other movies and quite often had the news on. Scattered around that was a hodge-podge of framed photos. There were pictures of her and her family, her dog, her brother and his family and a few friends. As well as pictures of her on various social occasions and vacations.
    Stephanie loved the fact that she had her own office. And because she had occasional meetings and interviews in her office, she tried to make it as comfortable and nice looking as she could. She did this for the occasional visitors she had, but more for herself and her own