A few hours later, after one meeting with an actually nice—but idiotic—engineer, followed by yet another pervy one, I'm engrossed in more product research when my stomach rumbles loud enough to startle my coworker in the cubicle next to me.
"Whoa, hungry much?" he laughs. "Is that an 'I forgot to eat lunch' rumble or a 'lunch wasn't enough and now I need a snack' rumble?"
I smile sheepishly. "Forgot to eat. I lost track of time and didn't realize it was almost 3:00. Guess I better go heat up my lunch, so my obnoxious stomach doesn't continue to distract you."
"I appreciate that," he chuckles as he turns back to his screen. He's a nice man, very quiet and always focused on his work. I’m lucky if I get more than a brief conversation out of him every few days.
I sigh and lock my computer screen before heading toward the kitchen. As always, I have some form of healthy, prepped food ready to be heated up. Once I started training, I realized how much better both my mind and body feel when the majority of my meals are meat and vegetables. Lunch especially turned out to be an important meal, since it would either fuel me to finish work and an evening workout, or make me feel sluggish and cause me to crash on my couch as soon as my workday was over. I prefer feeling energetic.
As I warm up my chicken and broccoli dish, I think about the work I've done today and what I still have left to do. I groan when I realize my fruitless meetings have ensured a late night. Before I realize it, my brain starts going down a rabbit hole of unhelpful—but very accurate—anti-work thoughts.
I'm not happy. I don't like my job here. In fact, most days I hate it. I hate the people I have to work with, I hate that I'm doing things that I wasn't hired to do, and I hate that I'm in a position where I have to do the work anyway. All of those things make me a very unhappy employee.
But mostly, I hate the fact that I somehow ended up so far away from what I actually want to be doing.
When I became an English major in college, I was enthralled with every single one of my classes. I loved reading every form of literature. I loved my creative writing classes. I even loved writing fifteen page research papers analyzing a single theme in a book. I loved everything about my studies.
I never admitted it to myself in college, but I picked my major because I wanted to one day become an author myself. I wanted to write something that would change people's lives.
The only problem was that dream fell very flat the summer after I graduated.
I dabbled in writing my whole life, but I had never seriously sat down to actually finish something that wasn't a required college essay. Somehow, I never realized how difficult the process actually is. Nothing that ended up on paper ever sounded as profound as it did in my head, and I could never bring myself to actually write an entire book. Somehow, in all my years of reading and writing, I never realized how hard writing actually is.
It took me a single anxious and depressed summer of half-assed and incomplete writing to come to the conclusion that I needed to wake up and find a real job. Being a writer was not something I was ready to do.
So, I found a job that was technically in my field that paid a decent amount of money. Actually, it paid more than a decent amount of money. Corporate America pays very well. Which only made me feel guiltier about my choice, because I knew the money would be very hard to walk away from. It only took me a few months to realize that money is a very big reason that people stay in this world, even if it means wallowing in depression until retirement.
Three years later, I'm still sitting in the job that was only meant to be a temporary stream of income until I wrote something. Three years later, I still haven't written anything of substance.
Suddenly, I feel like wallowing in the same sadness I used to mock other cubicle employees for sitting in. I pick at the chicken on my plate with a frown. Despite the healthy meal in front of me, I find myself wanting to go home and crash on my couch.
That thought is enough to shake me out of my depressed stupor. I've noticed in the past that the times when I least want to get a workout in are the most important times to get one in anyway. I scarf down the rest of my meal and decide to fly through the rest of my work as quickly as possible. It’s still going to be a long day in the office but if I can be done by 6:30, I can still make it to the gym for class at 7:00. God knows a date with a heavy bag sounds way better than my original plan of running a few miles in an empty office gym.
The rest of the workday seems to both drag and fly. It flies because it's 6:30 before I know it, but I also had so much technical research and writing to get through that at the same time it feels like I've been sitting at my desk for thirty-six hours. I grimace when I finally straighten to stretch my back.
"You're still here, Remy? I thought I was the only workaholic in this office."
I smile tightly at my boss, Brian. I'm often the last one to leave the office and I can confirm that he is very rarely still here at 5:00.
I don't think you can call yourself a workaholic if you leave before your paycheck says you can leave.
"I'm heading out, too," I respond politely. I quickly shut down my laptop and stuff it into my tote bag. "Have a good night. Don't stay too late." He grins at me, seemingly satisfied that I bought into the ruse of his ‘late night’ at the office.
Thankfully, the gym is only a fifteen-minute walk from my office. I got really lucky that the two places I frequent in my life are so close to each other, and I try to take advantage of that fact as often as possible. I try to make it into the MMA gym three or four times a week, using the remaining days to rest or just run and stretch. Typically, I wouldn't be heading to the gym tonight, but I can feel that my brain is in desperate need of it tonight.
I see Jax as soon as I walk in. He's leaning on the front desk, casually talking to a woman about signing up. I know without a shadow of a doubt that he'll have her sold on a membership before she leaves here today.
A small frown appears on his face when he sees me. He knows I don't usually come in on Thursdays. I smile and wave him off, conveying without words that I'm fine and that he should continue his sales pitch. The frown doesn't leave his face, but he turns his attention back to the woman in front of him.
"Hey, Remy!" my friend Lucy calls from across the gym. I turn to where she's already stretching on the mats. "What're you doing here?"
I shrug as I drop my bag on the side of the mats. "Just wanted to get an extra session in. Had some time tonight."
"Oh. Cool. Let's pair up, then."
I nod. "I just need to change out of this ungodly outfit, I'll be right back." Grabbing my workout clothes from my bag, I start walking toward the changing rooms at the end of the hall. I'm almost to the women's room when the door to the men's room opens and Tristan steps into my path.
I grunt as I run into a solid wall of muscle. I stumble back—yet again priding myself on not wearing heels today—and feel myself steadied by two strong hands as Tristan grips my waist.