The Corporate Retreat

The hotel pool shimmered like something from a brochure I couldn't afford. Twenty floors up, with the Las Vegas sprawl glittering beneath us like spilled jewelry. I was there for the annual leadership summit—three days of PowerPoint presentations about synergy and teamwork, delivered by people who'd laid off half my department last quarter.

'I'm going in,' Marcus said, already unbuttoning his shirt. 'You coming?'

'I don't have a suit,' I lied. I did. It was in my room, still wrapped in plastic from the Target I'd visited at midnight, desperate not to look like I didn't belong.

'Christina brought extras,' he said, and there it was—the name that had been haunting me for six months. The new VP of Operations. The woman who'd sat across from me in interviews five years ago when I was a terrified twenty-two-year-old, and who now sat in the corner office I'd been promised. The woman Marcus was swimming toward, quite literally, as she stepped out of the elevator in a crimson swimsuit that cost more than my car.

I followed them to the water's edge. Christina was already in, cutting through the pool with effortless grace, while Marcus floundered beside her like an eager puppy. I waded in slowly, letting the cool water swallow me inch by inch, thinking about the corporate pyramid we were all climbing—or maybe just the one Marcus was desperately trying to build with her.

Later, at the buffet, I found myself beside her. She had a piece of spinach caught between her teeth, an emerald imperfection that made her suddenly, painfully human. I considered telling her, then didn't.

'You're quiet,' she said, pushing food around her plate.

'Just thinking about the reorg,' I said, which wasn't entirely a lie. 'Heard your team might absorb mine.'

She swallowed. 'It's not personal, David.'

'Never is.'

We stood there in silence, both of us swimming in things we couldn't say, while Marcus laughed at something the CEO said across the room. The spinach was still there. I wanted to reach out and brush it away—wanted a lot of things I couldn't have.

'For what it's worth,' she said quietly, 'I fought for you.'

Then she walked away, leaving me alone with my words and the spinach and the terrible knowledge that sometimes losing is just a different kind of winning.