What made it worse was that after the takeout incident, she started deliberately fabricating gossip about me.
"I saw Anita getting into a luxury car yesterday! The license plate had five eights~"
"I heard back in college she used to... I mean, how else could she have gotten into Fox Group?"
"Oopsie, Stacy's just being silly! If she finds out, will she hit me? I'm so scared~"
Soon after, I started receiving harassing texts. One client even asked my manager directly:
"I heard your team leader Lin sleeps her way to contracts?"
The way my manager looked at me changed. Admiration curdled into disgust.
I found Arnold, hoping he'd vouch that I'd been working overtime every night—that I'd never gotten into any luxury car.
He was helping Stacy fix her computer. He didn't even look up.
"Anita, where there's smoke, there's fire. If there really wasn't anything going on, would the rumors have spread this far? Stacy's so innocent—she'd never lie. Besides..."
He finally looked at me, his eyes full of disappointment. "I saw you get into a black car in the parking lot yesterday myself."
That was my father's driver, picking me up for a family dinner.