Page 21 of The Law of Attraction
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Nothing.” The word came out too quickly and too loud. Instead of easy, breezy and nonchalant like she’d intended, she sounded defensive.
“Why is your first instinct always to lie?”
“It’s not.” More defensiveness. Why was she always so defensive around him? She didn’t think of herself as a defensive person in general. But something about him made her dig in and start fortifying her walls.
“You were thinking about something. People are always thinking about something. So it’s a lie to say you’re thinking about nothing.”
The knitting needles clacked as she channeled her irritation into them. “Maybe it’s none of your business what I’m thinking about.”
“So why not say that instead of lying?”
“Because it’s rude.” She recited the shawl pattern in her head like a meditation mantra as her fingers formed the stitches. Knit three, knit two together, yarn over.
“Lying’s rude too. Do you think it was rude of me to ask what you were thinking?”
“Maybe a little.” Knit three, knit two together, yarn over.
“You really can’t stop equivocating, can you?”
“Yes, it was rude to ask me that,” she snapped, and the man sitting on the other side of Adam glanced their way.
“So if I started the rudeness, you should be able to be rude back.”
“The world doesn’t work that way.” Olivia reached up and raised the window shade. The view outside was an icebox gray haze. Too bad she wasn’t in an exit row, so she could hurl herself into oblivion.
“Sure it does,” Adam insisted.
“No, it doesn’t.” She couldn’t believe she had to explain this to him. But then look who she was talking to. No one would ever dare be rude to Adam Cortinas—or point out his own rudeness. They were too busy throwing roses at his feet. “If everyone escalated every time they were annoyed or inconvenienced by someone else’s behavior, no one would ever get anything done and society would break down. The world works because people compromise and forgive. The ones who don’t are the gremlins in the machinery, they just don’t realize it because they’re only thinking of themselves.”
“So according to you, we should all just let people take advantage and walk all over us for the sake of compromise and pretending to get along.”
Olivia unclenched her jaw and blew out a breath. Knit three, knit two together, yarn over. “Not always. Just sometimes. When it benefits everyone.”
“Like when one of the traders wants a generator configuration that you know won’t work, and you don’t say anything because you don’t want to rock the boat? Is that the kind of compromise that benefits everyone? Or is that just you being afraid to stand up to the trade desk?”
His words struck her like an electric shock, bringing belated realization. She turned on him with an accusing look. “Is that why you wouldn’t give me a reference? Because of Tulelake?”
“That mistake cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“You think I didn’t try to warn them?”
“You should have tried harder. You should have taken a stand.”
“Yeah, like Cassandra.”
His forehead scrunched in confusion. “Cassandra in accounting?”
“Cassandra from The Odyssey who was cursed to utter prophecies no one believed.”
“I’m familiar with the mythology, but—”
“You heard me in that meeting with Gavin and Brad, and how much good it did when I raised my concerns about the timeline for this integration. I was immediately overruled in favor of you. That’s what it’s like being a woman in business, every day. Being talked over and ignored, having your mistakes put under a microscope while your ideas and accomplishments are credited to someone else.”
“I’m not saying sexism in the workplace doesn’t exist—”
“Gee, thanks for not denying my lived experience.” Her voice had risen again, and the man beside Adam looked like he was regretting his seatmates.
