Loved None But You

On a Thursday in March, Anne Elliston was having a very good day.

She had an entire month without a business trip, and she was looking forward to the break. She’d been working at a small but successful marketing firm in Abingdon, Virginia, ever since she graduated from college six years ago. For the first few years, she’d loved her job, but gradually constant travel and a boss who refused to listen to her concerns had drowned out her previous satisfaction and fulfillment.

For the past year, just the thought of her job had made her stomach churn. On the edge of burnout, she’d used all her ingenuity to negotiate with her boss for a month without a business trip.

Anne really hoped the month would be enough of a break to keep her from constantly daydreaming about new jobs.

When her boss, Krystal, called Anne into her office at ten in the morning, she assumed it was to give the final report on the project she’d spent the past two months working on, so she grabbed her notes and mentally sorted her thoughts into an organized overview.

She was pleased with the results of the campaign, and the client was very happy, so Anne wasn’t nervous or reluctant as she walked into the office and sat down in the leather chair across from Krystal’s desk.

Her first sign that something was wrong was when Krystal gave her a sympathetic smile.

That wasn’t the appropriate expression for the conversation she’d been expecting.

Anne smoothed down the fabric of her black trousers over her thighs before she looked up again. “Did you want a report on Paxton?”

“Sure. I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts on how it went. But I wanted to tell you about your next job.”

Anne knew Krystal well by now. Six years of working under her meant she’d learned how to read her face and intonation. She could see a reluctance underlying her words. Something bad was about to happen here. “Okay. What’s it going to be?”

Krystal’s marketing firm had had only a local reach when Anne had joined the team, and a lot of their income was still from local and regional businesses. But Anne had been a knitter all her life, and through her connections in online needlework communities, they’d slowly started working with small shops and businesses around the country that specialized in needlework and other crafts. One of their clients who did custom high-end embroidery projects had taken off in a major way a couple of years ago, and since then their marketing services were in huge demand with similar businesses.

Krystal had been a fine boss early on when their reach was small. But the stress from the quick escalation had brought out all her bad habits as a supervisor—namely moving her employees around like chess pieces instead of treating them like human beings and then hiding the manipulation beneath a veneer of niceness.

Anne kept hoping that Krystal would eventually catch up to her success and settle into a more relaxed management style, but it hadn’t happened yet.

Krystal handed Anne a couple of sheets of paper—a printout of the introductory information form they had all new clients fill out.

Anne read it over quickly. The farther she got down the first page, the heavier her stomach felt.

When she looked up, Krystal was giving her that sympathetic smile again.

It was all Anne could do not to snap her teeth in annoyance. “This is a great thing for us. It’s one of the biggest campaigns we’ve had. And if we can hold off on starting this until the end of April, I’ll be happy to work on it.”

“They want to start right away.”

“Then Cath and Becky can work on it. They’re just as good as I am. You promised I wouldn’t have to travel for at least a month, and this would require me to spend half the month in Portland.”

“They asked for you specifically.”

Anne swallowed over a pressure in her throat. This wasn’t the first time she’d been promised some downtime and then had it taken away.

It was the seventh time in six years.

And it was more than just the travel. It was the absolute proof that she was working for someone who didn’t care about her well-being in any real way.

She kept her voice calm as she said, “I really don’t want to do it, Krystal. We’ve talked about this over and over again. I didn’t take this job to do so much traveling. We have plenty of local clients I can work with for a while.”

“I understand. But I need you this time.”

“That’s what you say every time. And every time I’ve given in and agreed to do it. But I think I’m going to say no this time.”

Saying no wasn’t something Anne was good at. She’d been raised by a father who was used to being the center of attention and two older sisters who had similar qualities. They were all smart and opinionated and successful and craved the limelight. Her mother died in a car accident very young, and now Anne was the only one in her family who was different, so she’d gotten used to working behind the scenes to make things run smoothly. She hated conflict so much that she usually just accepted what other people told her as long as it was something she could live with.

But she wasn’t sure she could live with this.