Penny woke with a start and looked around the darkened room. It was mostly bare at this point, except for the futon that had served as her bed for the past two years, and the few remaining moving boxes stacked neatly beside it.

Last night, before settling in to sleep, she'd dragged the futon across the floor and put it back in its original position, pushed up against a wall beneath the only window in the room. On the opposite wall, a ribbon of white paint stood out starkly bright. Penny followed it with her eyes now - up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the other side - the last remaining vestige of the partition that had demarcated her bedroom. The men from the temporary wall company had come by yesterday to take it down.

"Penny, you know you don't have to do this," Lauren had said, as the four roommates stood by and watched the workmen folding the wall into sections, back and forth like a paper fan.

"At least stay to the end of the month," Kristen had chimed in.

Penny could tell their protests were half-hearted. She knew she'd overstayed her welcome. "It's OK," she'd reassured them, imbuing her voice with greater confidence than she really felt. "Onward and upward, right?"

The truth was, Penny couldn't bear the thought of spending one more minute here in this apartment. She couldn't take the awkwardness. Ever since that night, one week ago today, when the four of them had met for drinks at Purgatory, her relationship with her roommates had gone from strained to unendurable.

Penny had all but ignored them when they came back from the bar that night, but she'd given in the next morning to their insistent knocking on her bedroom door. The look of sympathetic concern on Lauren's face had made Penny want to gouge her own eyes out. Or gouge somebody's eyes out, at any rate.

Kristen had spoken for all of them. "Penny, is everything OK?"

"I'm fine. Everything's fine."

"It sounded like a herd of buffalo in here last night," Lauren said. Her eyes had widened in surprise as she looked around the room and saw the half-full moving boxes. "What's with all the-"

"Here," Penny had interrupted, holding out a check. "This should cover the rest of the month's rent. I'll be out of your hair by the end of the week."

"But what-"

"Why-"

Penny had held up a hand to silence them both. "Really guys. I'm fine. It's just time."

There had been a moment's pause as her two roommates exchanged a look. Then Kristen had spoken again. "You're not moving in with him, are you?"

Him? Penny had stared at Kristen in bafflement. "Who?"

"David?"

Moving in with-- Did they think she was sleeping with her boss, too? The fact that they even had to ask....  If anything could have further steeled her resolve, that question from Kristen had done it.

"Of course not!" Penny had exclaimed.

"OK! Sorry. We're just not totally in the loop, so-"

Penny had covered her face with her hands. "For the last time, there's nothing going on with David. He's just my boss. My former boss."

"You quit?" Lauren had looked at skeptically.

Penny hadn't responded. She'd merely picked up an oversized manila envelope and held it out for them to see, pointing to the address printed on the front in block letters:

Human Resources Department
c/o David Powers
Dewitt Hathaway Worldwide, Inc.
60 Wall Street, 16th floor
New York, NY 10005

As her roommates watched in silence, Penny reached into the oversized purse she used for work. She pulled out her corporate ID badge and dropped it in the envelope. "Yes," she said. "I quit."

She put her hand back in the purse and groped until her fingers closed around the familiar shape of her cellphone. No new messages, she saw, as she pulled it out. She didn't even bother to click the power off before she dropped it in the envelope as well.

"Your phone, Penny?"

"It was never my phone," she'd replied. She ran her tongue along the flap of the envelope and firmly pressed it closed. "Company-issued."

That got the message across, at least. Even in this electronic age, there was still nothing like an 8x10 manila envelope to show the world you meant business.

It had gotten the message across to more than just her roommates, too. They weren't the only ones who'd failed to take her resignation seriously. Penny couldn't decide if she wanted to laugh, cry, or scream out loud when she'd clicked on the email last weekend and read her boss's reply:

***************************************************************

David ([email protected])

To: Penelope Stewart

Subj: RE: cnan't sleep

Very funny, my love. No points for originality. See you Monday.

***************************************************************

"My love," he had called her. Not my friend. Not my esteemed colleague. Not my capable assistant. No. He had to go with "my love."

My L-O-V-E.

How many times before had he typed out that four-letter-word to her? He should have known better - drunk or not. He should have known the kind of damage that word could do. How could he not realize? He, of all people.... How could he not understand the power of that word to penetrate - to pierce straight through a person's chest?

She couldn't really blame him though. Not entirely. She bore her share of the guilt. She'd spent two years now, playing it off as a joke every time he emailed her that word. And worse than that, she'd turned around and fired the word right back at him, more times than she cared to admit.

She could still remember getting that very first email from him, and the feeling it had given her. That initial rush of air - like she was floating. That's what it felt like, she remembered, to get a secret late-night email from your secret crush. Like levitating. And she remembered, too, the moment when the bottom fell out from underneath her. The moment her eyes locked on those four innocent little letters: L-O-V-E. And she knew from the way her lungs had ceased to function that this was no harmless crush after all.

Afterward, she'd spent the whole night agonizing. What did it mean? Was his message the truth, with alcohol just removing the inhibitions that kept him silent before? Maybe. Or maybe he wouldn't even remember sending it. She'd sat up for hours, editing her reply over and over again. In the end, she'd swallowed back down everything she felt and settled on that playful, snide retort: 

"See, I knew you were a sappy drunk."

And just like that, without even realizing what she'd done, she'd set the tone for everything else that ever passed between them.

It didn't matter now. Those messages were all gone. Buried away on some corporate server, never to see the light of day again. Penny's work email account had been deactivated this past Monday - two days after she'd dropped the big manila envelope in the mail. The message had gotten through to someone.

She'd known it was coming, but still it had hit her with a jolt when she'd tried to log into her account on Monday afternoon and saw the error message:

"This user is not recognized. Please try again."

For two years, she'd allowed this job to be the center of her universe. And now it was over. Easy as that. Her presence or absence made no real difference whatsoever. Not to Dewitt Hathaway Worldwide, Inc.

And not to David Powers.

It was for the best, Penny told herself now, as she lay awake on the futon and ran her eyes around the empty room. Time to move on. Onward and upward. There was only one reason she'd stuck with that job as long as she had - with its stress and horrible hours and lousy pay - and it had nothing to do with the thrill of working for the best investment bank on Wall Street.

She knew it was time. Well past time. She should have sent that resignation email two years ago. She smiled to herself at the thought.

Because, of course, she had sent that email two years ago. Or another one, just like it.

Dear Mr. Powers: Please accept this email as formal notice of my resignation....

She'd typed those very words, and she'd hit Send. And it had sat there in his inbox, on August 10, 2012, waiting for him to click it open. 

The smile faded from her face. Penny wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. August 10, 2012. She would never forget the date: the Friday before she was due to arrive at Yale for her first-year orientation.

The day the Earth ceased spinning on its axis for one unfathomable instant - and sent the whole direction of her future careening into space.

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