Erin Scott-Ross had always believed that she was destined for big things.
And yes, it sounded cliché when you said it out loud. But she’d been living out every day like it was less of a saying and more of a motto. Whether or not she was actually destined for greatness was irrelevant—she worked hard, kept her nose to the grindstone, and managed to surmount any obstacles that had stood in her way with no fumbles.
Erin had a way of tackling her problems head-on, something that had earned her the respect and fear of her colleagues in the corporate world. She had quickly gained the reputation of being a battle-axe, a ball buster, and whatever other names you might call a powerful woman who wasn’t afraid to mince words. She wouldn’t take a back seat, and all of her thoughts would be heard.
It had made life as a copy editor absolutely unbearable, and it had only made things in her career tougher ever since.
Funny how a “negative attitude” and “determination” can be misconstrued as the same thing.
But over the years, Erin had clawed her way up from one rung of the corporate ladder to the next using nothing but her candor and determination. Complaints about her attitude slowly fell to the wayside as she steamrolled her way into the corporate world from nothing something that she was hardly shy about bringing up whenever someone wanted to try to test their oneupsmanship against hers.
To put it bluntly, what Erin set her mind to she almost always accomplished.
And that was the problem—why she’d called Phoebe Lang.
A few years older and that much wiser than Erin in the business sense, she liked to think of herself as Erin’s mentor. Born into money and gifted with a natural head for leadership, she had taught Erin how to hone her skills and sharpen her claws back when she was still serving coffee during undergrad. Twenty years later and, though they didn’t get to see one another often, they still took time to keep in touch and met face to face once in a while for lunch.
Dodu Oiseau was a particularly popular spot for business meetings and power lunches with the local suit scene, and had been the backdrop for plenty of both. A fine bistro in its own right, it also had the honor of being Phoebe’s favorite place to meal. She recommended it highly, and had insisted that their impromptu meeting happen there, and at her expense.
Well, at her company’s expense.
It was technically a business meeting after all—Erin was asking for advice.
Erin’s promotion to CEO had come with a new set of peers to integrate with. Most of them WASP-y men named Chrises and Tylers who had never been faced with a problem that couldn’t be fixed by throwing money at it. They were walking talking Sexual Disclosure NDA’s who (probably) complained about not knowing how to act around female co-workers. Predatory and just plain punchable, but not for those reasons in particular.
No, the reason that Erin had called Phoebe to lunch today was because none of her new colleagues would listen to her. They didn’t respect her, or at the very least they didn’t fear her like they ought to have. She was a powerful woman, but there was only so much to be done when her ideas were brushed off because she wouldn’t sleep with them. They outnumbered her by nine to one, and the other members of the board (a token black man and another woman, close to retirement) weren’t going to be of much help.
Thus Phoebe Lang—and her rather disjointed response of:
“If I have one complaint about this place, it’s that the serving sizes are too small.”
Phoebe had said it without a hint of irony—only the dejected puff of someone who wasn’t used to compromising over taste. Her sausage fingers wrapped over the handle of her knife, each one as pink and plump as the steak that she’d ordered. The gentle cutting motion rippled in her forearm, making her large chest sway as it rest on top of the great balcony that was her stomach. As she cut, her beady eyes locked onto the savory slab in front of her. Once she’d cut a suitable piece off for herself, she popped it delicately into her mouth.
“I tell you that nobody listens to my ideas or takes me seriously, and you complain about the portion sizes.” Erin laughed a little, “Tell me, why do I come to you with these problems again?”
Phoebe smiled, her chipmunk cheeks dimpling at the corner of her mouth while she chewed her steak. Swallowing, and wiping her mouth with the napkin, she continued. As she settled, edging herself closer to the seat and therefore further into the conversation, her mass trembled with effort.
“We’ll circle back to that, but let’s try a different route—” she said more plainly, “—right now, you’re a big fish in a big pond.”
She held her hands out to gesticulate, a habit of Phoebe’s. When she moved her arms, they wobbled. Sheathed beneath the sleeves of her designer blouse, her bingo wings jiggled and swayed with her slightest movements, squishing against her heaving chest.
“Before, you were in a small pond.” Her hands narrowed, “Where you could stand out.”
“So said my high school guidance counsellor.” Erin cocked an eyebrow suspiciously, “So I’m a big fish in a big pond now?”
“Exactly.” Phoebe pointed her chubby knife-hands at Erin from across the table, “And the only way for you to stand out is to be a bigger fish.”
“Right, okay, but I can’t become a bigger fish if nobody takes me seriously.”
“No, you become a bigger fish by making yourself stand out.”
“I’m… not following.”
Phoebe took another bite of her steak. Every time she leaned forward into the table, a small grunt of struggle. She’d chew, and lean back with an even smaller sigh of relief. Wiping her hands on her napkin, she rested her hands along the curve of her stomach as it rolled up to the table.
“How long have we known each other?” she asked
“Twenty years.” Erin answered matter-of-factly, “But I don’t—"
“And in that time, has anything changed about me?”
Erin sucked through her teeth as she bit back the obvious answer.
When she’d met Phoebe, it had been as a junior executive for some crappy little firm who had come in for a coffee break one day. She’d been everything that Erin had wanted to be at the time—professional, rich, and capable. Dressed in a smart black suit and visibly powerful, it gave the still-struggling Erin motivation to escape the ugly green smock that she’d tied around her waist every day through undergrad.
Since then, they’d both gone through some changes, but some were much more obvious than others. Though Erin still respected Phoebe’s advice and business acumen, and considered her one of her very best friends, it was hard to deny that she cut an entirely different figure now than she did twenty years ago. Years (literally decades) of power lunches and celebratory dinners, all at the expense of whatever corporation’s checkbook she happened to be borrowing from at the time, had left her as this barrel of a woman. A hippopotamus stuffed into a blouse and skirt, complete with a blonde bob and diamond earrings.
“Uh…”
“That’s right—“ Phoebe said with an accusatory finger, “—you’re afraid to tell me the obvious answer. I got fat.”
That was the understatement of the century.
“And do you know why you were afraid to tell me that?”
“…because you’re my friend and I respect you?” Erin offered with a furrowed brow, “And because that would have been super rude fo—”
“It’s because I’m literally more than twice your size.” Phoebe went back to knife-handing the air, “It’s a psychological trick, like you do with bears in the woods. Or like how royalty used to be considered more important if they were heavy. I’m not sure which analogy I like better. Maybe the bear one.”
“When people see a skinny bitch (no offense!) in a business suit, they immediately think she’s a slut. That she screwed some old guy or one of their dads, and that’s how she got the job. So they still treat her like a secretary because they know that they can get away with it.”
Erin’s expression hardened at the not-so-distant memory of one of her fellow board members handing her a memo.
“They look at me—they can’t not look at me—and they see that I don’t give a shit what they think.” Phoebe said proudly, “I don’t care if they think I’m hot (I am, but that’s beside the point) I don’t care if they think I’m fat (which, again, I am) and I don’t care if the call me a bitch. I’m not there for their enjoyment, I’m there to do a job.”
“…and that… works?”
“It terrifies them.” Phoebe cackled, “They can’t control me, and they know that I could literally crush them with my left ass cheek.”
There was a pause that hung over the dinner table, one that Phoebe used as an opportunity to get back to eating her steak. The sound of metal scraping against plate was the only thing besides the restaurant clamor for a full thirty seconds before Erin decided to venture back in.
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