"You got this, Marigold. Everyone knows Ashley has to go after all the things she's said to customers. Remember when she—" I searched my memory for a while, but all the bitchy things she had said to customers were no longer stored there. Instead, all I had were recollections of when she told someone exactly what the rest of us were thinking but didn't have the guts to say.

I smiled to myself. Like the time a guy made a few too many comments about another waitress's body. Ashley was the only one with the mouth to kick him out and tell him just how much he'd never have the honor of seeing said body. Good times.

I put my head in my hands. Why didn't my temporary title come with a little bit more power? I wasn't asking for much, but just enough to have a say in truly meaningful matters.

A few days had passed since my fun night in with Mason, and somehow during that time, I had managed to work up the courage to follow through with George's order to fire Ashley. It was true that she had an attitude, but was that a bad thing? Not always.

But in this case, it was a little bit of a bad thing when I was the one who was supposed to give her some bad news. Hopefully she would take it easy on my self-esteem once I told her it wasn't my decision.

I let out a loud sigh. No one was around to hear it, and it didn't make me feel any better either. There was still a herd of elephants stampeding through my digestive system.

As she passed by my open door, I called her in to my office, and she poked her head inside.

This was a bad idea. I needed a witness or something.

"You want to take a seat for a second?" I asked.

She plopped down in the chair across from me. "You don't have to tell me twice. I really have to tell you, I'm over everyone still telling me that they're sorry for our loss here. Like, she's six feet under ground now. We don't have to be sorry anymore."

I kept my jaw from dropping, but I couldn't imagine that I completely kept the look of surprise off of my face. "That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. We don't feel you're handling the stress of the situation in a healthy way."

"Okay, but I don't know why—"

I interrupted her. "You're taking it out on customers, coworkers, everyone. And you've been doing that as long as I've known you. You do great work when you want to, but most of the time, you don't want to."

Who on earth was taking over me? Because these words sure as hell weren't mine.

She let out a breath and looked at the floor beside her. "So you're so important that you get to tell me what to do now. I've worked here longer, but you somehow got the office and I didn't, and you just want to rub it in."

I shook my head. "Ashley, I don't want to be saying any of this, but it's true, and it's probably for the best if you just—"

I searched for the words I wanted to use, but before I could find them, she spoke up. "If I just what, Marigold?"

"I have to let you go, Ashley. I don't want to, but I have to," I said.

"So I'm fired."

I nodded. "I just want you to know that it wasn't my choice, and I've really loved working with you. You're a good person."

Even if she had quite a mouth, she had a good heart. I knew that, even if other people couldn't see it.

"Wow," she said as she bit down on the inside of her cheek. The wheels were turning in her mind, and I tried my best to ignore the steam coming out of her ears. "After all we've been through together, I didn't think you would do me like this, Marigold."

"I told you that I—" But I didn't get to finish my sentence before she stood up and undid her apron as she walked out the door.

I wasn't really sure how I expected that to go, but that was somehow simultaneously better and worse than what I had in mind.

"Dammit," I muttered to myself. Once again, no one was around to hear it, and just like before, it still didn't make me feel any better. But now it was done, and once we got all the paperwork squared away, it was official.

Paperwork. There had to be something George needed to sign, right?

I opened up the drawer to the filing cabinet behind my desk to look for some kind of form to put what just happened in writing, but inside there were a bunch of folders with all of our names on them.

Files?

I picked two folders out of the drawer, Ashley's and my own. I had only been written up once for being late because my car wouldn't start in the morning, but it couldn't hurt to see what else was in there.

I opened up Ashley's first, and it was just about stuffed full of papers signed by both Ashley and Lydia acknowledging her unacceptable behavior. For telling a customer she was a fat bitch, for giving her coworker the finger, for refusing to perform her job duties as assigned.

I grimaced. With a history like that, how could she hold the firing against me?

But before I could let that thought ease my mind (and before I could even take a peek at my own file), my office door opened up, and in walked Mason.

I smiled. "You should probably knock if you want to come in. It's only polite."

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I just wanted to see how firing Ashley went."

"How'd you know I just did that?"

"Well, she stormed out and announced to all of the customers that you're a two-faced bitch who's on a power trip right now."

My shoulders sank. "But I'm not. I'm just doing what George told me to do."

Two-faced? How was I two-faced, even if I did tell her that she was a bit of a handful sometimes then tell her that she's a good person in spite of it? That wasn't two-faced.

Mason paused for a moment before he replied. "I guess that's all you can do. It's still his business, and not yours."

I nodded. "Exactly. I'm just trying to help right now, but I didn't know it was going to end up hurting people."

And I especially didn't know that it was going to hurt me too, even if I probably was doing what was right. Probably.

But before I let myself think about it any longer, I changed the subject. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in distracting me just long enough that I forget about everything that went wrong today."

"What do you have in mind?" he asked.

I certainly only had one thing on my mind (the red sailboat), but asking directly was probably a bit rude. Instead, I looked down at my desk and shrugged. "I don't know. I'm tired of thinking right now."

He looked back at the door, still wide open, and he leaned in closer to me and lowered his voice. "Can I have the rest of the day off? I mean, you're kind of in charge if you can fire people."

"That goes against the spirit of distraction, Mason. How can I allow that?" I said with a smile. Rudeness be damned. "Can I see that red sailboat you were telling me about? It'd really cheer me up."

He nodded. "Let's go."

He turned for the door, and before he could head out, I had to ask him, "Now?"

"Obviously."

"But we still have work."

"And who's going to stop you? You're in charge when George isn't here, so what you say goes," he said. "Well, as long as I don't have to be here either."

I smiled and shook my head. "I guess that's true. I've clearly had a bad day. I deserve something nice." And in that moment, my idea of nice was to ignore my desk and my crafts for an afternoon while I was on a boat.

I grabbed my purse and waved for him to go ahead without me. I didn't need any rumors going around about what was going on between him and I, especially since I didn't even know myself. And where was a better place to relax and figure things out than on a picturesque sailboat on a Great Lake?

I smiled to myself as I put my keys in my purse. Maybe I had a little bit more power than I thought.

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Hello, and thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate your support as we make progress on this book!

So for today's question, in a movie about you, which actor would play you?

I don't really know for myself, but I've been told that Lily Collins would be a good me. And I can't disagree with that either.