The only sound to break the silence was the rhythmic clicking like a clock of Lottie's high-heeled shoes. I had no other choice but to drift along behind her, following as she ascended the stairs from the cafeteria and started off into the main hallway with steps brisk and hurried off knowing exactly where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do. Something I didn't yet know.

Lottie didn't spare me a glance on our way. The walk would have only been a single turn of hallway but I could sense the seconds ticking away, clinging to the moment to figure out what was happening. The air had become slightly more difficult to breathe with every step we took and though confusion reached to the corners of my mind, my stomach twisted in dreaded anticipation that something was about to be very bad.

"Lottie, I..." I began, a half-hearted attempt to ease the situation.

"No," Lottie cut me off instantly and firmly. She kept on walking.

We crossed the turn of the hallway, moving into the row of offices where Lottie's was at the end. It was a few steps past the turn that I began to take notice of a soft sound other than our swift footsteps. Her breath had become uneven, broken. I snuck a glance over at her beside me, though my heart quivered at the idea of what I would see, and found tears glistening in the eyes that refused to meet mine. Despite this, her expression was an unshaken impatience, masking the struggle in fighting back her tears. I didn't make a sound as I walked alongside her.

As we neared the end of the hallway, Lottie drew in a deep, unsteady breath. "Did you know that when you adjust the settings on the phone to delete voicemails as soon as they are accepted, the settings change on all of the other phones as they are linked?" she asked shakily.

She knew what I had done. My stomach quite suddenly felt to collapse in on itself and I opened my mouth to respond, to confess that I hadn't known such a thing and was too young and hurt to know what I was doing, but no words came out. But it wasn't that bad, right? We could have just as easily reversed the settings. Lottie wouldn't have gotten so upset over a silly mistake. There was something else.

A throbbing ache settled in my forehead and stress clawed through my chest as Lottie pushed her way carelessly through the door into her office, leaving me to enter after her. I quietly stepped through the doorway as Lottie crossed the room, stopping at the front of her desk and reaching up in a hasty swipe to hide her tears. Only after the door latched shut again did she turn back to face me.

"I can't believe this," Lottie whispered, slowly turning to face me and meet my gaze again with damp eyes, and then she appeared to correct herself. "I can't believe you."

"What happened?" I asked weakly. It was the only thing I could think of to say. Maybe an apology would have been better—The only time she broke down was when something was truly wrong—But I didn't have the faintest clue what I even did.

"What happened?" Lottie echoed. Whatever anger had been there before had crumbled down as audible distress tore through her voice. "You don't know what happened? You're so ignorant that you don't even know what happened!"

It felt like a gashing hole had just been torn in my chest and I kept my mouth shut. I didn't know where this was coming from. I didn't know what I did wrong this time. I didn't know what I was supposed to do.

Lottie sniffled, distraught and emotional, shakily running her paws over her face as if to calm herself or wipe away her tears again. "I was just on the phone with Isabelle," she choked out, lowering her paws again to look at me. "Do you know what she told me? Do you know what she said?"

She confessed my mistakes behind my back, that I knew. "What?" I answered, a hollowness swallowing the word whole.

"She told me what you did. She told me about what you said and how you turned off the voicemails without saying a word of it to me first. Just to suddenly drop your friendship and run," Lottie declared tearfully. "You are the most selfish animal I've ever known. How long has it been since you've done that? Six months? A year?"

I might have been close to losing the lunch I had just eaten now. My stomach churned and a lightheaded sensation crept into the room.

"I don't understand," I mumbled.

Lottie seemed to be about to answer, but a burst of heavy sobs drowned out her voice. Immediately, she hid her face in her paws as she cried with gasping breaths, shuddering painfully with every sob. I figured that this would have been the best time for any sort of comfort, physical or verbal, but still I stood fixed about five feet away.

"There are three of us here, Digby," Lottie whimpered, her voice thick with tears as she brought her trembling paws from her face. "We're not always going to be around to answer the phone as it is. As for the voicemails that you deleted, we rely on that for the communication and the animals out there depend on us for that ease. If we can't hear them, then we can't respond to them. Haven't you heard them trying to tell us that they feel unheard? That we don't communicate like we used to? Or that this inexplicable change we made is tearing us down and we deserve it? Don't you ever stop and think for even a second what's going on here? Do you remember when all of that started?!"

For a moment, I didn't entirely follow what she was trying to tell me, my mind instead blinded by the intensity of her breakdown, and then everything hit me at once. When I had been younger and more hurt, I hadn't seen the bigger picture as I did in this very moment. Blocking the option of leaving voicemails wasn't just for Isabelle, it was for literally anyone who tried to reach the line and the phone didn't get picked up in time. The HHDA was a massively, immensely known company that received calls multiple times during the day while we were working. Once word got out that the mode of communication had been discarded, leaving minimal chance of being assisted, the information spread like wildfire and turned everyone away for the risk of being "ignored". The reputation of the company collapsed because the voicemails were no longer in use. By my own actions. A blankness flooded my mind at the realization, a tremble shooting down to my own paws as my heart hammered tirelessly and frantically in my chest.

I have done something unspeakable.

"Lottie, I..." I tried to speak. My head had begun to spin, causing the room to sway slightly in front of me. If I didn't find a way to calm myself down soon, then I could have easily seen myself passing out right on the floor. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what I was doing. I'm sorry."

"Just stop it!" Lottie howled. With the tears that poured down her face, her mascara had begun to run down, leaving dark and evident streaks down her cheeks. "Stop saying that! If you meant it, you would have thought about what you were doing before you brought this on us. But you only think about yourself and now look where we are because of it. You have broken us, Digby. We're broken."

A scream lodged in the pit of my stomach. Not at Lottie, never at Lottie, but at myself and at the world I had created for myself. After what I had done, I knew that I deserved every word that was being so violently hurled at me, but they just kept coming and coming and coming.

"You don't have anything to say, do you? You don't know the half of what you put me through!" Lottie went on shrilly between gasping tears. "I put my life into this company! My uncle put his life into this company! We put every ounce of ourselves into working hard to make sure this company made a difference in the world long before you even came here. I was so excited to bring you here so that you could work beside me and now you took it all away from me. You've taken everything from me. You have no idea how happy I was to guide you through everything you needed to know. You have no idea how much I used to care about you."

"I'm sorry," I mumbled weakly. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I'm going to work on fixing this as soon as I come into work tomorrow. I'm going to make this better."

"No, you're not," Lottie insisted firmly. I quickly opened my mouth, ready to jump in and assure her that I really did have the intention of working this out with her, but it wasn't what she meant. "You're not coming back tomorrow. You're not coming back the next day or the next week or even the rest of the year. I don't want you here anymore. Your work here is over."

My heart plunged into my stomach, instantly setting in the desperation as pleads began to spill out. "No, wait," I begged. The tugging urge behind my eyes to cry had surfaced within a second of hearing those words, shaky breaths coming in and going out at record time. "Wait, I can do this. I can change. I can be better. Please don't let me go. I don't want to go. I'll be better. I'll make this better. You'll see."

"How do you expect me to believe that you're going to make things better when you're the one who messed it up in the first place?" Lottie wailed. "You're not listening to me. I don't want you to come back here. I don't want you anywhere around here ever again. That's it. Now get out of my office. I don't want to look at your face anymore."

My thoughts were firing quicker than I could even comprehend, my mind alert and alive in panic. Not now. Not like this. Not so soon after losing Isabelle. I can't lose my job. Most importantly, I can't lose Lottie. I can't. Please don't let this be how it ends. Please.

"Lottie, please," I tried again shakily. I could feel my heart pounding hurriedly in my chest, rattling in my head, as I crossed the room to join her and tugged her into a tight hug the moment I was close enough. It didn't last long as Lottie was immediately prying her way out of my arms and turning up her tear and makeup-stained face to look at me.

"Don't touch me!" Lottie snapped. She set her paw down on the desk beside her, leaning her weight onto it as if she was suddenly having trouble staying upright, but her voice was no less harsh and agonized as she continued to yell at me. "Get out! Just get out."

After that, I could only stand petrified in front of her, the same rotten and sour-tasting feeling from no more than twenty minutes ago building in my stomach again. Lottie still stood with one paw leaning her weight onto the desk and sobbing heavily and hysterically into the other, quivering noticeably with every wave of tears. There was nothing that could have taught me better what a broken and ended friendship looked like in its clearest signs.

It was only after several seconds did Lottie move again. She finally straightened up from putting her weight on the desk, wiping her face as a weak sob escaped her, and she wordlessly walked around the desk to take a seat. I watched her as she collapsed down into a seat at her desk, setting her elbows on the surface and her head in her paws, and suddenly, at last, went quiet.

I decided that it was about time for me to leave. I gulped down the last of my words, numbly turning on my heel and starting off towards the door. Just as I set my paw on the doorknob again, about to return to my own office and collect my belongings for the last time, Lottie spoke up again, her voice still tearful and strained.

"I thought you were different," Lottie mumbled, refusing to raise her head from her paws.

I twisted the doorknob and stepped through the door without a word.