Skin

A young woman sitting behind a computer took a sip of her coffee. She ran her perfectly manicured hands through her dark hair and groaned in the highest of all frustrations.

”This goddamn coffee’s gone cold on me again,” she said to no one in particular, as she was the only one in the office. The woman was so tied up in her work she had completely forgotten about her coffee. She buried her face into her hands, no longer worrying about messing up her perfect cat-like eyeliner and mascara. Rubbing her eyes in exhaustion, she looked at the black marks left behind on her fingers.

She scratched at her head, grabbed the lukewarm coffee, and headed to the office floor’s lunch room. She had been on her feet all day and couldn’t take the pain from her heels any longer. As her coffee heated up in the microwave, she removed her shoes and stood barefoot. It was oddly quiet in the building. She was so used to the buzzing sound of business men and women talking about numbers and profit. But as she looked at the clock hanging from the wall, she realized how late it was.

”Of course, only crazy people are up this late catching up on work.” Again, to no one in particular. But what jolted her around, was the voice of another person.

“Welcome to the crazy people club!”

She put her hand to her chest and released a few in-and-out breaths.

“Felicity, hi. I didn’t know anybody was still here.”

Beep, beep, beep. The microwave sounded off.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I do a lot of late nights here.”

“Do you really?” She asked in a bit of a shock. For the life of her, she could not imagine anybody wanting to stay at work late on a Friday night. Not even the eccentric Felicity Smoak. The two worked in different departments, but everybody seemed to know everybody either way. She was a little quirky, but Felicity was a genius. Both young women were, actually. But perhaps in different ways. After all, they were both 25 year olds in a multimillion dollar company.

“Yeah, from time to time.. I have a few assignments to follow up on,” Felicity said coyly. “What about you, Violet? What’s keeping you here on a Friday night?”

The young woman bit the inside of her cheek, “same. Just a few items that need to be reviewed before sending out.”

Felicity shrugged and walked over to the coffee machine and made her own cup. “You doing anything for the holidays?”

“Nope,” Violet said with a slight popping of her ‘p.’

“You and your fiancé aren’t doing anything?” Violet shook her head.
“Not even your yearly grand holiday party?”

Violet looked down in embarrassment. She and her fiancé threw a huge Christmas party every year and Felicity was never invited. It wasn’t that Violet didn’t like Felicity, necessarily. That was not the case- Violet just thought Felicity was a little weird. Felicity had such a close “working relationship” with the owner of the company, and nothing about it seemed right. Something always felt a little off with her. Violet couldn’t put her finger on it, but it made her raise questions.

“No..”

“Oh? Are you guys going to be visiting family members then?”

“No..”

“Weekend away?”

She sure asks a shit ton of questions…

Violet shook her head again.

“But it’s the holidays, surely you two have plans!” At this point, Violet was agitated. It was well past midnight and she had been in the office before she could even eat a proper breakfast. Her coffee had gone cold on her six different times before she could take a sip out of it. She still had 13 pages of reports to put together before her next shift at the office started (which in this case, was in the next 6 hours). And today, she found out the love of her life had been cheating on her with her best friend. Violet was not having a good day.

“Josh and I are actually no longer together.” She said, her voice slightly quavering.

A look of actual disbelief swept across Felicity’s face. “Oh my god, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have pestered. I’m actually not upset about not getting an invite again this year.”

As bad as Felicity felt, she wasn’t all that surprised. Violet was never the nicest girl in the office. She always had an air about her that screamed, ”look at me, I’m perfect and pretty. My hair is always done to perfection even though these are probably extensions, my make up is so nice even though I probably don’t need it, oh, and look at my heels! My boyfriend bought them for me, even though I can afford 100 different pairs.” Felicity had spent her fair share of mocking the other woman in her spare time. She recalled a moment in the break room where Violet mocked a coworker for wearing something “atrocious” behind her back and complimenting her a few moments later. Felicity always thought Violet was childish and immature.

But still, break ups were hard. Relationships, in general, were hard.

Felicity cleared her throat to shake off the memory, “Will you at least be going home to visit your parents?”

“No, they’re in Coast City, and I kind of just want some alone time after all this.”

“You know what you should do? You need to get away.” Felicity was suddenly reminded of a very happy and bright place. A place where everybody was positive and in such good moods. She felt that Violet needed a change from Starling City’s often dark and brooding environment. “Go and visit Central City! There’s not too much to do out there but just go and get your mind off of things. It’s probably the happiest place I’ve ever been to. I’d stay there for a few days and just try to be reminded of what it’s like to be happy.”

“Central City? Hm.. At this point I’ll give anything a try.” Violet desperately wanted to get out of Starling City for however long she could. She also realized she still had some vacation time saved for her honeymoon. But that was obviously never going to happen. Might as well use that time to leave town and clear my mind. Suddenly, she was feeling a lot better. She would leave town for a few weeks and come back a changed person. “Thanks for the advice, Felicity. I like that top, by the way.”

With a swift hair flip, Violet was out of the room.


Felicity stood there and considered never wearing that shirt ever again.