Zoey “Cheers!” Five glasses slammed together with more enthusiasm than coordination. Liquid sloshed over the rims. Someone missed and hit knuckles. Jamie swore. Morgan laughed louder than necessary. I smiled, which felt suspicious on principle. Smiling in a group was how cults started, and this place had enough charm to qualify as a gateway drug. I k ept my guard up. The tavern was a surprise. When I’d heard the word rustic, I had pictured two stools, maybe a moose head, and beer that tasted faintly of punishment. Instead, it was a lovely, low-ceilinged room carved into the main floor of the equally charming bed-and-breakfast where we were staying, all dark wood and iron fixtures with a bar that, unlike most things in my life, looked permanent. The lights were low but warm—warm enough to evoke feelings, which I had not consented to. I had come here to drink and emotionally metabolize workplace trauma, not to experience ambiance. A few locals sat at the bar, acting like they weren’t listening to us while absolutely listening to us. I respected their technique. There was a scarred dartboard against one wall, a chalkboard menu written by someone who hated lowercase letters, and a fir eplace that looked like a liability. The whole room felt solid and lived in, which should have been reassuring. Instead, it made me wonder if I could trust my surroundings. Alex was midway through an impression of our former boss, and it was unsettling how accurate it was. Same cadence. Same pause before saying something stupid. Same way he used people’s names like weapons. He always said your name right before ruining your afternoon. Sometimes your week. “ n ‘I just don’t think you’re being a team player, Alex,” Alex said, leaning back smugly. “And honestly, it’s fucking concerning.” Jamie made a choking sound. Morgan slammed her palm on the table. “Stop. I can feel my blood pressure rising. I think I’m getting fucking hives.” Cris wiped her eyes. “You even did the head tilt!” I took a sip of my drink and watched Alex continue the performance. We had survived two years of that man. And now, we had documented him into unemployment. That was a sentence I would like embroidered on a throw pillow. So here we were, celebrating it in a tavern in the woods like emotionally r epressed adults on a budget. I hadn’t planned on enjoying this.
I resented that I was. I sat there, amused and a little stunned, looking around the table at women I had technically known for years without ever really seeing them. We had never sat across from one another. We had never known who was tall or short, or what someone’s hands looked like wrapped around a glass, or that every single one of us had been making the same quiet calculation in the background of our work life. And we had never known we were all women, which, in retrospect, explained several things. The competence, for one. The exhaustion, for another. That revelation had happened over dinner earlier that week, after the firing of our asshole boss became official. We had decided a celebratory dinner was a must. We’d spent the rest of the workday organizing and met up that same night for the first time. I had sat there, blinking, realizing that every single one of us had used a gender-neutral name in our fully remote workplace. I went by Zee, which made me sound efficient and unthreatening in a help-desk queue. We knew each other by our Slack handles, our text-only avatars. No profile pictures. We had all protected ourselves in the same way without discussing it. No one had said it out loud, but we had all known. The plan for a girls’ weekend had come together fast, fueled by margaritas and adrenaline and relief. A quiet bed-and-breakfast in the woods an hour north of Albany. There’d be no work tickets there, no escalations. It was the kind of plan people made when they’d survived something stupid and wanted to commemorate by being temporarily irresponsible. I had found Pine Hollow months earlier while researching towns in the southern Adirondacks. I had lived in Albany most of my life, on the same streets, near the same grocery store, inside the same version of myself that showed up whenever my mother called and needed something handled. I told people I wanted a change, which was true in the same way “I need oxygen” was true. What I really wanted was space. Space from her. Space from the routines I had mistaken for identity. Space from a life that had calcified around me so gradually I hadn’t noticed until I started trying to breathe inside it. So, I had started looking north. The towns in the southern Adirondacks had that specific balance I craved. One main road with a hardware store and a coffee shop that closed early enough to tell me the people here had boundaries. A lake nearby, with mountains in the background. It felt structured but not suffocating. Quiet without being empty. The kind of place where you could be known slowly instead of immediately and anonymously categorized. The apartment I found was twenty-five minutes from Pine Hollow, right in town. Walking distance to the grocery store. Close enough to the hospital to satisfy my practical brain, but far enough from my mother that dropping by unannounced would require planning and stamina. And I was moving in this week. I could not be more excited. When I saw the listing for the B&B during my research, I had bookmarked it without thinking because I’d liked the look of the place: the dock over the dark water, steam lifting off the spa in early morning photos. The place would provide stillness without promising miracles. It had appealed to me, like a sort of contained preview of the life I was considering. So, when the idea for a girls’ weekend came up, I knew exactly where we were going. Alex raised her glass again. “To collective action.”
“To documentation,” Jamie added solemnly. “To screenshots,” Morgan said. “To that smug asshole never darkening our Slack again,” Cris said. I lifted my glass last. “To no longer being the emergency contact, AKA the person everyone tags when he screws something up.” We drank. Someone hummed, softly at first, then louder. Alex snapped her fingers and sang, bright and cheerful, “Per my last email n —” I groaned and laughed at the same time. Jamie jumped in immediately, no hesitation. Morgan slapped the table to ke ep time and missed it completely. Cris leaned close enough that our shoulders touched. “Is this really happening?” she asked. “Yes, it is,” I said, helpless. Alex belted the next line about “looping in leadership.” Jamie harmonized like she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment. Morgan clapped offbeat, determined. At the bar, heads turned, but no one asked us to stop. One man nodded like he, too, had been personally victimized by Outlook. By the time we hit the chorus, we were all fully committed. “Micromanaging” rhymed with nothing, but that didn’t stop us. “Hostile work environment” got dragged out for emphasis. Someone at the bar lifted their glass in solidarity. “Here, here!” I was laughing before I could think to stop. It rolled through me, making my face hurt. When it ended, we bowed from our seats like idiots. It was alarming how much lighter I felt afterward. The knot that had taken residence de ep in my chest was beginning to loosen. The bartender was already pouring another round, no questions asked, which suggested he had correctly identified the tone of the evening. Jamie acc epted her fresh drink like she had just been handed a microphone and announced, “Drinking game, bitches.” “Oh no.” “Worst Ticket, Take a Sip,” Jamie announced. “Rules are simple. Worst customer, worst ticket, worst interaction. We vote. Mildly awful is one sip. Unhinged is two. If HR would like a word, then you finish your drink.” It was not so much a game as it was group therapy with a side of liver damage, but I had already agreed to be here and was, apparently, in a mood to ke ep making questionable choices. “Escalation clause,” Alex added. “If someone tops the previous story, the previous teller drinks too.” I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. Morgan went first. Her story in volved a client who insisted the system was broken because it would not acc ept their password. The password was their first name, all lowercase. One sip.
Alex followed with a story about a man who refused to believe Alex was not the intern. He asked to speak to “the real engineer.” Alex was the real engineer. We all stared into our glasses like they might contain answers or poison. Alex took her two sips like a woman who had been waiting years for them. Jamie told a story that in volved a printer, a cat, and a fire alarm. We made her finish her drink. Cris laughed so hard she had to put her head on the table. I stayed quiet, taking small sips. Alex pointed at me. “Zee, you’ve been smiling like a sniper. Your turn.” Four faces turned my way. I hated that I enjoyed the attention. “Fine.” I set my glass down like I was about to testify. “Client r eports the system randomly deletes their work.” Groans rippled around the table. “I asked for logs.” Jamie already had her face in her hands. “They sent screenshots.” Morgan winced. “Of course they did.” “I recreate the issue on my end. Nothing happens. I ask them if anything changed.” Alex laughed without humor. “Nothing ever changes.” “They say nothing changed,” I agreed. “I dig away. I find six new plugins installed that morning.” Jamie slapped the table. “Six?” “Six,” I confirmed. “One of them was a crypto widget. They work in accounting.” Cris choked on her drink. “I point this out politely. I show them the timestamps. They deny installing anything.” Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It is also a personality type. “In writing?” Cris asked. “In writing,” I said. “With their whole stupid chest.” Morgan stared at me. “I would simply pass away.” “I disable the plugins. The problem stops immediately. Surprise, surprise.” I picked up my glass again. “Client r eplies that they fixed it themselves and asks why I took so long if I was a professional.” The table went dead silent for about three seconds. Then chaos erupted. “What do you mean they fixed it?” Jamie yelled. “I don’t understand how you’re not in prison,” Morgan said. Alex leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “I would have committed a crime.”
I shrugged. Took a sip. “I dissociate professionally.” “Finish your drink,” Alex said, wiping tears from her face. I did. After that, the noise got louder, but somehow more contained. Someone slid a bowl of pretzels down the table, and it stayed there like shared property. It was a level of trust I didn’t personally endorse, but I respected it. Cris had angled her chair toward mine at some point. She put her hand on my shoulder when she laughed, and by some miracle I didn’t wince. My nervous system made a note of it and filed it under Unclear but Not Bad. Was I making a friend? I would deny this later if asked. She leaned forward, eyes still on Alex and Morgan as they argued about whether printers were sentient because they were so spiteful. I laughed, surprised by how easy it came. I hadn’t noticed how quiet I’d been for most of the night until I wasn’t. It felt good, which was de eply inconvenient. I took another sip and let myself pretend this was normal for me. Let myself pretend I hadn’t spent years ke eping people at a careful distance because closeness always came with expectations. Pete slid another round toward us and raised his brows at the empty glasses. “You ladies celebrating or coping?” He said it like he already knew the answer and was simply being polite. “Both,” I said. He nodded in understanding. “Excellent. Hydration is available if anyone wants to pretend.” “No one wants to pretend,” Morgan said. Pete glanced at me. “You look like the responsible one.” That was absolute slander. I snorted. “That’s a terrible first impression.” He smiled. Not the greasy kind, but the genuine, bartender-who-has- seen-things kind. I liked men like this. The older ones who were married to their jobs and completely uninterested in me. It was the safest kind of flirting because everyone went home alone and emotionally intact. “You want water on the side?” he asked. “Yes,” I said immediately. “And another of whatever this is. For balance.” “Smart,” he said. “I like you.” I eyed him. “Careful. That’s how it starts.” He laughed and set the glasses down without spilling a drop. This man was professional and respectable. I approved. As the night went on, glasses k ept appearing, and somehow, they k ept emptying. Jamie was laughing at something Morgan said three minutes ago like it had just occurred to her, which felt like a strong sign we were officially past the point of dignity. This was how it always went. I watched for the moment everyone crossed the invisible line between fun and regret. Usually, I was the one standing there with a flashlight and a plan. Cris eyed me with a conspiratorial grin on her face. “You’re smiling.”
“I am not.” “You are.” “It’s a facial malfunction.” Which would, eventually, resolve itself. It had been a long time since I had sat in a room full of people who didn’t need anything from me. No emergencies. No “just a quick question.” No one quietly waiting for me to fix what they broke, smooth the mood, ke ep the night moving, make sure everyone got home safely and nobody forgot anything important. I had spent most of my life being the responsible one, and not in the flattering, capable-adult way people like to compliment when they aren’t the ones carrying it. I had to make sure the bills got paid on time. I had to remind my mother about appointments she had made herself. I had to sign permission slips and track deadlines and learn, early, that if I didn’t hold everything together, it simply would not hold. The drag. That was the word that lived in the back of my head. The wet blanket. The fun killer. The person who showed up to remind everyone that actions had consequences. My jaw tightened before I even realized it. My free hand curled against my leg, nails pressing into my palm hard enough to anchor me. I caught it a second later. Forced my fingers to uncurl. So yes, I was drinking more than usual. On purpose. I lifted my glass and took a long sip. Cris lifted her glass and squinted at it. “I think this one is empty, which feels unfair.” Alex squinted at hers. “Mine is full, which also feels unfair.” Morgan raised both hands. “We have reached the point where fairness is theoretical.” Last call happened at some point. We didn’t heed it. Jamie stood too fast and swayed, then planted both hands on the table like someone about to propose either a crime or a bonding exercise. “I’m done with this game,” she announced. “I want to do something dangerous but socially acc eptable.” I narrowed my eyes. “Those two things do not generally overlap.” “Skinny dipping,” she announced. Cris gasped. “No.” Jamie pointed at her. “Yes.” “No.” “Absolutely yes.” I rubbed my forehead. “You are all drunk, and that is a lake out there. Lakes have rules. You can’t see them, but they’re there.” I didn’t know what they were, but I trusted them to be punitive. This was upstate New York, not Cabo. The lakes here weren’t decorative. They were glacial and moody and owned by men named Gary whose belief in property lines were as intense as their belief in religion. Each body of water came with at least three warning signs, two passive-aggressive dock notes, and one retired contractor who would absolutely call the sheriff over a misplaced kayak. Adirondack hospitality was real, but so was Adirondack
territorialism. You could borrow a snowblower. You could not skinny dip uninvited. “Live a little, Zee,” Morgan said. That phrase had never once been spoken by someone with a plan. Cris looked at me with an earnestness that only appears after too much alcohol and too much collective relief. “I wouldn’t usually do this either.” And that was the problem. I would never. Not sober. Not the careful version of me that made checklists and backup plans. But I wasn’t sober, and I was suddenly violently tired of being careful. “Fine,” I said. “If I drown, though, I’m haunting all of you.” The trail down to the lake was more a suggestion than a path, which seemed appropriate for a bad decision made after midnight. We stumbled through it in a loose line, hands on each other’s shoulders, laughing too loudly for people who were trying not to be noticed. Someone started singing our ridiculous boss song again, and by the time we hit the chorus, we were yelling it into the trees like women trying to exorcise an entire corporate structure by force. Somewhere overhead, a bird made a clear judgment call and relocated. The lake spread out in front of us, dark and still. Jamie had already kicked off her shoes. Morgan was halfway through pulling her shirt over her head. Surrounded by pine and rock that had been here longer than anyone arguing about it, the flat surface of the lake looked harmless. But Adirondack lakes were cold year-round. Snowmelt fed them well into summer. You st epped in thinking you were brave and came out reconsidering your life choices. Somewhere under that black water were ancient tree stumps, abandoned anchors, and probably a canoe from 1987 that someone had sworn they were coming back for. “This is happening,” Cris said. “I’m aware,” I said. We shed our clothes and ran into the water. The cold stole my breath but woke every nerve ending in my body. I gasped and laughed as I went under with them, letting the water close over my head. I came back up to Jamie screaming at the sky. “Why is it this cold?” she yelled. “Because it’s a lake in the Adirondacks,” Morgan said, completely calm, before diving under again like she was trying to es cape the conversation entirely. Cris splashed me hard enough to get water up my nose. “You needed to commit.” “I did commit,” I said, wiping my face. “This was a mistake.” Jamie lunged toward me, arms out, and before I could dodge, she dragged me under. The cold hit again, sharper this time, and when I came back up, I was laughing for real. Then a flashlight shone across the water. Ah. Actions meet consequences.
“Hey,” a man yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jamie swore. Morgan vanished under the surface like she was being hunted. Cris’s hands went flying up to cover her tits. My brain finally caught up. This was the part where I was supposed to do something smart. De-escalate. Get us out. Protect the idiots I had never agreed to be responsible for. Instead, I was still standing there, half drunk and waist-de ep in a lake, tits hanging free. “We’re swimming,” I called back. “It’s a lake. That is the whole point, no?” I had not planned to die on this hill, but here we were. “Get out of there,” he shouted. “This is private property.” Of course it was. Everything was private property up here. Shoreline maps were studied with the intensity of battle plans. People built docks two inches over a line and fought about it for decades. If you were going to commit public indecency, this was not the region to do it in. These people measured their lawns, for God’s sake. “Your property touches public water,” I shot back. “That sounds like a you problem, buddy.” Apparently, the part of my brain that cared about self-preservation was as inebriated as the rest of me. “Get your stupid naked asses out of the water and off my property right fucking now!” The beam of the flashlight jittered, catching bare skin and startled faces. Before I could escalate further, a large form st epped out of the trees. Another man, tall and solid, moved into the light, putting himself between us and the yelling like it was no big deal. “Evening,” the man said calmly. “They’re leaving. No need to ke ep this going.” The neighbor snorted, but he backed away almost immediately, grumbling. “Unbelievable. No shame anymore. None. Just out here like animals.” He sw ept the flashlight toward the trees, still talking. “This is why I don’t talk to people. Bunch of damn exhibitionists.” He k ept grumbling as he stomped down the trail. “Used to be a quiet place. Used to have standards.” The light finally vanished, his commentary trailing off with it. The second man stayed where he was, unruffled. He turned back toward us and stared resolutely at the stars, like this was the most disciplined thing he’d done all night. The mountains rose dark behind him in a backdrop that made every small human drama feel embarrassing. For a moment, the world went very still. I was cold. I was wet. I was surrounded by naked coworkers. This was not in the employee handbook.