My “Best Friend”

I stare at the woman leaning aggressively on the other side of my low office partition, my newly found, soaring confidence violently freezing in my veins. My breath catches painfully in my throat, and my heart completely stops. The bustling noises of the office—the clacking keyboards, the ringing phones, the muted chatter of my coworkers—all fade into a distant, underwater ringing.

Of all the peo