I trained him eight months ago, and then his unlocked screen showed me the number: he makes $31,000 more than I do.

PART 3

The caramel-sweet smell of stroopwafels filled the corner of the office Friday afternoon. Greg was warming one on his desk, the way he always does, and the scent drifted over the divider and landed in the space where I was pretending to review a contract.

He leaned back in his chair. “You want one? I order them special. You have to treat yourself, you know?”

I looked at him. Really looked. His ease. The way he said “treat yourself” like it was a decision, not a luxury. The stroopwafel package on his desk, imported, probably twelve dollars for a box of ten. I did the math without thinking. That’s the problem now. I do the math on everything.

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

He handed it over, still warm. I held it and realized Greg’s financial comfort is visible in every small choice. The good coffee he brings from home. The lunch he doesn’t pack because he buys it.

The ease in his body, the way he leans back and stretches and doesn’t carry the low-grade panic of someone who checks their bank account before purchasing a book.

Priya caught me in the parking garage that evening. I was sitting in my car, engine off, stroopwafel wrapper still in my hand.

She knocked on the window. I rolled it down.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

I didn’t answer. Priya stood there in the fluorescent garage light, keys in her hand, deciding something.

“Can I tell you something?” she said finally.

I nodded.

She leaned against my car. “My last job. I found out the guy who started three months after me was making eighteen thousand more. Eighteen. I didn’t say anything. I told myself it wasn’t worth the fight. I told myself maybe he negotiated better, maybe he had a better offer, maybe it wasn’t really about me.”

“What happened?”

“I left,” Priya said. “Two years later. And the whole two years I regretted not asking. Not fighting. I let them make me feel like it was my fault for not negotiating hard enough at the start, and I believed it, and I left, and you know what I found out after?”

“What?”

“They gave him my accounts. Promoted him. He’s a director now.” She looked at me. “You have to ask, Maya. No one will do it for you. They’ll keep taking as long as you keep giving.”

I stared at the steering wheel. Priya’s reflection in the windshield, my own face barely visible behind it.

“What if they say no?” I asked.

“Then you know,” she said. “And knowing is better than this.”

I went home and opened Greg Data one more time. Scrolled to the bottom. Seventeen working days. $7,843 of accumulated gap. I closed the spreadsheet. I didn’t delete it. I just closed it.

Then I opened my work email and typed: Diane, do you have time Monday morning? I’d like to discuss my compensation.

I sat there for four minutes before I hit send. My hand hovered. I thought about all the things that could go wrong. I thought about being labeled difficult. I thought about the possibility that she’d say no and I’d have to sit next to Greg for another eight months, another year, knowing I asked and it wasn’t enough.

I hit send.

The whoosh sound felt like jumping off something.