24

She beamed like the morning sun, and he felt as if a massive cold granite wrecking ball had hit his stomach and was dragging him straight down through the floor into the fiery pits of hell. A wave of nausea moved through him, and he turned away from her and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling glass wall at one end of his office.

Derrick slid his hands into his pants pockets and stared out into the city. From the height of the top floor of his building where his office was located, and from the point of view from where he stood nearly against the window, it looked almost as if he was standing at a precipice, staring down into an abyss of the city, and he realized that it was the perfect metaphor for the exact position of his life where he found himself at that moment.