For one surreal second, I just stared at him.
I had imagined maybe another interview.
Maybe a referral.
Maybe advice.
Not this.
Not a job offer sitting right there in the middle of the table like a door being kicked open.
“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered.
He leaned back.
“That seems to be a running theme.”
I laughed then.
Actually laughed.
It came out shaky and disbelieving and more emotional than I meant it to.
I looked down, swallowed hard, and blinked fast.
The last twenty-four hours had ripped me up so thoroughly that kindness hit like a blow.
“I want it,” I said finally. “If you mean it, I want it.”
“I mean it.”
“When would you need me to start?”
“How soon can you?”
I almost said immediately.
Then I thought of Emily.
The girls.
The fact that my whole life had already whiplashed once in a single day.
“Tomorrow?”
That made him smile.
“Tomorrow works.”
He stood and extended his hand again.
I rose so fast my chair nearly scraped backward.
When our hands met, it felt less like a greeting and more like a bridge being built in real time.
“Welcome aboard, Sebastian.”
I shook his hand.
And for the first time since the morning before, I felt something stronger than fear.
I felt possibility.
When I got back to the car, I sat there with both hands on the wheel and the official offer papers on the passenger seat.
Then I called Emily.
She answered on the second ring.
“How did it go?”
I couldn’t help it.
I started crying.
Not the broken, humiliated kind from the day before.
The stunned kind.
The relieved kind.
The kind that comes when pressure leaves a body too fast.
“Sebastian?”
“I got it,” I said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Em, I got it.”
There was silence for half a heartbeat.
Then she made this sound that was half gasp, half sob.
“Oh my God.”
“He hired me. Senior outreach strategist. Better pay. Benefits. Everything.”
I heard a cabinet door slam in the background.
Then Claire asking, “Mom?”
Then Emily again, voice shaking.
“I knew it. I knew it.”
“No, you hoped it.”
“I knew it anyway.”
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel.
“It’s real.”
“I’m proud of you.”
Those four words hit me straight in the chest.
