Cylithria.com - 1 Word, 2 Words…

“Ma’am, your brother is on the phone.” My assistant says as he pokes his head into office a week later.

“Who? My….brother? Really?” I ask incredulously. My brother never calls me.

“Hello?” I ask cautiously as I answer the phone.

“Sis? How are you????” My older brother asks.

“I’m…..okay. How are you? What’s wrong?” I ask, still uncertain as to why he’s calling.

“I’m great. I called to say congratulations.” I can hear my troops in the background.

“How did you find out? Did she call you?” I ask confused.

“No, I haven’t spoken to her since you guys left. Why would she call? I just got notification from headquarters.”

“Headquarters? What the fuck? How do they know?”

“Sis? What the hell are you talking about?” My older brother asks laughing now.

I take a deep breath, shake my head and close my eyes before answering.

“They promoted me here. Director of European Operations or some shit. I can’t get the title right to save my life. What are YOU talking about?” I say as I sigh and reopen my eyes to look at the screensaver on my laptop. It’s a photo of my son being silly.

“You picked up rank. Congratulations.” He answers, laughing still.

“I WHAT?” I scream into the phone, causing my assistant to come running into my office.

“Who the fuck promoted me? Why?” I am pissed. I don’t want another promotion. I smile weakly and wave to my assistant that I am okay.

“Who do you think?” I can see him rolling his eyes at my inane question.

“Why would they fuck me like that?” I ask, head in hands.

“Calm down, Sis. It’s not so bad. You’re the same rank as me now.” I hear him trying to stifle his chuckling.

“Greaaaaaat. How are the troops?” I ask with a sigh as I change the subject.

“They’re awesome. Proud of you.” I hear the smile in his voice as he answers.

“Hmmmpfffffffff.”

“How’s she?” He asks in a quiet voice after a minute.

“SHE is fine. She’s on an LOA. They won’t promote HER.” I answer trying to be angry but failing. So instead I sigh again.

“Heh. Yeah they won’t promote her. Not yet anyway. That’ll happen after we get home.” He chuckles.

“No shit.” I answer smiling for the first time during our conversation.

We talk for a few more minutes about inane things.

“Oh lookie here.” I say as I see an alert in my inbox alerting me to an official email.

“What?” My brother asks.

“Headquarters is emailing me. I got promoted. Fuck.” I moan. It’s true. I picked up rank. Not that my brother would lie to me, but still, part of me had hoped it was not true.

“What? Did you think I was lying?” He asks.

“No, but I was hoping you were joking.” I say on yet another sigh.

“So, who’s pinning your new rank on?”

“Uh. I hadn’t thought about it. You wanna do it?”

“Really? I was figuring Two A’s would do it.” He stammers, apparently shocked by my offer.

“Yeah really. He can pin the next one on me.” I joke, knowing I probably won’t make the next rank.

“Fair enough. He’ll be older then and more able to understand it. I’ll pin this one on you! Thanks!” I can hear the excitement in his voice.

“Yep.” I reply smiling.