Final Hours

The walk back from the restaurant didn’t take long, and since you’d had a late start to lunch to begin with and had been talking with Garrison for so long, you were out of the lunchtime press. Downtown was a lot nicer when it wasn’t a rush hour - you could walk without constantly weaving around people or bumping into them, and the traffic didn’t feel like it was ready to run you down whenever you were crossing the street, even with a light.

The lateness of your return also meant that, by the time you got back and Garrison had headed off to his office while you, Sabrina and Eric headed for the conference room, there were only a couple of hours left in the day.

Your last day. Last afternoon. Last hours.

Each of you had an offboarding email waiting for you in your inboxes when you logged onto your computers from HR, reminding you of all the stuff that needed to be done before you could leave for the day.

“Are we really done… working?” Eric asked as the three of you read through the short lists.

“I guess so,” you said, shaking your head slowly. “They want our computers up to IT by 4 PM, and most of the other stuff requires us to do stuff on our computers…”

“Let’s do a half hour of work,” Sabrina suggested. “We could probably not, but I just- I don’t feel done yet. And Garrison just spent a bunch of money on us.”

You and Eric agreed, and you set a timer on Eric’s phone for thirty minutes and started one last work sprint. Settling into your routine, you focused on the tasks at hand, and the easy banter slipped into only the occasional murmur.

The timer went off before you knew it, and you’d completed three tasks on the master list. Eric had tackled a big one, and Sabrina had picked off six of the smaller ones that were easier to handle in batches when you already had the sluggish processing program open. You almost stood up and reached over to snooze Eric’s phone, but stopped yourself and let him turn it off as the three of you exhaled.

It felt good to be good at the job. It wasn’t hard, but it took finesse. You would have only gotten one of the doc processing tasks done in the same amount of time at the start of the summer.

“So that’s it, I guess,” you said, then let out a heavy sigh.

“Guess so,” Eric shrugged.

The three of you started going through the same end-of-summer tasks that Gemma had the week earlier, with a couple of additions since you were ‘closing down’ the internship and had to bounce back a bunch of the tasks to the Associates and Partners who had requested them. It took about half an hour for you to do your part of cleaning out the tasking program, emptying your email folders and tracking down any saved files to delete. You hadn’t really screwed around on your work laptop so you didn’t feel the need to delete the minimal browsing history or anything, though you did go in and check the slack channels for anything that was left hanging.

You, Sabrina and Eric all headed up to IT together and handed over your laptops with their associated accessories to one of the new techs who were working. You never did find out what the end result was for the guy who was being blackmailed by Joy to get into the backend of the email server - by all rights, he probably deserved to be fired, but he’d also been… kind of pitiful. Worried about the impact of Joy being vindictive on his marriage if he didn’t follow her demands.

If you hadn’t had Sabrina and Gemma that summer, you didn’t want to know how much more trouble Joy would have been for you, and you hadn’t even really had something she wanted.

Once the laptops were handed over, you headed down to HR to fill out the final necessary paperwork, which took a total of five minutes, and you were pretty sure both of the ladies were more than happy to see the three of you off the payroll.

You couldn’t blame them really - multiple lawsuits, sexual harassment claims, discoveries of corporate espionage, not-quite-secret relationships complicating all of those things… There really wasn’t any way you could blame them for thinking of you more as Problems than as Assets, at least from an HR point of view.

Once the paperwork was handed over, you were done.

The three of you drifted to the break room on your floor, grabbing some water and taking a drink as you just… hesitated.

The office bustled on. Without you.

It shouldn’t have been surprising, but it felt off. Like you’d had an impact, but you hadn’t left your mark. A few people might remember you - well, more than a few, considering everything that had happened - but a very few might ‘miss’ you.

“This is awkward as fuck,” Eric said once you were all in the conference room, gathering your stuff for the last time.

“Yup,” you sighed.

“We’ll go say bye to Garrison,” Sabrina said. “That’ll make it feel more… done.”

You were the last one out of the conference room, turning off the light after taking one more glance back at the big table that had been your desk for a life-changing four months. Your spot. Gemma’s spot. Andy’s spot.

Garrison was working in his office when Sabrina knocked, leading you and Eric once the Senior Partner waved you in. “All wrapped up?” he asked.

“We’re officially unemployed bums hanging around your office,” you said with a chuckle.

“Technically, I’m an unemployed client,” Sabrina smirked a little.

“Well, if none of you are interns here anymore, I guess I’d better send off these glowing reference letters for law school to your private emails,” Garrison grinned. “And if you need one for any future internship applications next year, feel free to reach out - I’ll even try not to mention the lawsuits.”

“That would, uh, be great, Sir,” Eric said. Considering he’d been sued twice, he was damn right.

“Thank you,” you said sincerely.

“Now come on, Sir,” Sabrina said, waving for him to come around the table. “I’m not your employee, and I’m not leaving until you give me a hug.”

Garrison grumbled good naturedly and gave a solid Old Man Groan as he stood up from behind his desk. Sabrina hugged him firmly as she murmured her thanks again for the summer, and then stepped out of the way pointedly for Eric, and you watched while suppressing a snort as Eric and Garrison hugged as well.

Then it was your turn, and you decided to offer Garrison the much more manly, and professional, firm handshake and one-armed hug, which he readily accepted.

“This summer has been life-changing for me, Sir,” you said quietly as the two of you embraced, a final reminder of how big he was not just as a personality in the office, but as a man in general. You couldn’t imagine what he would have been like before he’d lost weight. “Thank you for being an amazing part of that, and for giving us so many opportunities.”

“You were up to them, John,” Garrison said, giving your hand a squeeze as it was trapped between the two of you. “Keep up the momentum and you’ll go far. And like I told you, don’t forget to do some living as well.”

“I won’t,” you promised him. “I’ve got a lot to live for, after all.”

He pulled back, looking into your eyes, and chuckled knowingly. “I’m sure you do,” he said, giving your hand one last squeeze and shake as he patted you on the shoulder heavily. Then you let go of each other, and he was looking at all three of you. “Alright, folks,” he said. “Get out of here. We don’t need unemployed bums running around our offices looking up our legal skirts for privileged information.”

You almost choked on your laugh and how cavalier he referenced the Joy incident.

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