Rental offices are the grown-up version of musical chairs. I had a car sales startup guy next to me, a web developer across the hall, a music producer who was prone to cranking the tunes and wailing, “Strings, baby, strings!” And then, there was Mr. Lonelyhearts. 

He appeared in my office door one afternoon, looking like a disheveled teddy bear in a suit. “Well, hello there neighbor!” He grinned at me. 

His name was John. He was divorced with adult kids. He was a lawyer, with a background as a public defender. He told me what type of law he was practicing now, but by that time, the crunch of the day’s deadline had sucked me back in, so I don’t remember what he said as I smiled and nodded and tried to work with one eye on the screen. 

He became a fixture in my doorway, stopping by every time he came or went. The loneliness reeked off him like the smell of wet dog. I forced myself to pause what I was doing, try to carry on a conversation, but it was more like making occasional interjections into a monologue. One day, while John was updating me on his behavioral health journey, I mentioned that I have depression. The next day, he stuck his head in my door and asked, “How’s your mental state today, D’Arcy?”

My mental state those days was eh. Nothing was crushingly, dramatically wrong. I was in a job I felt meh about, trying to figure out how I could still pay the bills and get back to a career path I actually wanted to be on. I wanted more time with my kid, who was still in preschool. There was a stewpot of resentment on a low burner in the back of my mind, bubbling right next to one full of shame. I just wanted to put my head down, get my work done and go home. I did not want to extend my hours at the musical chairs rent-an-office to engage in prolonged conversations with Mr. Lonelyhearts. But I couldn’t ignore him, as I could feel his pain radiating next to my own. 

I did not say anything. I tried to signal my boundaries, giving shorter responses, making less eye contact. Surely he’d get it. He shaved a few minutes off his lingering visits to my doorway, but they still happened, every day. And then he walked into my office on Valentine’s Day. 

He was holding something wrapped in brown paper in his hands. “There was this woman, I thought we were dating,” he began. “But then it turns out she’s a lesbian. I had already gotten this and you obviously have a big heart, so I thought you should have it.” He put the package on my desk. 

I think we all have default responses to bizarre social situations and apparently, mine is politeness. “Thank you!” I said, staring at the package.

He beamed and nodded, and I realized he was waiting for me to open it. I unwrapped the brown paper and inside found a heart-shaped doily in a frame. It still had the sticker from Homegoods on the back. “Thank you!” I said again. “How kind of you. It’s not really an office style” – and no way was I hanging it in my office – “but I’ll take it home and my husband and daughter and I can decide what to do with it.”

When I told my remote co-workers what had happened, all but one of them agreed I’d done the only thing you could do when a casual acquaintance gives you a heart-shaped object on Valentine’s Day. The exception was Jim, who had a background in security and the steely personal boundaries to prove it. “Nope!” he declared. “Wouldn’t have taken it.”

I spirited the heart home that night, a stopover on its way to the thrift store. After that, John must have gotten busier at work, since he stopped visiting me daily. Maybe, I thought hopefully, with the gifting of the heart our one-sided relationship had peaked.

And then he caught me in the hallway one day. “Hey!” he said, beaming at me like we were old chums. “How ya doing, kid?”

The pot of resentment in my brain suddenly surged. I was on the backside of my thirties. I was a mother. I was a breadwinner. I was doing the good parts and the shitty parts of adulting, surviving, and trying to figure out how to thrive again. To call me ‘kid’, no matter how haplessly, was to completely not see me. 

I knocked on his office door a few minutes later. “I need to talk to you.”

He jumped up from his desk and moved a stack of files off one of the two guest chairs so I could sit down. All around the office, piles of paper were stacked up as high as my waist. But I was too pissed to let pity back into my heart now. “You called me kid out there,” I began. “I’m not one.”

I set some boundaries that day all right. Too late and too sharp, colored as they were by my anger. 

Mr. Lonelyhearts and I avoided each other after that. A few months later, he switched offices. I heard him going on to the rental office lady about how the space just wasn’t working for him. But I knew the real reason. 

I work mostly from home now, so I don’t think anyone’s planning to drop a well-intentioned-yet-inappropriate gift on me this V-Day. But if they did, I’d combine my playbook with Jim’s and add a gentle “no” to my “thank you”.