The first thing he said that made me uncomfortable happened at a team dinner in my sixth week reporting to him. He was sitting next to me. We had all been drinking. He leaned over and he said, in a voice that was lower than his normal voice, "You know what's unfair? You're too pretty to be this smart." I laughed. Everyone laughs in that moment. Everyone laughs because not laughing makes it a scene, and you don't want to make a scene at a team dinner, and you don't want to be the woman who can't "take a compliment." I laughed.

I went home. I told my roommate. She said, "That's weird but it's probably nothing." I agreed. I filed it in my head under "weird but probably nothing." Two weeks later, he did it again. Then three days after that. Then at a regional off-site. Then in an elevator where we were alone and he told me my new haircut made me "look like a different woman, in a good way." I started writing things down.