“I look forward to it,” Daniel said with a smile.
Good Lord, the man haddimples. He had outrageously gorgeous cheekbones and freaking dimples. So not fair.
John left them standing at the coffee bar. An awkward silence stretched between them.
No!No! No! No!
Why did this feel so awkward? There should be no awkwardness here. He was just her coworker.
Samiah cleared her throat and held up her coffee mug. It was probably cold now, but she wouldn’t dare stick around to brew another cup. “I should finish this in my office. I have a presentation to give at noon.”
“I heard,” he said, pitching his chin toward where John had just left. He stepped aside, giving her ample room to pass. She slid past him, ignoring the quiver in her stomach.
“Hey, Samiah?” Daniel called after she’d taken a couple of steps.
She coaxed herself into showing a bit of restraint by turning slowly. “Yes?”
“Don’t sweat all the attention that video is getting. You did what you had to do.”
Her heart lifted with a rush of gratitude that nearly brought tears to her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “I really needed to hear that.” Then she raced for the sanctuary of her office.
Chapter Five
She couldn’t hear it, but she felt it. The methodic ticktock of her internal clock as the seconds quickly ticked away. It was getting closer. Closer.
Samiah reached for her phone and extended the time on the alarm before it had the chance to blare with the annoying sound that was the bane of her existence. She’d set the alarm to go off at seven thirty, determined to leave the office, whether her work was done or not.
Yeah, that wasn’t happening.
She’d moved the goalpost three times already. The first was a promise not to stay past dusk. When the sun started to dip below the pinkish horizon, she changed it to leaving before seven. After gauging the amount of work she still had to complete before she uploaded a draft report of Monday’s presentation for her team’s review, she knew she wasn’t making it out of here before eight o’clock. And that was if she was lucky.
It’s a good thing she’d emptied her DVR a couple of weekends ago, after Craig canceled their date at a club near the University of Texas that she hadn’t wanted to go to anyway. She couldn’t remember the excuse he’d given her. No doubt it had been a lie.
“Asshole.”
The urge to pick up the phone and curse him out gnawed at her, but she resisted. Allowing that sack of wasted skin to consume any more of her energy would serve no purpose. It was time to move past the Craig Walters episode ofThe Life and Times of Samiah Brooks.
Of course, doing so would be a lot easier if interest in that inane viral video decreased, but any hope of that happening dwindled with every hour that passed. It continued to rack up views in the tens of thousands per hour.
She just didn’t get it. The video wasn’tthatentertaining. Men were called out for being lying, cheating jerks all the time. Yet, between the thousands of comments on YouTube, the memes on Twitter, and people constantly tagging her on Facebook, it was obvious that the public remained obsessed with the thing.
Samiah hadn’t realized just how obsessed people still were until she had received a call from a local news station earlier today, seeking to interview her for a story. After emphatically stating that she had nothing more to say about the incident with Craig, she’d texted both Taylor and London. Sure enough, they both had been contacted.
Just as she reached for her phone to reply to their group text, it dinged with the arrival of a text message. It was from Taylor. She’d sent a meme about an actual catfish that had been catfished by a shark, accompanied by Taylor’s commentary,At least we’re in good company.
She replied with three laughing-crying emojis before setting the phone back on her desk and returning to her computer. She stared at her report for a solid three minutes before pushing her chair away. She couldn’t concentrate on work right now, not with the tug-of-war taking place inside her head.
She couldn’t deny that having Taylor and London with her as she faced this Craig mess had made the experience easier than having to deal with it on her own. But the swiftness with which this friendship had developed unnerved her. She didn’t have room for new friends right now. Friends required time and effort. FaceTiming and group texts. Meeting up for drinks and dinner and shopping. Having to reply with an actual response to Facebook posts instead of getting away with a simple Like or smiley face. The overall plan for this particular stage of her life left very little room for cultivating relationships.
Establish a career.
Buy a home.
Find a man.
Thatwas the plan. Sure, she’d backed away from that final item in the heat of the moment on Sunday, but after thinking it over, Samiah had started having second thoughts. Why should she allow one scheming con man to derail her from accomplishing those goals she’d set for herself years ago?
