“Good. I’m doing good. Just been busy with work. Year end, auditors, you know how it goes.”
Gemma smiled. “Actually, I don’t know the first thing about year end and auditors, but please spare me the details. It sounds dreadfully boring. So what do you wanna do tonight? We could go to that club downtown…the one with the hot bouncers. We could ask Neil to come along. He’s in more need of cock than you are.”
Jordan groaned. Even though she was very tempted to spend the evening watching the “who picked up more guys”competition between Neil and Gemma, she had otherwise committed herself to something much less entertaining. “Gem, can we do it tomorrow night? I already have plans for tonight.”
Gemma’s eyes sparkled. “Who is he?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Jordan. You’re going on a date.”
“No! Not a date. I was distinctly told it is not a date.”
“But you are going out? With a man?”
“Yeah, it’s just dinner…with my boss.”
Gemma coughed out a laugh. “Are you serious? You don’t go out with anyone for over a year and then you cave in to date your deadbeat boss.”
“It’s not a date!”
“Then what is it?”
Jordan shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s…it’s weird. He was acting so strange today. He wasn’t himself. He kept staring…at my breasts.”
“Well, I don’t blame him. You do have a fantastic pair of knockers. Those tits were made for the money shot in a porn movie.” Gemma finished off her tea and put her empty mug in the sink. “If you ask me, this is not a bad thing. Like I said,it’s been over a year and you are in desperate need of a good humping.”
Jordan unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it off her shoulders. “Gemma, he’s my boss. There shall be no humping. And I have a standard. I kinda have to be remotely attracted to a guy before I sleep with him.” She tossed her blouse into the washing machine before making her way to her bedroom.
Gemma followed her in and tossed herself lazily onto the bed. “If you’re not gonna fuck him, then why in the world did you agree to go out with him? It’s certainly not for his gripping personality.”
Jordan opened her closet and began rummaging for something to wear. “I don’t know, Gem. Something isn’t right. He’s up to something and I need to find out what it is.”
The Date
Tyler walked apprehensively down the pathway leading to the door of her little townhouse. The sun was beginning its descent, the orange and purple hues lighting up the evening sky. The air was a little cooler tonight, but Tyler still felt quite warm. It was the nervousness. This was a bad idea. Every cell inside him was screaming this was a bad idea. He was going to take Jordan out to dinner, the same woman who color-coded her stationery and ate ice-cream for breakfast.
What kind of crazy person eats ice-cream for breakfast?
And now he was going to spend the entire evening with her and pretend he was actually interested in what she had to say. He’d made a mental list of conversational points. There could be no stilted silences when Trisha saw them together. The conversation needed to seem professional to Jordan yet intimate to Trisha and that was going to be pretty hard to pull off. For a second he thought about calling the whole thing off, but he needed to do this. His happiness depended on it.
He knocked on the door and a while later, when there was still no answer, he knocked again. A woman, who looked as though she had just robbed a clown of all his apparel, answered the door.
“Hi,” Tyler said, a little confused. “Sorry, I think I have the wrong house.”
“You’re looking for Jordan, right?” she asked, brushing her strawberry-blonde hair out of her face. Her smile was so wide, it looked almost sinister. “I’m Gemma. Come on in. She’ll be rightwith you.” She allowed him to enter and walked with him to the living room. “Have a seat. I’ll get her.”
Gemma raced out of the living room, past the kitchen, and headed straight for Jordan’s bedroom. “Oh, my God! You didn’t tell me your boss is such a hottie! Fuck!” She fanned herself with her hand. “Fuck! Oh, my God! So hot! You’ve been working with him for two years and not once did you think to mention that fact to me.”
Jordan looked at her friend as if she were deranged. “Maybe you don’t see what I see. After a while, his looks are the last thing you notice.” She turned to look at herself in the mirror one last time. “He’s taking me to some fancy Italian restaurant and this is the nicest dress I own.” She slowly turned around. “How do I look?”
Gemma smiled. “Like you’re going on a date.”
Jordan rolled her eyes, grabbed her purse, and walked out.
Tyler sat on the sofa and tried to shift away from the cat who appeared to be sniffing him. Every time he moved an inch to the left, the cat moved too. It seemed completely fascinated by him, as if it had never seen a human before, but he needed to create a big enough gap between them. The last thing he wanted was fur all over his beige Armani jacket.
He tried to ignore the cat and the funny noises it made and looked around the room. The place was very small, seeming more appropriate for leprechauns and elves than for humans. The kitchen was a few feet away, almost merging with the living room, and there was a narrow corridor to the right of the fridge where the clown-mugger had disappeared into. Tyler assumed the bedrooms were down there.
