“Ew! No, no no! Gail, stop. I don’t want to go. You can’t make me go.”
“Who pays your salary, darling?” she growls, viciously.
My face heats. It must be bright red. Her eyes seem to soften a tinge, and she tries her best for one of her fake smiles. “Look, Jane, dear. I know you’ve been distraught since the whole social media fiasco.”
“Oh really, do you? How could you tell?” I ask in a sharp tone.
“Oh darling, you learn a lot about someone when you read through their personal emails,” she says, winking at me.
What?
“You need to look at the bright side of this little snafu,” she smiles.
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I ask, dryly.
“Look at all the requests for dates you received on Twitter alone.”
“Ha.Youwould call them dates,” I say, rubbing my brow to ward off the freight train of a headache I feel coming on.
“Okay, so hookups. You say tomato, I say—”
“Please stop,” I sigh.
“If I was your age…How old are you again, thirty-nine?”
“Thirty-two!” I snarl as heat flushes across my chest.
“Really?” she asks, lifting a single eyebrow.
“Yes,” I huff, angrily.
“My God, if I were thirty-two again, then I’d rent out an entire football team and social media post the fuck out of all the debauchery I’d have done to me.” She looks off into the distance behind me as if she were seeing the aforementioned debauchery right before her eyes. “Some of those perky cheerleaders too…” she trails off. “Definitely one of those animal mascots.”
“Did you, like, see some inappropriate sexual content at a young age with some strange uncle who smells like broccoli that warped your entire view on the reality of sex?” I ask.
“Oh Jane, can it be that you are still upset with me about putting you on that article instead of Dex?” she asks in a sing-songy voice.I never wanted to punch someone so much in my life. “You’re letting it overwhelm you. I mean, just look at you! You’ve been coming to work, walking around looking like a before picture ever since the live feed.”
“It washispitch.Hewas much better suited for that kind of piece than me!” I huff, standing up angrily. “Consider my view on this, Gail. To millions of myfemalereaders and followers, who read my column for sexy eye shadow trends or hottest novels to masturbate to, I committed the heinous crime of live posting a sex date while in possession of a vagina,” I stammer angrily, grabbing the still-damp-with-coffee crotch of my sweatpants. “A simple Tinder hookup—something thousands of people do every day. And because the Internet is such a shitty place that would reek of two-week-old sour milk if it had a smell, I got coined aharlot for doing it live. I went to college for journalism. I don’t need this—” Before I could really go off on her, a fist rapping on her door stops me mid-sentence. I turn to see who is cutting me off from my self-loathing tantrum.And who still uses the word harlot? Me, that’s who.
“I’m sorry, Gail, am I interrupting something?” a deep sexy voice dances along my skin.
In one perfectly sculpted hand, he holds a stack of photo ads from the marketing department and in the other, a water bottle that I am strangely jealous of. His clothes literallyhughis muscles, and his flawlessly chiseled face is the stuff of legends. He is so perfect that you don’t know where to look first; you want to take every inch of him in.And I mean every inch of him. His name: Heath. His occupation: newly hiredfucksicle in the advertising department. The rumor is he makes it absolutely impossible for anyone in the vicinity to concentrate when he’s around. Even Julia isn’t immune to whatever panty-melting pheromones he gives off. I watched her walk headfirst right into a pole last week because of him. Even Gail seems smitten, sitting behind her desk twirling her hair at him and squirming in her seat.
He’s perfect, but he’s not Mr. Perfect. God, I need to get Nate out of my head.
“Interrupting? You? Never!” she says, blushing and tucking her white-blonde hair behind her ear. “I believe we were done, right, um Jane, dear?” she says, raising her eyebrows at me.
I couldn’t remember a damn thing of what the hell we were just talking about as Heath smiles at me.
Heath smiled atme.
Then, he winks.At me.
Something strange and alarming starts happening to my knees at that precise point, and all I can think about is how he must look without his shirt on. Or pants. Or if he were shirtless and pantless say in, like, my bedroom.
“Jane? We’re on the same page in regards to the costume ball, correct?” Gail chirps, tapping a pen against her coffee mug and smiling up wistfully in Heath’s direction.
“Huh? What? No. No, we are not on the same page,” I stammer, almost incoherently.
