“Ugh, just let me get my hair and makeup things then we can be done.” I hustle to the bathroom and toss everything into my bag along with my art supplies.
“I’m starving, I’ll find something to whip up for us.” Ash runs for the fridge before I can stop her, “Uh, babe. What the hell is this?” I hear her yell from the kitchen.
I bury my face in my hands. “I haven’t had time!” I holler back and peek around the corner. “Just eat the snacks you brought. It’ll be fine!”
“What?” Jaz pops out of my bedroom. “It’s empty again?”
Ash yells back. “Yeah. We need an intervention. Alright, let’s go down the road and get brick stone pizza!I can’t survive on just chips and chocolate.” Her enthusiasm is contagious as we all slip on our shoes and run out the door laughing.
I’m so lucky to have these two amazing women in my life. I’m not sure where I would be without them.
CHAPTER 9
James
Sitting at my desk,I can’t seem to get a certain brown-haired woman out of my head as I glance at my calendar. I really need to get my shit together and ask her out, especially now that I know she only lives a couple blocks away from my apartment. I make a mental note to have Alester look into her, find anything that might be alarming. I can’t have another Rebecca on my hands, the media would eat me alive, and I’m not sure if I can handle going through it again. It’s best if Alex doesn’t know the entire extent of what I do for a living.
I almost jump as Ryder comes barreling through the door, too buried in my own thoughts. “What are you still doing in here?” he asks.
“Come on in, again. I’m checking my emails and calendar for the day. Is something on fire?”
He blinks at me and taps the doorway. “Well, you’re ten minutes late to our interviews already, so I’d saysomething is definitely happening.” His eyes light up. “Oh! Is it that girl…what’s her name again? Did you ask her out? Where are you going? Are you texting? Am I in the wedding?”
“Jesus. Calm down. I don’t even have her number yet.” I scrub a hand over my face. It’s not like me to forget meetings, but I have been a tad distracted lately. I look at Ryder who’s watching me as if I grew another head. “Well, let’s go then. Don’t want to keep…whoever they are…waiting. We need to fill these vacancies.” I grab my tablet and make my way around the desk. Ryder tries to block the doorway, but I reach out and shove him onto the couch.
“Hey! Maybe if you stop going to the gym so much you wouldn’t be able to take me.” He launches back off the couch, gearing up to tackle me, but I sidestep him at the last second. He has to pivot to avoid slamming into the doorframe.
I pinch my eyebrows together. “And why would that be appealing to me? Why don’t you just spend some time bulking up a little?” Ryder isn’t small, just a few inches shorter than me and has more of a lean muscle instead of extra strength training.
“Hmmm.” He takes off to the conference room where Alester is waiting for us to start prepping before the endless interviews start for the day. I despise interviews, but they need to be completed, and we are all on the same page about finding the right person for each role. We are looking to expand assistant positions, paralegals,IT, and we need to figure out which companies we want for janitorial and security. We may hire the last two in-house, but it’s always good to have options. We look at what they’ve accomplished but we also dig deeper and like to get a feel for their personality. It’s not a traditional interview, which throws most people, but the right candidate enjoys it.
“You made it,” Alester says. “We have a full day, so we should probably start looking at which roles we will want to fill in the next couple of days or weeks. First, we have more assistants to interview, since they’re the backbone and help the most behind the scenes. We need at least three more to start I would think, then we can circle back and look for more. We have ten interviews to get through today for them, so if we like more we can keep them.” I nod, having already read our plan the night before, but Ryder is rapidly taking notes.
I shake my head at Alester, who smiles before continuing.
“We need a designer-slash-marketing person for our campaigns. We can start brainstorming what posting we want to make for it, or if we want to hunt online ourselves, keep your eyes open for artists that you find interesting. We can talk to legal if we need another person here or just relocate someone from our other branch to cover policies here. Maybe a few scouts for companies or generic job duty that we can send to shmoose when we aren’t available.” Alester flips rapidly through his notes, trying to quickly cover every barely relevant position,there will be more later when we are more functioning here.
He throws his finger in the air. “Oh! And we have a few IT slots we are interviewing today, almost forgot. Otherwise, this branch will stay pretty small with mostly us and people to assist, until we find the new leadership for this location,ifwe plan to move back to New York.” His eyes lock onto mine in silent communication. He doesn’t know if I’m staying here. We briefly talked about the possibility to be closer to our family, but it wasn’t a guarantee. I nod so we can continue with our day.
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll text Stacy and let her know we are ready for the first.” Ryder shoots a text quickly on his phone then flips to a new page on his legal pad.
I’m not sure why he insists on paper while Alester and I switched to digital, but he refuses a tablet every time we offer him one. Stacy babies him and transfers all of his notes for him after each day and submits it to his main file hub. He better hope she never retires or he’s screwed. We all are.
The day dragged on with our interviews, but we found the three main people we wanted to fill the secretary slots along with two extra that we may end up offering as well, after we check our plans and financials. The IT people were easy. A young woman and man fresh out of college and eager to set up a new company. They both have plans to stay in the city with plenty of hobbies, plus our pay and compensation make it an easy sell for them. We drafted a list of companies and individuals to go through next week for the other positions. Then we just need someone for marketing, to help promote our clients and make designs for us and them. That’s the tricky part, artists are sometimes particular on things they want to make, and we want someone committed but free thinking.
Ryder follows me into my office and plops onto the couch with his notes. “Man, that was exhausting. Do you want to go out with me again? We can do dinner first. Maybe you can invite that hot chick from the other night.” He raises his eyebrows at me suggestively.
“Sure, but I’m not inviting her because one, you’re crazy and two, I don’t have her number like I said. And we are going to that new brick oven pizza place, none of your weird restaurants.” I power off my computer and grab my keys from inside the desk. I stand and put my jacket on. I should probably dig out my bigger coat for the weather coming tonight. An alert dings on my phone.
“Sold, I’ll go get Alester.” I follow behind him as he takes off towards Alester’s office at the end of the hall.
The door is propped open when I get there. Alester faces five computer screens with various programs open on each as his eyes dart back and forth. “Hang on, I’m just finishing translating this search into multiple documents for you both to go through,” Alester says.
Ryder is standing over his shoulder. “This is what your brain looks like before you organize it and send it to me? This shit is confusing. How do you even know what all of those letters and symbols mean?” Ryder scratches the back of his neck.
Alester continues to type as he answers Ryder. I lean against the doorway. “It’s just a different language. The same as all of the finance programs are in a language that you understand, but I couldn’t care less about any of that. We all have our strengths.”
“Right, but money makes sense. This does not.” Ryder starts tapping his foot. “Are you almost done? I’m starving and might start to chew on your arm if you don’t hurry up.”
