It’s finally too much.He glares.He de-slinkifies.All of a sudden, he’s standing with prissy precision, trying to melt me with his eyes, and then he stalks out of the room.
I should set a timer on my watch.I give him twenty minutes.
The worst part is, he likes it.
I pick through the phones, looking for any that are clearly beyond saving.With most of them, I won’t know until I plug them in and try, but I set two aside as visibly beyond repair—one looks like it’s been smashed with a hammer, and the other has chewing gum pressed into the receiver.The box with the survivors goes against the wall, and then I’m back at the desk, checking my laptop, looking at the never-ending to-do list.
If I could be here more than a few nights.If I had more time than the weekends.
Furniture for the drop-in room.
Somewhere to plug in these fucking phones.
My eye is already starting to throb.
Fix this fucking fluorescent.
But all those things require money, and while the college has been generous enough—if that’s the right word—to supply us with space, they’re not handing out any cash, and the small grant I received from the state ran out a long time ago.
All of which means donors.
And that’s why, in thirty minutes, I need to be ready.
I take all of WISP’s paperwork out of the filing cabinet and spread it out on the desk.WISP—Wahredua Intimate / Sexual Partner Violence Initiative (we couldn’t figure out how to make the V work.Or, for that matter, the second I)—is still getting off the ground.That’s putting it politely.The reality is that the nonprofit is kind of blindly humping its way along because: a) I don’t have enough time to do it properly, and b) even if I did, I don’t have the money to really get things going.
Problems for another time.
More specifically, problems for about twenty-six minutes from now.
I spend some time reviewing our organizational plan.I make sure I’ve got my cost projections, my budget estimates, my fundraising goals.I’m not exactly a finance wiz, and there’s this part of me watching from the sidelines, seeing me in this dingy little cupboard with stacks of paper around me, my eye starting to twitch, that can’t help but think,Nerd.And not the sexy kind of nerd, where a hot guy just puts on a pair of glasses.There’s this part of me that isdyingat the fact that I’m in this fucking room, for another fucking night, instead of out doing—
Well, Robin.
No, I tell myself.
Absolutely not.
“Do you want some coffee?”Robin asks.
It’s only been eighteen minutes.
“Get out!”
“You need a massage.If you sit like that, you’re going to hurt your back.”
I’m not Emery Hazard, so I don’t throw a stapler.But I do put the laptop between me and Robin and stare at the screen until he huffs away.
When a knock comes at the door, I can’t help it.“No, Robin, I do not want a new pen or a roll of tape or a foot rub or a blow job.I want to get these fucking numbers right before I—”
It’s not Robin, of course.
“—talk to Kayla.”
Kayla is legit.She’s probably ten years older than me, she makes absolutely no effort to hide her grays, and she smokes like she’s afraid someone’s going to grab the pack out of her hand.She also has way raunchier jokes than me, so she just resettles her glasses and says, “If he’s offering.”
“God, don’t let him hear you.”
“I heard her,” Robin sings out from the front of the suite.
