“Yeah. I think I’m going to get the ahi. Tuna sounds good tonight.”
“I’m not talking about dinner, dumbass,” he snaps, setting his glass down.
“Isn’t that why we’re here? Dinner?”
“I want to know what happened at the Velvet Lounge the other night.”
I say nothing.
“With your new assistant…?”
I blink.
“It was your first time out with her.”
I take another sip of my drink.
“Listen, if you don’t say something, I’m just going to make up a story, and the way I am going to describe her in next to nothing is not going to–”
“Shut up,” I snap, cutting him off. He’s not wrong. If he so much as mentions her curves or her lips or the way her breasts swell in her dresses, I’m going to throw him over the edge of this thirty-story building. “It went well.”
“Well? As in she did as she was told? Well? As in she put out? Well? As in she gave you a blow job on the circle couch?” he presses.
“Well as in, I’m going to keep her around. For now, anyway. It was only day one,” I answer. The waitress comes over and takes our order, giving me a much-needed break from Diego’s gossip addiction. This man is my best friend, but he’s a constant pain in my ass.
“Keep her around? You say that as if you were questioning it. The way you hired her on the spot tells me her resume was nothing short of flawless. And she’s very much your type. Why wouldn’t you keep her around?”
I make the mistake of answering the first part of the string of questions. “I never actually looked at her resume,” I admit, regretting it immediately.
“What do you mean you didn’t look at her resume?” Diego lets out a disbelieving laugh.
“I mean…I saw her, and I just knew,” I state.
But Diego, being Diego, doesn’t drop it. “You knew what? That you wanted to bang her?”
“I knew that she was right for the part,” I tell him.
“Okay, but how would you know that if you knew nothing about her?” he presses.
“Because. She figured out the job fast. She figured me out fast. From coffee orders to protocol. I never have to repeat myself. I never have to question anything. She’s devoted.”
The last word that comes out of my mouth surprises me a little. It’s not usually a word that I use when describing my assistants. But at the same time, I’ve never had an assistant like Annelise before either.
“So she’s the one,” he says, and my attention snaps back up to him.
“The one what?”
“You know, the girl you’ve been looking for,” Diego says with a grin as the waitress sets stuffed mushrooms in front of us that Diego must’ve ordered when I wasn’t listening. Either way, it smells good. Being pissed off must burn a lot of calories because I am suddenly starving.
“I’m not looking for a girl,” I remind him. “I’m looking for an assistant. Which, as you know, has been an uphill battle.” I decide to snag one of the mushrooms off the oven hot plate and pop the whole thing in my mouth.
“You? But your standards are so low.”
“I’m not looking for a relationship. Only a woman to play the part,” I say.
“I know, I know. I’m just having fun. Don’t worry, I know you won’t get too attached to her. With the way you test drive ‘em and roll ‘em out, I know better than to think you’ll like any of them too much.”
“She’s not going anywhere!” I clap back faster than I expect myself to, and Diego’s signature shit-eating grin crawls across his smug face.
