A noise I’ve never made before, somewhere between a dying cat and a scream muffled by a pillow, escapes from my mouth.
“Oh my God, oh myGod,no, no, no?—”
My hands are shaking, one clasped over my mouth, the other screwing my screen up so badly from the tremors that I struggle to reread my messages and his response. I feel like I’ve just dropped a nuclear bomb onmyself. I feel like I’ve just driven a clown car into crates and crates of gunpowder and set myself on fire. My entire career, mydignity, flashes before my eyes in bursts of embarrassment so strong I think I might black out.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
I can’t text him back. What the hell am I even supposed to say?
He knows.
HeknowsI think about him. He knows I fantasize about him. Oh no, he knows I want him to bend me over his desk and call me a good girl like we’re in some kind of early office porno.
Oh my god.
My brain flatlined. No thoughts, just static. I stare at the screen that’s shaking in my hand. Maybe it’ll glitch, or reverse time, or set itself on fire in solidarity with me. It does not. It just stays intact, glowing brightly, proudly displaying my thirsty little meltdown in its entirety to the man who signs my checks.
My boss.
My literal, very attractive, and emotionally constipatedboss.
By this time tomorrow, I’ll be a cautionary tale passed down through generations of interns.
Did you hear about the old Executive Communications Manager?
Oh my god.
Oh mygod.
Chapter 4
Anthony
Iarrive at Voss & Bartley earlier than I need to. Not out of nervousness, but out of necessity.
I want to enter the building when it is quiet and still. I want no distractions or interruptions; no eyes watching my face for the cracks I refuse to show. I want a moment to breathe in the stillness of the empty top floor before she shows her face.
The lights flick on one by one as I walk down the hall toward my office. The late autumn morning sun only half-lights the unlit zones. Ironically, the city that never sleeps is waking up and starting to move down below. For reasons I never quite understood, this is the time of day when being up this high over it all feels the most likepower.
I slide my coat off as I step into my office. I hang it in the closet, shut the hall door behind me, and set my briefcase down on my desk. I don’t bother turning on a light. It’ll be bright in here soon enough when the sun fully rises and burns off the misty fog. I don’t love working beneath harsh overhead lighting, anyway.
The idea of leaving the door between my office and April’s closed is preposterous to me, especially when I know that’s exactly what she’d want. She’ll need every ounce of nerve just toshow up, and I’m not letting a closed door fool her into thinking she’s earned a moment’s peace. She can walk straight into the storm. I won’t sit here listening to her gather her courage.
I open itjustwide enough so that I’ll be able to see her the moment she steps in. Part of me wants her to walk in and see there’s nowhere to hide.
Part of me wants to see how she’ll react.
I lean back against my desk, arms crossed, letting the silence stretch. I tweaked the Paris press release last night once I realized there wasn’t a chance in hell that it would be fixed this morning, so there’s nothing to do but wait. The email,thatemail, is still fresh in my mind, sharp as glass. I’ve read it ten times since yesterday evening, not because I didn’t understand it, but because I did. Too well.
And then camehermessages. Sent by accident, or maybe fate, clearly meant for someone named Nicky who is absolutely not me. When they started trickling in, I thought for a moment that it wasn’t about me. I didn’t believe it was real, thought that maybe I was thinking too much into it, that she was talking about someone else. But the moment she mentioned my text asking her to come in early, the moment she wrote myname, the evidence turned damning.
Her words weren’t just crude. They were honest, frustrated, bare—a written-out fantasy she’d clearly indulged one too many times. They were enough to make my brain short-circuit and my blood rush south. They were enough to make me question too many HR policies. They were enough to make me consider things I shouldn’t be considering more seriously.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it all night.
I couldn’t stop imagining her, somewhere, probably getting off on the idea of her splayed out like a feast on my fucking desk.
