His eyes met mine. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about. Seriously.”
“You know, with the picture that wasn’t actually of me?”
He chuckled. “Not sure who you’re sending pictures to, but it certainly isn’t me.”
I sat there and stared at him for a while, trying to figure out if I had lost my damn mind. Either he was really good at putting on a face, or I had dreamt the entire thing. But, I couldn’t have, right? It actually happened. I watched my emails get wiped. I watched the messages on my now-non-existent dating app delete themselves before my very eyes.
But that didn’t stop me from standing and nodding my head softly. “Well, I’ll go ahead and get to work then.”
JoJo snickered. “You should. I’m paying you to work, not sit in my office and talk.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you later, then.”
I meandered back to my desk, lost in my thoughts. Clearly, someone had logged onto not only my dating app, but also my personal email. But I didn’t know who the hell could have done it. I didn’t know anyone with that kind of expertise, and I’d never stepped foot into the I.T. Department, much less pissed someone off down there.
And as I sat down at my desk, tears rushed to my eyes.
“I just want control of my life back,” I whispered to myself.
I pulled out my phone and navigated to the only shred of proof I had that something had happened yesterday. I read through the texts exchanged between JoJo and myself, and it brought me a modicum of relief. I wasn’t crazy. It really had happened. But that still didn’t give me any answers as to who was trying to ruin my life.
“Damn it,” I whimpered.
I went against everything within me, and I deleted those messages as well. And with that, the last shred of evidence I had of the activities of yesterday were gone. I leaned back and let the tears flow. It wasn’t as if I had on any makeup to ruin in the first place, so it didn’t matter. I felt trapped within my own life. It felt like this entire city was out to destroy me simply because it didn’t like the fact that I wanted JoJo’s attention. That I wanted answers.
It was almost as if the city were working against me to throw me out.
But, by deleting the last little bit of evidence, I felt a sort of pseudo-control come back. After shedding my tears of stress, I wiped my face clean and straightened my back. I guzzled down the terrible coffee and felt the caffeinated bliss rushing through my veins. My muscles came alive as I booted up my desktop computer, and I figured that if JoJo could pretend like this shit didn’t happen, then so could I.
Which made the perpetrator null and void in my life.
“Here we go. That’s the stuff,” I murmured.
With every email I answered, I put the squabble of yesterday behind me. With every call I took, I felt a control over my life falling back into my lap. It felt good to ignore the problem. It felt good to act like something didn’t exist. The only power I gave over was the power I was willing to give, and I didn’t want to give the silent perpetrator any other lease on my life. If they wanted to be miserable, that was fine with me. But they sure as hell weren’t going to drag me down with them.
And by the time lunch rolled around, I was back to my usual self.
“Knock knock!” Brit sing-songed behind my door.
I giggled as I stood. “Come on in, I’m just logging out for lunch.”
She whipped my door open. “Good, because there’s this fabulous--.”
My desk phone started ringing and I held up my finger to Brit. She mouthed that she’d meet me downstairs and I waved her off with a nod of my head. We tried to walk to our lunch spots every chance we could in order to stretch our legs and get our bodies moving. And as I drew in a deep breath, a smile crossed my face.
“TechGiants, this is Rebecca speaking.”
JoJo’s voice was clipped. “My office. Now.”
“I actually just clocked out for lunch. Can it--?”
“What part of ‘now’ don’t you understand? Get up here, Miss Loren.”
I furrowed my brow. “All right, I’ll be up there soon.”
I dropped the phone back into the receiver before shooting a text off to Brit. I wasn’t sure how long this tongue-lashing would take, so I told her that if I wasn’t downstairs in ten minutes to head on without me. She sent me a thumbs up with the hashtag “good luck,” and it made me giggle as I headed for the stairs. But I wasn’t laughing the second I stepped into Joseph’s office.
Because he looked genuinely upset.
