I looked around the office, but nobody looked like they’d sat down at my desk for a second and left their beverage. Sighing, I picked it up, moving it to the edge and out of my way, when a small wadded-up paper underneath the cup gave me pause. I set the drink back down and unfolded the note.
Kiss Cam,
Heard about the tires. I was once told there wasn’t much a DP couldn’t fix.
PS. I made sure it fell.
I sat therefor a long moment, not moving, chewing on the insides of my cheeks, the words on the paper blurring at the edges. When the tears had been pushed back and I’d finally collected myself, I slid the drink closer to me and proceeded to have the longest and most satisfying drink ever drunk in the entire world. The combination of caffeine and Duke’s kindness pumped enough life back into my veins to get me through the rest of the day.
14
After my disastrousmorning in the tire shop and only bills to greet me when I got home, I had no desire to hurry through my cleaning tonight. I finished the upstairs office much later than usual, which gave me exactly what I wanted when I arrived back at RDM—everyone gone. I began working through the rooms, spot cleaning when needed and emptying the garbage cans. I found the repetitive tasks soothing in a pathetic kind of way. I was about to enter the women’s restroom when I heard a door open somewhere down the hallway. Panicking, I dove through the doorway to hide.
Of course, diving somewhere was difficult when lugging a huge, squeaking cleaning cart behind me, but I thought I made it through the doorway without being seen. In the bathroom, I moved efficiently, cleaning toilets, sinks, and mirrors before mopping the floor. When I finished, I peered out into the hallway, taking my earbuds out to listen before pulling the cart into the men’s bathroom.
I’d gotten into a rhythm with the cleaning that suited me. I didn’t hate the work. Okay, to be fair, I did hate cleaning the men’s bathroom. Not that it was ever too disgusting, thank goodness, it just felt wrong to be inside. Like I was doing something I shouldn’t be. I made sure to check underneath the stalls twice before allowing myself to relax.
The mindless work allowed my cluttered brain to run rampant with every anxious thought I had pushed aside throughout the day. Bills and rent and tires circled in and out of my thoughts. And of course, the one question it all really boiled down to—how I could be saving up my entire life but never really get ahead. I scrubbed and plunged, anxiety and anger taking hold of my fingers as I wielded a brush and cleaned in and out and around the men’s urinals.
Since our meeting a week ago, the talk of bucket lists had been prominent on each intern’s mind. I hadn’t expected a company to take interest in something like that. Duke’s influence, no doubt. Maybe in Duke’s world, bucket lists were a dime a dozen. Spend a pile of money to go somewhere exotic in order to feel fulfilled in this life. A big life meant doing big things. Big trips. Can’t write home about something if there’s nothing to write home about.
In my world, the idea of a bucket list only created guilt. Guilt that I was somehow doing this life wrong. No matter how hard I tried, how hard I worked, it might never be enough. And that thought made me physically ache. Maybe I’d always have guilt for not being more fun or for always covering for my mom.
I flushed the urinal, watching in depressed satisfaction as the soap swirled around the bowl before being sucked down the pipe. I had guilt because Iwasembarrassed to be working as a janitor in the same office I was interning at. The same office I worked at with Duke, even though it shouldn’t matter because he had a girlfriend—but somehow it did. I had guilt for wanting to put a career ahead of my personal life. I even had guilt for accepting this stupid internship and for the fact that I not only wanted it, Ineededit. I hated the idea that Duke had seen me so low.
And there, in the quiet of the men’s bathroom, all the emotions I’d pressed down came to me full force. A tension headache behind my eyes had me clutching my head and sitting down on the only seat within sight. There is a certain cathartic release that happens when a person cries. I had held myself so stiff and rigid, my body taut with anxiety, I had almost been begging for this moment of release.
It was also unfortunate that Duke, of all people, decided to walk into the men’s restroom at that precise moment to see me crying while sitting on the men’s urinal.
“Nora? Hey! What’s wrong?” he asked, alarm lacing his voice.
I jumped up, horrified, choking back snot through my nose while he strode over to me, his eyes examining every part of me as though he expected to see me bleeding out on the floor.
“Nora.” He stopped in front of me. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“No.” I wiped at my face. “I’m fine. Why are you still here?”
“I had a meeting. Why areyoustill here?” he countered, his eyes scanning my face as though he didn’t believe me.
“I work here, remember?” The smile I attempted was most likely a cross between a circus clown and serial killer. For all I knew, the mascara had gone the way of the tears. I wiped under my eyes, doing my best attempt to clean them up. “I’m fine now. Sorry.”
“What do you have left to do?” Duke took in the bathroom, his gaze scanning over the mirrors still speckled with water stains and the dirty sinks.
Panic laced my insides. “Nothing. Go home.”
“Tell me.” He grabbed a toilet brush from my cart and held it up like it was a hostage situation. It was a new brush, thank goodness, still wrapped in plastic and attached to the bottom compartment. Duke stood with his disheveled brown hair, suit pants, tie, and rolled-up sleeves and was brandishing a toilet brush as a weapon. And dang it all if it didn’t make me smile.
“I’m done,” I said brightly, inching my way closer to him.
“No, you’re not.” He moved the brush a bit higher out of my reach.
“I am. I was just sitting down to have a quick cry before leaving. I did that. So now I’m going home.”
I began straightening up the things on my cart, untying my apron and waiting until he dropped his guard a fraction of an inch before I attacked. I flung myself toward him, surprise on my side as I grabbed his arm holding the brush and used all my weight to pull it down. By that point, Duke was on to me, trying to shake me off like a wet dog. My fingers clung to him, a rush of adrenaline on my side. There was no way on this green earth he would be scrubbing toilets for me.
But then he did something unexpected. He dropped the brush on the floor and wrapped both arms around me and pulled me into his chest. I froze. The subtle scent of pine from his cologne infiltrated my nose and left me comatose. It was all so appropriately inappropriate, and my right-and-wrong sensors were pinging. He had a girlfriend, and we were hugging. But we were also friends…or something. I stood there, a statue in his arms. It must have been like hugging a tree trunk. Undeterred, he pulled me closer and held me tighter until something deep within me let out a great gaping sigh of relief. He was the wrong person to be hugging, but there was nobody else around, and so, ever so slowly, my head melted against his chest. My arms went around his waist. And for a moment, a brief millisecond in the history of time, I let Duke Webber, my boss, hug me in the men’s bathroom.
“Why were you crying?” he whispered a long moment later, his voice low and in my ear.
