Page 12 of Man Flu

“What would you say to him?” she snaps back. I probably need the context before offering a realistic answer.

“I’d say …” Uhh.

“I know, right? I was totally speechless. I don’t know. I didn’t exactly respond to him. I think I need some time to ponder the idea.”

An email pops up as I’m thinking of my next response, and it’s from Logan, so I casually click on it.

The email is short and says:

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Just a little FYI

Brielle just told you her boyfriend asked her about a threesome, and she’s considering it but wants your input. Not eavesdropping—the walls are very thin, and I can see your confused expression through the window.

— :) Logan Batman

Oh no. I knew the walls were thin, but I didn’t think we were that loud. Just lovely.

A threesome?Is that like a normal thing to ask your girlfriend nowadays? There I go sounding old again. “Um, I’d have a hard time agreeing to that,” I tell her. “Is the third party a man or a woman?” The thought popped into my head, and I wonder if that part of the question would have persuaded my premarital mind in a particular direction.

“It’s his best friend, Fray,” she says with a bit of a blush tinting her cheeks.

“Is Fray hot?”

She mouths the words, “Oh my Blahniks, yes. All of his friends are hot, Boston, city guys.”

“Eh, so why not? Maybe it’ll spice things up.” As the words that are so not mine—could never be mine—but definitely came out of my mouth, offer her advice, I feel a little saucy suggesting such a dirty activity. Maybe it’s the part of me that wants to live vicariously through Brielle and her pretty little self.

“You’re so right,” she says. “You should be a therapist, you know that?” Yeah, that’d be good. I’d be out of a job within a week. I’m going to go ahead and disagree with that opinion.

Brielle hops up from her seat and trots out of my office and back toward her cube.

I open my presentation that I’ve been working on for days but haven’t managed to make a dent in, even though it needs to be ready by noon today. I work my best when I’m being rushed, so it’s all good.

PowerPoint stalls as it populates the three slides I’ve already created. The file can’t be that big. What the hell?

That could be the problem … the three slides I created turned into thirty. I’m confused. These aren’t my slides. I scan through them, and while there is no content on the slides, they are all set up and ready for the content.

Logan appears in my doorway as I’m wondering how this file ended up in my folder. “I hope you don’t mind, but I did a little work on your presentation today. I noticed it wasn’t too far along, so I created a few template pages for you to use.”

I close my eyes, trying to understand everything he just said. “Wait, how did you know I had to do this presentation and didn’t have it done?”

Logan takes the opportunity to sit down in the open chair and crosses one of his legs over the other. His pants pull snugly in the wrong—no, the right spots, and once again, it makes me wonder what he looked like in a baseball uniform. I shouldn’t be wondering that. I’m his boss.

“Brielle told me you had been working on it, and she was kind of making fun of the fact that you hadn’t quite figured out how to work the new version of PowerPoint yet. As I was finding my way around the Intranet, I happened to see the file, and since you were tied up with meetings yesterday afternoon, I thought you might not mind if I helped a little. I apologize if I overstepped any boundaries.”

I could kiss him. Is he kidding? He basically did all my work, leaving me with just entering in numbers and words. That, I can manage. “You’re quite the go-getter, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s always a good remark,” he says.

“I don’t mean it rudely. You’ve been sort of killing it since you got here twenty-four hours ago, and you’re probably going to end up taking my job.” While I laugh at my joke, I realize I don’t really find it funny.

“Your phone is lighting up,” he tells me while glancing at the red light flashing.