“Well, I gave it to him, but…” I shook my head.“He shredded it without reading it.”
“What!”
“And then he took me to dinner.”
Clara stared at me for a long, silent moment.“Keaton Dunbar,” she said at last.“Your life is stranger than fiction.”
In the echo behind her words, I heard him calling my name just the same way.Keaton Dunbar.And then he’d looked at me with those clear blue eyes.
“I promised I’d stay,” I said.I didn’t even know why.I was kind of thinking out loud.Saying the things that had been swirling around in my head since I’d gotten back.“After the dinner, he asked me if I would stop trying to quit and I said I would stay.”
“Okay,” Clara said.“And are you?Staying?”
I swallowed.“I…”
Clara gasped.“You want him.”
“What?”It was my turn to stare at her wide-eyed, mouth open.
“Keat!”She slapped my arm lightly for emphasis.“You have the hots for your boss!”
“Well, I mean, I…”
“No, this is real, isn’t it?”She shook her head.“When we were talking about him being hot before, I thought you were just playing around.But you actually like him, don’t you?More than just to look at.You want him.”
I could do nothing but hang my head in recognition of the fact that she was telling the truth.I did want him.I wanted him more than anything.
“That’s why I needed to quit,” I said miserably.
“But you’re not going to,” Clara said.I didn’t need to confirm it for her.She knew.She knewme.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said with a simple shrug of my shoulders.“He’s letting me in.And… I don’t know.Maybe that just means he thinks I’m a good secretary.But…”
“But you’re so starved for attention, you’ll take anything you can get from a man who looks like that?”Clara filled in for me.Her voice was soft and careful.Not mean.Not cruel.She wasn’t saying it just to hurt me.
I took a deep, shuddering breath.“I guess Jordan really did a number on me, huh?”
“Oh, Keat.”Clara sighed and rubbed the back of my hand.“Things will work out, one way or another.But you have to promise me that when you feel ready to move on, you move on.Don’t get stuck in a dead-end job you don’t actually want.Don’t give up your dream for a boss who doesn’t see you the same way.”
I nodded.
After a moment, I was the one to break the silence.“I didn’t mean to crash your celebration like this,” I said.“Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Clara said.“I’m here for you, Keat.You know that.You and me against the world.”
I smiled.“You and me, kid.”
And maybe the one thing that made people take Clara seriously, treat her like an adult and give her the deals she had been dreaming of, was the fact that – unlike me – she was secure enough in her identity not to argue with me when I called her a kid.
I headed back to my bedroom with my laptop tucked under my arm and stowed it away on the table again.There wasn’t any time to look at the footage right now.I had to sleep – Mr.Harvey wanted me in early again tomorrow, like always, and I needed to be sharp.
The last thing I did before going to sleep was to check the trending stories on my favorite social app, and what I saw made me cringe: ongoing and endless speculation about whether Ridley Angus, the biggest football star in the nation and widely-regarded good guy, was actually a giant asshole who had been lying to his fans for his whole career about who he really was.People were digging into archive footage and unearthing old posts, trying to find any hint of something that showed he was an alcoholic, a liar, whatever they wanted to make him out to be.
And my last thought before dropping off?
Worry for Mr.Harvey, and how his star client was going to survive this – because, apparently, my whole life now revolved around one person only.
Olly
