“I…” Jaxon is out there, watching, waiting. Even though Salinger is never going to love me, he’s the devil I know. “I’ll just get drip coffee from the break room.”
Jess whistles. “That must really be a magical penis to make you give up Starbucks.”
“I just have a lot of work,” I tell her weakly.
Jess goes home on time—well,early in the culture of Rainier Equity.
I’m almost caught up on the work I didn’t get done from Friday. It’s late. Rain patters against the windows as I head downstairs to raid the break room.
I greet Jameson and his team, who are packing up for the night. “Still at it?”
“My wife’s having a baby in two months, so I’m trying to rack up all the time I can, but you put us all to shame,” the project manager tells me.
“Perks of being an executive assistant.” I let out a half-hearted laugh.
“He doesn’t pay you enough.”
“Mandy!” Austin waves to me. “There’s snacks in the fourteenth-floor break room.”
I fill a plate with spinach-and-cheese turnovers and microwave them.
If it wasn’t raining, I would sit on the roof and eat them in the chilly evening air. Before Jaxon, I would do that to try to stay up, back when I wasn’t afraid to go home all by myself. When anxiety about the future wasn’t a better energy jolt than a venti Starbucks Frappuccino for keeping me awake.
I stuff a warm pastry in my mouth, washing it down with one of the mini cans of fancy sparkling flavored water produced by one of the big drink companies Rainier Equity invested in to keep them from going bankrupt.
As I head back upstairs, the office is eerily empty.
What would everyone think if they knew I was sleeping with Salinger? Honestly, they probably wouldn’t believe a word of it. That’s probably why Salinger broke hisno-sleeping-with-employees rule, because he knows no one would believe me.
If, by some miracle, the stalker situation gets resolved, I am cutting off this… whatever it is he and I are doing.
I don’t look into Salinger’s office as I hurry back to my desk, sweeping the flaky pastry crumbs off my silk shirt into the trash can and rubbing at the grease stains.
I wish I’d had the balls to keep on my normal, comfy office clothes, the oversized sweater and elastic-waisted pants.
“You’re wearing that?” was all he said to me that morning when I came downstairs with all my bags.
Now it’s almost midnight, and I am on hour sixteen of wearing this less-than-comfortable skirt that is a little too tight and the silk blouse gifted by my mom, who liked to force me to dress nicer.
I’m searching online to see if a Tide pen is safe to use on silk when Salinger calls me.
“Get in here.”
I creep into the dark office. The only light comes from my desk lamp on the other side of the glass wall. I squint as my eyes adjust. “Oh no.”
On his desk sits the vase of yellow roses.
He watches me, eyes predatory, and stands. His jacket’s hanging on the back of the chair.
“You want to tell me who sent you these?”
Wordlessly, I shake my head.
He plucks the bent card out of the broken bouquet and reads it. “Yellow is the color of my favorite panties, the ones with the little pink bows on them that make your ass look like a cupcake. J.”
I want to vomit.
Jaxon’s been in my apartment—that’s the only way he would know about those underwear.
