The corner of his mouth twitches, as though he’s suppressing a smile.
“I’ll take the one by the window,” I say before he can answer, his secretive smile pissing me off enough to decide that politeness is wasted on someone like him.
“You sure?” he says, shrugging and pulling out the chair of the other. “Okay.”
“This one is clearly the best one,” I point out, sitting down. “Who doesn’t want to be next to the window?”
“Someone who doesn’t want the glare of the sun on their screen.”
“There’s no glare.”
“Not today, but on a nice day, it will be very annoying,” he warns.
“Today is a nice day. It’s boiling out there.”
“It’s humid,” he agrees, “but not sunny.”
I press my lips together, irritated. “The sun is coming out in intervals,” I say.
I don’t know when I became a meteorologist, but this guy is really pushing my buttons, and I feel the need to one-up him.
I type in the login details and wait for the desktop to load. As I do, I can’t help but observe Ryan tackling the mess on his desk with a fierce determination, his expression serious and focused as he begins the painstaking process of gathering the various pens scattered everywhere and slotting them into a knocked-over stationery holder, then reading the names of the files and stacking them to the side of his screen in alphabetical order.
“What are you doing?” I ask, unable to hide the note of ridicule to my tone.
“Tidying.”
“Yeah, but why are you doing it so inefficiently?”
That makes him stop abruptly and look up at me. “You think there’s a more efficient way of doing this?”
“Watch and learn,” I announce, before sweeping everything on my desk to one side.
It doesn’t go as smoothly as I’d like: lots of items topple onto the floor and the various pieces of paper dispersed about the desk crumple together or even rip. But I have the outcome I was hoping for, a nice clear bit of space right in front of my keyboard.
Ryan looks appalled. “That’s not tidying!”
“It is. Kind of.” I shrug, peering at the screen and examining the folders dotted around the desktop.
“You can’t seriously work like that,” he says, aghast.
“Work like what?”
“Surrounded by mess.”
“I prefer things to be a little chaotic,” I inform him, delighted at his disapproval. “You want a bit of character when it comes to a writing space.”
He shakes his head and gets back to his organizing until his desk is perfectly neat, a stark contrast to the bombsite that is mine. Acknowledging that he’s obviously one of those neat freaks, I take great pleasure in his side glances, knowing that the state of my surroundings must be killing him.
“Shame we’re not working in different departments like you wanted,” I say innocently, reaching for the intern folder and plonking it on top of a stack of files, some of their contents flitting down onto the floor. “Then you wouldn’t have to put up with my mess. Oh well! It’s only eight weeks.”
He doesn’t say anything, but I see the muscle in his jaw twitch. I smile to myself, flicking open the folder triumphantly.
CHAPTER SIX
The Audrey Abbot issue was a hit.
Almost two weeks later, her comeback is still being widely discussed on social media. The weekend it hit the newsstands, the interview sparked a reexamination of how she was treated all those years ago in comparison with Hank, and she received an overwhelming wave of support. A bouquet of flowers arrived for me the following Monday from Shamari, and then another from the producers of the play—they brought the ticket release forward and sold out the whole run in three minutes. Our social media and digital director, Roman, has been rushed off his feet trying to keep up with the interaction.
