“Have you heard?” she asked.
I half turned to her but she cut me off quickly before I could manage to respond.
“They hired a new Creative Director. Apparently he’s a fucking rock star. Blake something I think—”
At the sound of that name, one of the junior copywriters who happened to be walking past quickly corrected her, “Isn’t it Blade? I heard his name was Blade?”
Next thing I knew, an equally excitable art director joined the conversation, “Blaze? Isn’t it Blaze? Or Slash?” She was practically squealing.
I looked from one glowing face to the other. Their eyes were lit up like firecrackers and their cheeks were flushed a bright shade of pink.
“I heard they offered him a huge financial package to come here,” Becks said with a wild, wide-eye look. Becks, short for Rebecca, always seemed to know exactly what was going on in the office. I think she made it her business to know. She was also my toughest competition for the permanent job here.
The other creatives simultaneously nodded in agreement, declaring that he was probably worth every cent, maybe even more.Yes, he was definitely worth more, they concluded. Then they walked off—no doubt to spread more legends of this creative man-God.
In an ad agency, creativity is king. It’s the currency and the Holy Grail. So when one of these so-called creative geniuses comes around, it whips everyone into a star-struck frenzy. He might as well have been an actual rock star because everyone here at JTS was whipped. I was too hung over to be vaguely interested, but the rest of the office buzzed like the static on a television.
“I heard he doesn’t sleep . . . ever,” the strange pale vampire girl from layout said dreamily.
“He’s going to bring in a lot of new accounts . . . not to mention awards,” two senior managers said as they passed.
“I heard he nailed all the chicks at his last job,” two guys from IT said before a macho fist bump.
I sighed and started to roll my eyes, but they hurt too much. I opened my email and there it was: “Meeting in the Canteen to introduce new CD”(Creative Director).The meeting was in ten minutes. I lay my head on my desk and waited for the headache pills to kick in.
I must have drifted off to sleep though because I thought I heard someone say, “I heard he was raised by wolves.” I opened my eyes and looked around, but no one was there. I glanced at my watch—Crap!
I jumped up and ran to the canteen as fast as I could without tripping and landing on my face. When I finally got there, everyone was already inside and standing around a black-clad figure. I could only see the back of him from where I was. I glanced around looking for Becks and finally saw her standing in the front row with the other starry-eyed women. I carefully pushed my way forward trying not to be seen, but when I got there, he turned and suddenly I couldn’t breathe—
3. A Big Load . . .
The storm had hit, and it was a fucking hurricane.
He was dressed head to toe in black—the uniform of a Creative Director—but there was nothing else typical about him. He wore dark sunglasses inside, and had a cigarette tucked behind one of his ears. His hair was strangely, unevenly cut and was slicked back and wet looking. He had a beard, obviously—it’s practically a prerequisite in this world—but it wasn’t one of those massive hipster beards that made ordinary men look like axe swinging lumberjacks. It was short and well-groomed and so damn sexy.
He would have been a sight under normal circumstances, but considering that only a few hours before he’d had me bent over his car seat, he was really,reallyquite a sight.
He wore a full suit, pants, jacket, waistcoat, tie—the works. He even had a black piece of fabric sticking out of his jacket pocket.Who dresses like that? Does he think he’s Don Draper fromMad Men?
He was almost gentlemanly—almost.But the tattoo that popped out from under his cuff and ran the length of the back of his hand and the one peering out from his collar that went up his neck and stopped behind his ear were anything but gentlemanly. He loomed like a dark, mysterious creature. Fortunately, he still hadn’t seen me.
“Oh my God, he’ssoooofucking weird,” Vampire girl said, rubbing her neck. Did she want him to bite her? “Weird” you must understand is a compliment in this world.
And then he looked directly at me and I nearly fainted. I inhaled sharply, so sharply that I started choking on a fleck of saliva. As Becks patted me on the back, his eyes lingered momentarily and then they left me. He showed absolutely no recognition on his face and in that moment I was overcome by two very strong emotions. One, relief. Sleeping with your new boss is not the kind of thing that looks good on anyone’s resume, not to mention the awkwardness it creates around the office. And two . . . I was pissed—“I want you so badly, Sera. I need you, be mine, you’re so hot”. . .and now he didn’t recognize me?
What an asshole! With his unnecessary indoor sunglasses, his oh-so-cool cigarette and his ridiculous black borderline-tuxedo.
I hated him.
Work was painfully slow that day. It seemed that the arrival of Ben—his name was Ben, just plain old Ben, not any of the aforementioned exotic names such as Blaze, Blade, Slade or Xenon . . . Ben—had caused people to forget they had jobs . . . and minds. People were standing around, eagerly waiting for their names to be called. Ben said he was “very hands-on,” a phrase that had caused me to both cringe with disgust and tremble with excitement all at the same time. He explained he was going to be speaking to all the members of his team “one-on-one”—another phrase that brought back images of back-seat bumping and grinding.
Ben had used several phrases that morning that had my panties in a twist—as JJ was so fond of saying. I couldn’t figure out whether he was an innate pervert who tossed around sexual innuendos like salad croutons, or whether I was just being overly sensitive.
“I have a big load for you today,” he’d said before he emphasized how he wanted to “get on top of things.” All the innuendo caused strange feelings to pass through my body, but I almost passed out cold when he said he “wanted to really get his hands dirty and not be a back-seat driver.” The mere mention of his back-seat nearly put me in a coma.
But the worst thing was that my desk was directly across from his glass-walled office, so I had a front row seat and a clear view and—Oh my God, he was sexy . . .
He was calling people in for their one-on-ones, which caused a temporary traffic jam in the bathroom as women slicked on layers of fresh lip-gloss and fiddled with their hair and clothes.
