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“Vanessa. Nice to meet you. At our next encounter, let’s try and be a little kinder.”
“There won’t be a next time. Alex doesn’t keep his conquests.”
“Cool.”
Alex appears behind her, his eyes wider than they should be. She shoots me a sneer. Alex blurts out, “You two have met. Fabulous.” He scrubs his face with his hand.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Are you at first break already?”
“We called a break. Nothing’s happening. What’s happening here?”
Vanessa answers him, “I was checking on the security of this place. You know, doing my job.”
I sit up straight. “Remind me to tell you how good she is at her job.” Don’t fuck with me, Nessa.
Vanessa addresses him and not me, “If you knew your friend was going to visit, you needed to inform the staff. I called security.”
“Oh shit. Really? And she’s not my friend.”
“What is she?”
He winks at me. “I’ll get back to you on that. But I’ll tell the staff the next time she visits.”
“Next time?”
I respond with a big bitch smile for Vanessa. “Yeah. Next time. As in, the next time I come to the studio to be with Alex, I’ll make sure he lets the staff know.”
She slams his door shut.
“Holy chilly shit.” Alex shudders. That’s a good sign.
“She is not a fan of mine.”
He pushes me back on the couch and lies down on top of me. “But I am.” His eyes telegraphing things to me we don’t have time for right now.
“Spill it.” I squint at him.
“We hooked up at a staff thing in May. Then after a Fourth of July party. Super drunk. Her house. And then again, like a moron, a month later after a rally.”
“You did it at the rally? She was that good?”
“No. And no. Super drunk and well, you know. Again, her apartment. And she was the kiss.”
I fake a large gasp. “The Carlos counter kiss?”
“Yeah. Stupid. But she was in Vermont with us, and I was trying to—”
“No. Don’t. It’s fine. I get it.”
He says, “We’ve had many conversations about the kiss. How I was trying to convince myself I hadn’t met someone significant.”
“Significant?”
He bites my lower lip. “She’s been informed about you. And I’ve been all over HR about it.”
“You have an HR?”
“Hell, yes, we do. We’re a company. I made sure my ass was covered.”
