I Like Being Watched

"Would you be pissed at me if I applied for the position?" I asked, choosing my words carefully.

"Wynn, what if he is like... selling the footage?" she asked, literally placing a hand against her lips as though this was just an all-too-shocking idea.

"Well, at least I would feel like I'd been paid well for it. I mean... Per, I could really use that twenty-five an hour. I am drowning. I can handle a paranoid boss with a security fetish."

To that, her face sank, likely thinking about her own bills piling up on her kitchen counter. They were just going to keep coming. We both understood the grueling pace of this particular hamster wheel.

"I won't be pissed. Of course not. But, like, maybe bring some pepper spray with you to work if they hire you? I just don't like those cameras. They give me the heebie-jeebies."

They gave me the hot-and-bothereds, but I wasn't going to admit that. Even best friends were entitled to their secrets.

"Was it a pain in the ass to get the job?" I asked, even though I figured anyone could be a house manager if they, you know, knew how to manage their own household. How hard was it to make sure toilet paper was ordered before you ran out?

"No, I mean, I never even met with the owner. I talked to Elsbeth, who is the cook. I guess because she's been around for ages, they used her to do the first round of interviews. And from there, she moves you onto Blake. He's the younger brother to Fitzwilliam Buchanan."

When she spoke of him, she always used his full name. Fitzwilliam Buchanan. Like he was some big celebrity. From what I understood, he was just some investment banker guy who was born rich then managed to make himself even richer in the years since his father passed. Maybe that meant he deserved a respectful Mr. Buchanan. But I thought the whole name thing was a little silly. I mean, most people referred to presidents just by their surnames.

This man was no leader of the free world.

He was likely just your run-of-the-mill average old dude with silver hair and the silver spoon shoved up his ass to match.

"Was Blake as pretentious as his brother's name is?" I asked, reaching for my half-cold coffee, grimacing a little as the sugar-free caramel met my tastebuds. Hot, you barely even noticed the artificial flavor of the sugar-free stuff. Cold, though, it stripped everything down to their base notes. And sugar-free caramel's base flavor was, well, chemicals. I tried to convince myself it was a healthier choice to have since we were sharing the frosting bagel. All the while I knew I had a fresh bag of Cool Ranch off-brand Doritos waiting for me on the counter at home, daring to call itself my dinner.

"I think his name is kind of romantic. Like some hero from a bodice-ripper. But, no, Blake is actually nice. Charming."

Nice and charming.

Why she was dating Dickwad Sly and not Blake Buchanan was beyond me. It sure wasn't because Blake wouldn't have wanted her. All guys who liked the fairer sex liked her. It was a law of nature. The sun rose, boobs floated in a pool, and men liked Perry Pearlman.

Maybe Blake was blond.

Perry didn't like blonde.

She quipped it was why the two of us could never be together. That, and not, you know, the fact that both of us were straight.

"Did they need a physical, blood test, and the promise of your firstborn son?" I asked, scraping some frosting off the plate with a pad of my finger.

To that, she gave me one of her brilliant smiles—pearly whites that were somehow all hers without the aid of orthodontia or bleaching sessions at the dentist on full display.

"No, it was an easy interview. I mean, it wasn't like one of those stuffed-shirts interviews we did during our sophomore year." Back when we thought working at a temp agency would be a good way to make cash. Honestly, we'd probably done it because we liked the idea of getting to wear fancy outfits to 'the office' every week. But sitting at a desk all day, answering phones, filing, pretending to know how to draw up a spreadsheet, it all got old pretty quickly. "He mostly just asked questions about multitasking and what kind of manual labor you are willing to do or not."

"What? Did the job require laying bricks or something?"

"Just general cleaning. There is a cleaning service that comes in once a week to do the deep stuff, but, apparently, Fitzwilliam Buchanan is a bit of a neat freak or something. He wants everything swept and mopped, and the surfaces wiped. And, I mean, the only other duties include making sure everything in the house is stocked and that all the staff members are doing their jobs. It was actually kind of nice to be able to move around and actually get something done."