Hard For My Boss

Elijah shakes his head. “Not sure how I feel about that.”

“Go on with the internship, Elijah,” I insist. “Be both of us.”

He glances back at the door, considering it. Then he gives me a confident smirk. “I’ll call you on my lunch break. Then, when all of this dies down—and it will—you and I are going to go out and get some really, really hard drinks.”

I smile, despite my desire to stay in this apartment for months and hide from the world. “Sure,” I force myself to say, my heart not in it. “Really, really hard drinks.”

Elijah slaps me on the back, then picks up his backpack and heads for the door. The moment he opens it, an explosion of noise meets his face, then seconds later is immediately quashed out by the door slamming shut—which I promptly lock behind him.

With the news on mute and the house otherwise silent, all I hear is the distant humming and buzzing of reporters outside. I have to laugh to myself, wondering what the hell their questions could possibly be. “How did Benjamin Gage’s ass taste?” “Was his butt as warm and inviting as you dreamed it would be?” “Does he use Dove soap up his crack or Irish Spring?”

Really, am I that interesting? Is this whole story even that worth the time and attention of all these reporters who could be investigating homicides, kidnappings, corner store shootings, or even what Ms. Becky Buttersworth made for the PTA bake sale?

I stare down at the floor and find Salamander sitting there staring up at me. “Just you and me,” I mutter to the feline, who just twitches his tail, irritated, eyes half-lidded.

Just you, me, and a million vultures at my door.

And Ben … who-knows-where.

45

Benjamin is now his own scandal.

I stare through the car window at the crowd in front of my office building, numbed.

It doesn’t matter how many pretty words I string together, or how I can possibly manage to own the chaos I just inflicted on my company and my poor, unsuspecting coworkers, or what the world must think of me now.

None of it means anything if I can’t get Trevor back.

He isn’t answering any of my texts. He won’t pick up the phone, either. For all that I know, he’s already hightailed it out of town, unable to handle the stress of the invasive cameras. I can’t blame him, either. I brought this on him.

This is my fault. All of it.

How can he possibly forgive me for all of this shit I’ve put him through? It was my idea to pull him into my office. It was my dick that kept pushing us together, even when I’d promised myself to behave. It was me who pursued Trevor, who ignored the email that the Jersey boy Hawk would be arriving several hours earlier than planned, who accidentally hit the button that flipped open the blinds and unveiled us to over a million and a half viewers on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook—all the social media sites.

A million and a half.

Those are numbers that, in any other circumstance, I would frame and slap onto a wall.

But I don’t feel like slapping anything except myself today. I always have things under control, no matter the situation. I’m not the guy who hides to lick his wounds; I stay in the thick of it and suffer under the pressure until the problem is solved.

Yet here I am, clueless as ever, lost in a fog of doubt.

After the whole situation went down and Trevor ran out of the office, the employees were all sent home except for all of my department heads, who gathered for a meeting. Facing them was both easy and difficult—easy because I’d worked with these same people and suffered many missteps and awkward situations with them before, but difficult because I had no answers.

When we realized the media outlets had all been hit with a few videos and pictures, despite Rebekah’s efforts in confiscating and checking phones, it was deduced that the only person who could have been responsible—due to the particular camera angle of all of the leaked media—was Brady, whose efforts were likely intended to spite Trevor. I didn’t waste any more time on him than necessary, assigning the dealing of him to Rebekah and moving on to more important matters.

Namely, what this would do to Gage Communications, how to handle the employees and their feelings, and what steps we could take to control the “conversation” on social media. We discussed, we brainstormed, and we made a few decisions. Statements were sent out to the same media outlets that first debuted the material. We apologized, insisted that the scene was not a reflection of how we handle our clients, and the circumstance of the videos was pulled entirely out of context—which hopefully would debase the immediate reaction to the articles and instill doubt in the viewers’ and readers’ minds.