The Sexpert

We both go to pick it up at the same time.

“Oh,” I say, seeing her face.

“Oh!” she says back. She’s holding the charger now.

“Oh, good,” I say. “That’s yours. Thanks.”

Eden blinks at me a few times and tilts her head to the side. She sniffs and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She opens her mouth, squints at me, then closes her mouth again.

She is so goddamn cute.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

“Me? ’Cause. Why are you?”

“I work here.”

“Oh, yeah? Cool. So do I.”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh.”

“At… Le Man?”

“Oh. No. Not here.” I gesture around me. “I mean HERE. Like, here in this building. What do you do here?”

“Here in this building?”

“No, here at Le Man.”

“Oh,” she says. This is even more awkward than talking in traffic on the freeway. “Social media.”

“Oh. Cool.” A beat. No one says anything. And finally—“So. Anyway,” I continue. “Thanks again for letting me borrow the charger. I think my friend would’ve done something silly if I hadn’t been able to talk him off the ledge.”

“Is he OK now? Your friend?”

“Not really. But that’s not unusual.”

Pierce sticks his head out of his office now and shouts in my direction, “What are you doing for dinner?”

I shout back, “Dunno. I’ve still got to get settled in my place, get some work done, somebody told me there’s a good rock climbing gym I should check out…”

“Fuck that. We’re going out. Myrtle, make a reservation for eight-thirty.”

“For where?” Myrtle asks.

“Someplace not shitty,” he says. And goes back into his office.

I turn back to face my new friend Eden, who says, stutteringly, “Your friend is Pierce Chevalier?”

I sigh again. “Yup.”

We stare at each other for a second.

“You need something, Eden?” That’s Myrtle, breaking the mood.

“Oh, yeah, I, uh… I wanted to ask you something, actually.”

“OK,” says Myrtle. Then she looks at Eden. Who raises her eyebrows at Myrtle. Who gives a look like, What? to Eden. Who looks back at Myrtle like, Gimme a second. And then Eden looks back to me.

And I can’t help but grin as I say, “OK. Well. See ya!” And head off.

As I reach the elevator bank and press the button to summon a car, Eden calls out, “I… I thought you stole my charger!”

I stop and turn back. “Stole it? I’m shocked. Who do you think I am?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. Who are you?”

My grin spreads in such a way as to make my eyes close when I respond, “I’m just a guy who tries to do what he says he’s gonna do.”

“Yeah?” she asks, a flirty little grin on her lips that I’m now noticing are plumper and poutier than I realized before. Oh, boy…

“Yeah,” I say with a hint of a laugh. Then I add, “Cross my heart,” as the elevator doors open, and I step inside and out of sight.

CHAPTER FIVE – EDEN

I sigh as the elevator doors close and he disappears, then call out, “Hey! Your name!”

But he’s gone.

“It’s Andrew,” Myrtle purrs in my ear.

“Jesus,” I say, swatting her away. She was so close to me when she said that, she gave me a chill. “Why do you have to do that to me? You know it’s weird.”

She laughs. And Myrtle laughing is a beautiful thing because she doesn’t do it often. She’s one of those women who takes her role in life seriously and her role in life seems to be making people uncomfortable in every way imaginable. So she purrs into my ear a lot and every time I get this chill up my spine. Not like a creepy chill either. And I swear to God, I’m not bisexual, but Myrtle purring into my ear makes me want to reconsider that decision sometimes.

I rub the back of my neck to make that feeling go away. “Andrew, huh?”

She nods, winking at me. “Andrew Hawthorne. CEO of Aureality and creator of that app, Voice Lift.”

“Voice Lift, no shit?” That’s what I use to disguise my voice for the Sexpert videos. And just as that thought manifests in my head I get a weird feeling. Like…

“Yes, he’s got the empty offices down on forty-nine.”

“That big ol’ space that used to house all our creative people?”

“Yup,” Myrtle says, peeling a banana and taking a bite. She never eats the donuts I bring on Mondays. Ever. And I’m pretty sure she only eats the bananas to drive all the men up here crazy because Josh Washburn is watching her chew from the open doorway of his office right now. “He’s Pierce’s best friend or something. So we’re going to be seeing a lot of him.”

“He stole my charger on the freeway this morning.” I hold up the charger as evidence. “But he gave it back, so I guess he didn’t really steal it.”

Myrtle laughs again, but this time it’s the normal kind. Where she only tips up the corners of her mouth as she lets out a small huff. “Did you come up here for something? Or are you just making your good-morning rounds?”