Sometimes, if I bring donuts, I come up to fifty-one to say hello as well. I figure you can’t be too friendly with the upper management, right? And almost all of them appreciate the gesture. I was voted Most Likely To Brighten Your Day two years in a row at the company picnic we have every summer.
But I am here for a reason. “So listen,” I say. “Apparently something big is happening because Gretchen has me on an assignment to thwart a twat’s takeover of some intellectual property we don’t actually have. Do you know anything about this? I’d go back and ask Gretchen, but she’s in a pissy mood right now and I figured you’d know better than anyone. So what’s going on?”
“Oh.” Myrtle waves her hand in the air. Then she leans in to whisper at me, but this time she’s not trying to turn me on by purring. She’s just being quiet so Pierce can’t hear her. “If you think Gretchen is in a mood…” She huffs again. “He’s going out of his mind about this shit.”
“What shit?” I ask.
She takes my arm and pulls me down the hallway, looking over her shoulder as we walk. “Some girl is on YouTube with a video series Pierce thought up.”
“Yeah, I got that much from Gretchen. I’m supposed to grab related articles from the past two years and start blasting them all over social media. My problem is that Gretchen never told me what the videos are about.”
“Sex,” Myrtle says. “She’s calling herself the Sexpert. And Pierce is pissed off because…”
I stop hearing Myrtle and just stare at her glossy red lips as she continues talking because the word Sexpert is echoing through my head.
She didn’t just say that. I made it up. There’s no way all this stress and angst is about me. I just have the Sexpert on my mind because we were on the radio and we’re getting hits, and…
I snap out of my momentary shock just in time to hear Myrtle say, “And she’s gone viral, Eden. Oh, Pierce is livid. He thinks it’s someone he knows.”
“What?”
“Like an enemy of his father’s. But I think it’s probably someone here at the company.”
“Why would you say that?” I ask.
“It only makes sense. It was a super-secret project. He only has a small group in on it and they’ve been twiddling their dicks about it for almost a year, so one of them probably decided, Hey, if he’s not gonna do it, I will.” Myrtle shrugs, like this really does make all the sense.
“Oh, my God,” I say. He’s gonna think I stole that idea. And I didn’t! So I say, “I had no idea he was working on something like this.”
And then I realize I should really shut the fuck up, because Myrtle doesn’t even know I’m the Sexpert.
No one does.
And it needs to stay that way forever, and ever, and ever.
“Of course you didn’t,” Myrtle says. “But that’s what this is all about. So you should grab all the sex advice articles. That’s what you needed to know, right?”
I nod. Still in shock.
“Oh, and that Andrew guy you were swooning over?”
“Yeah?” I say.
“Well, Pierce got him to agree to find this Sexpert using some new voice app. I guess he can do that. So…”
“He what? I mean… How do you know?”
“Same way I know Pierce has a foot fetish. Myrtle hears everything, sweetie.” She winks and pats my shoulder. “This will all blow over soon. Don’t worry too much about it.”
I take a deep breath. Hold it. Let it out. Swallow. Smile. Then pull on the hem of my shirt to help mentally straighten myself out, and say, “Well, I have work to do. Gotta get the art department to make new sexy graphics! Byeeee!”
So I wave my usual cheerful wave and scoot past her.
I head straight to the stairs and immediately get out my phone and start texting Zoey as I pass through the door.
Me: bitch we got problems pierce is sexpert
I didn’t mean it to come out like that but I can’t be bothered with punctuation right now. And anyway, two seconds later my phone buzzes an incoming call from Zoey. I tab accept and whisper, “I’m gonna get fired today.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What’s that mean? Pierce is Sexpert?”
“I stole his idea and then he found out and I didn’t mean to do it and now the cute freeway guy is on the case and he’s gonna out me and get me fired! I’m fucked!” I whisper-scream that last part into the phone while I hold it at arm’s length.
“Eden!” Zoey snaps. “Calm the fuck down and explain! I didn’t understand any of that.”
But then the stairwell door opens on fifty and two girls—Sara from accounting and Leslie from data entry—start walking up to fifty-one towards me.