The limo pulls up to the curb and I scramble out, not waiting for the driver or Apollo to help me out. I am my own woman. I can get out of the vehicle without help…
No matter how nice that help is.
I push that thought away and hurry in the front doors. Maybe if I put enough distance between Apollo and myself, no one will notice how I got to work.
Natalie rushes over, ten minutes early to work. Of fucking course. The worst joke someone could play on Natalie would be to delete her complex set of alarms and calendar notifications that rule her world.
“You…him…you spent the night?” she hisses.
I ignore her question. “What’s going on?” I ask, looking around the open room. It doesn’t look like anyone is working this morning anymore than they were working yesterday morning. Two days of non-productivity is…not a good thing.
At this rate, we’re not going to have a magazine to put out this month, no matter what Apollo and the board decides to do.
“C’mon, everyone else is over here,” she says, and tugs on my hand. I follow her to the group of staff writers, all milling around together, gossiping.
I look up to find Apollo’s eyes pinned on me. He’s standing over with the managers and…
There’s hurt in his eyes, just for a moment, just long enough that I think that maybe I really see it and then it’s gone and I think maybe I was just imagining it.
But no matter what I was or was not imagining, this gulf between us?
I’m not imagining that.
A manager—I think he’s a part of the photography department? I’m not sure—steps forward and claps his hands together to get everyone’s attention. Everyone is so tense, it’s like setting off fireworks; he has everyone’s total attention instantly. “Let’s get to work,” he says in a no-nonsense tone of voice. “We’ve all got shit to do.”
With a grumble, the crowds disperse and everyone heads to their desks. I want info as much as anyone else, so I’ll admit it, my voice is added to the chorus. Fuck ‘em. They need to be upfront with us.
Even Apollo.
I push the thought away. I do have shit to do, and it’s about time I do it.
It’s afternoon and I’m drearily working my way through my third article on lipstick colors in the past two months—sometimes, even I get sick of talking about how to pick out lipstick—when Natalie pops her head over my cubicle divider. “Ready for a break?” she asks.
I spring up so quickly, my heel catches and I crash to the ground, my chair spinning away and crashing into Fredrick. Just what he needs—encouragement. I awkwardly pull myself to my feet, Natalie absolutely no help to me whatsoever as she laughs so hard, she’s doubled over, and retrieve my chair, giving Fredrick a brief grimace as an apology as I go.
“Coffee?” Natalie says perkily. I glare. She grins.
I grin.
I can’t help myself.
“Alright,” I grumble, trying to hide my grin but it doesn’t do me any good. Natalie sees it.
We head down to the staff break room, when I see Apollo head toward me. Well, not toward me, per se, just down the hallway that I’m in, heading the opposite direction as me. He’s probably not heading right at me, right?
I try to quell my internal blathering and instead shoot Natalie an oversized smile. “So how’s your article on skirt lengths going?” I ask with way too much enthusiasm. She doesn’t even attempt to hide the roll of her eyes but she answers my banal question anyway as Apollo passes me so closely, I can smell his cologne and despite myself, I inhale deeply, even as I’m staring straight at Natalie. My skin is crackling with sexual energy and I can’t breathe but I don’t care. I'm not looking at Apollo.
Not.
Looking.
He’s finally passed me and I can breathe normally again. Natalie, god bless her soul, continues her blathering until we make it to the staff break room, and then shuts the door behind us.
“Tell me all. Now,” she demands. “If I have to wait one more minute to hear what happened, I just might explode.”
As she starts the coffee pot with our special blend of shade-grown, organic coffee that we hide in the back of the freezer, away from the editorial department’s prying eyes, I wander around the break room, picking up old copies of Blush and putting them back down again without seeing any of it.
“Sex,” I finally blurt out. “Lots and lots and lots and oh god amazing sex. Never, in the history of sex, has anyone had better sex than the sex I had last night.”