Clara’s voice fills my office suddenly and interrupts our banter. “Mr. Ives, I have Mr. Frost with Berkin Industries on the line for you.”
Maybe smiles slightly and jerks a thumb toward the door. “I guess I’ll leave you to run your empire, Billionaireman.”
“Very funny.”
She grins. “Thank you for the sage career advice.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, and the genuineness in my tone can’t be missed. “Let me know how it goes with Rainbow Press next week. And if you have any issues figuring out where you need to be, give me a call.”
“Will do.”
I watch with dismay as she disappears, out of my office door and down the hallway and most likely home to start a goddamn dating profile on TapNext.
Son of a bitch. The idea of it makes me cringe.
But Maybe Willis is off-limits. So, I have no choice. All I can do is sit back and watch the real-live nightmare happen.
Maybe
I have an interview today.
An I’m going to interview but not take the job interview, but an interview all the same.
Thanks to Milo, I am meeting with Cassandra Cale, the editor in chief for Rainbow Press—a publishing house located in Manhattan.
It’s supposed to be a laid-back meet-and-greet where I’ll introduce myself, she’ll ask me some questions, and then tell me about the job opportunities that are available within the company.
Funny how that still translates to what must surely be a heart attack.
My chest is tight and my hands are fidgety, and if my knee would stop bouncing for just one fucking second, it’d be nice. And jaw pain. Women having heart attacks usually have jaw pain, right?
Anxiety, party of one!
I take a deep inhale and force myself to walk down the steps of the nearest subway station. My new pair of pale pink heels click-clacks against the concrete what sounds like assuredly, but my legs are so shaky, I have to do something I never do—grip the dirty, grimy, bacteria-infested banister to the left of the steps—to prevent myself from falling face first.
I make a mental note not to touch my face with my germy hands before I can wash them at the very first opportunity.
The noon subway crowd is chaos, and people are everywhere. Rushing. Waiting. Running. Walking fast. Walking too slow. It’s a swirling sea of hipsters, homeless, and upper middle-class worthy of that movie Sharknado.
Despite the variety of backgrounds, when it’s crowded like this, people have no distinction. They are just things in your way. Moving, smelling—good and bad—sometimes accommodating but a lot of times rude things.
An older gentleman in khaki shorts with his belt basically fastened to his neckline bumps me as I step onto the platform, and I teeter on my heels.
He doesn’t notice, though. I am, like him, just a thing.
With a whine and a displacement of air, the train arrives, and I hurry on with the rest of the New York crowd. Belt man bumps me again to find the only open seat left and plops his khaki ass down like he owns the joint.
I, on the other hand, am left standing beside one of the metal poles.
Promptly, the train shuts its doors, leaving anyone outside of its threshold stuck in the muggy station air, and starts its path toward the next station with a jolt. Unsteadily, I grip the coolness of the pole to keep my balance.
One hand free, I pull my phone out of my purse and do what everyone else on the train is doing, I scroll through social media.
Facebook first.
Then Twitter.
And for the briefest of moments, I search the TapNext app that Lena has been badgering me about for the past week. But when I locate it in the app store, I can’t get myself to download it.
What in the hell would I do on a dating app?
The only thing I can imagine is disaster.
Yeah. Definitely not doing this today.
I move right along, and by the time I pull up Instagram, I’m what those new age parents refer to as overstimulated. I scan the train surreptitiously, keeping one eye to my Instagram feed as a means of pretense until my attention catches on the phone screen of a young woman seated right beside the metal pole I’m holding on to. Wearing a cutoff pair of jean shorts and sporting curly blond hair, she looks to be about my age.
I watch as her fingers tap excitedly across the keypad and wait for something of interest to show up in response to her succinct prompt of Tell me.
I shouldn’t be looking. Or reading, for that matter, but I can’t help it.
After all the peptalking I’ve had to do to avoid throwing myself directly onto Milo’s penis, I have zero willpower left.
I want to spread your legs wide, slowly, and kiss down the inside of your thighs.
My cheeks heat at the simple sentence, but I have to blink three times just to steady myself when the next message populates.