I promised Tiana I would do it, and I intended on keeping my promise. Even ahead of schedule. I was going to figure it all out on Monday. But now that I’d made the decision to at least try to get in at one of the biggest companies in the city, I was eager to get started.
Tim’s desk was neat and organized, an old wooden thing that wobbled when you touched it. Careful not to disturb any of his stacks of papers or have the picture of his family fall over, I made myself at home.
The chair creaked as I sat down in it, joining the occasional squeaks of the mostly ineffective overhead fan. I scrolled through my phone, my optimism and positivity taking a nosedive when I saw there were almost no vacancies listed on any of the company’s website pages.
The only position I could find was personal secretary to Mr. Jeremiah Williams. Even though the ad had only been posted a couple of hours ago, it already had an intimidating amount of views. Wriggling my nose, I spotted Tim’s black-framed glasses lying next to his keyboard.
I slipped them on just as Jenny walked into the small manager’s office. “Does this make me look like a secretary?”
Jenny’s lips quirked into a smile as her eyes darted playfully around the room. “If I say yes, are there hidden cameras mounted in here? Are you trying to fulfill some kind of secretarial porn fantasy?”
“No, but that is what it sounds like, isn’t it?” I let out a long huff, gently pulling the glasses from my face and placing them back exactly where I found them. “A four-year degree in business, losing the respect of my family, and now I’m going to help some rich boy make his dinner dates and babysit his calendar. I mean fuck. Really?”
Jenny shrugged. “Life is what happens while we’re making other plans. As for that stuff with your family, they’ll come around. You’ve been unhappy and unfulfilled here since day one. If it takes helping the rich guy make dinner dates for a while for you to work your way up, is that really the worst thing?”
Not the worst, no. Certainly not as bad as working here in the bookstore. At least working for Williams, there had to be opportunity for growth. The companies were big enough. At the bookstore, I would never go anywhere. I couldn’t. There was nowhere to go here.
I shook my head and lowered my gaze back down to my phone. I knew Jeremiah Williams only by name. Though we’d both grown up in the city, we didn’t run in even almost the same circles.
The Williams family was splattered across the local tabloids occasionally, but they weren’t celebrities or anything. People were interested in them because they were loaded and connected, but it wasn’t like there were websites tracking their moves or anything. Not that I knew of, anyway.
From what little I remembered reading about Jeremiah over the years, he was the youngest of Jance Williams’s two sons. He was known to be a cocky, arrogant partier who hadn’t shown much interest in the business side of the Williams empire until his brother’s accident.
Working for him wouldn’t be anything like the serious, corporate environment I wanted to work myself up in, but it was a start. Besides, how hard could managing his dates and making sure there was a VIP section cordoned off for him in clubs every night really be?
As if sensing I had nearly made a decision, Jenny folded her arms over her apron making little bits of flour clinging to it fall to the floor. “What do you have to be afraid of, Stephanie?”
Dang. That was the same thing Tiana had said. Was the universe trying to tell me something?
“Nothing,” I answered immediately. She was right. I didn’t have anything to lose by applying for the position. After everything I’d been through, I could do this. “Fuck it, I’m doing it. No matter what.”