The Sexpert

And it’s a yes!

My phone dings a text.

Andrew: I’d love to go. Thanks for the invite. I’m real busy today with work, but I’ll pick you up tomorrow at noon.

I send back a whole line of red hearts.

Then he messages again. You look fantastic this morning. God, I’m killing myself for having to work. I want to eat you for lunch!

My mouth drops open in unexpected glee.

“What are you doing?”

“What?” I say, hiding my phone as I look up to find Gretchen looming over my desk.

“This isn’t personal time, Eden. We’re still in the middle of a crisis. I need repurposed articles for this weekend on my desk by noon.”

“No problem, Gretchen. I’m working on two right now.”

“No, right now you’re flirting with someone on your phone. And what is with this… this…” She points her finger up and down my body. “This new look? It’s not work-appropriate.”

“What?” I ask, looking down at myself then pushing my glasses up my nose as I meet her gaze. “It’s a long skirt and a button-down shirt.”

“Well… it makes you look… sexy.”

I smile. “Thank you. I think so too.”

“That wasn’t a compliment, Eden. Go back to your old outfits.”

And then she turns on her heel and walks off.

Janet, the girl on the other side of my cubicle partition who does website maintenance, peeks her head over and says, “Fuck her, Eden. You look great. She’s just jealous. And if I were you, I’d tell Pierce that she’s taking credit for your ideas. Because that’s bullshit too.”

She disappears behind the blue upholstery partition before I can even say anything back.

But I think about that for a moment.

Because I do look great. And my ideas are the ones that are keeping this stupid magazine in the spotlight right now. I didn’t rewrite anything, but I did send all my suggested edits and graphics up to the blog department and they’re using them. And we’re getting hits. Not Sexpert numbers, of course. But more people have been visiting Le Man online since I started repurposing articles than they were before.

So yeah. F-you, Gretchen.

Myrtle texts me just before noon, asking me to meet her for lunch. So I package up my weekend articles for Gretchen, send them over to her, and then grab my purse and baby-step my way over to the elevator.

Myrtle is already there, looking down at her phone.

“What’s up?” I ask.

She looks up at me, opens her mouth to say something, and then stops. She blinks. Three times fast. “Holy. Shit. Eden.”

“What?” I ask “What’s wrong?”

“You look hot, sister.” And then she holds up a finger. “Oh, my God. You and Andrew are totally a thing, aren’t you?”

How does she do that? Read my innermost thoughts and come up with the right deduction every single time? It’s like Myrtle has her finger on my pulse. But not just my pulse. The pulse of the world. She’s… worldly. And ever since I met her two years ago, I’ve wanted to be just like her. Have what she has. Command men the way she does.

But maybe not anymore. I mean the way Andrew sees me, it’s almost the way I see Myrtle. He thinks I’m sexy. And when I’m with him I feel sexy.

And old me might think he’s making me feel that way. But new me thinks I’m feeling sexy because… well, the Sexpert has given me confidence I never had before. It changed me.

I didn’t think it would. Not in a positive way. But it did.

I think that’s what Myrtle is picking up on. Maybe? My growing self-esteem?

That and… well, she just happened to be there when the whole Andrew thing started so she’s probably been taking secret notes about us.

“We seem to be,” I reply back, nodding excitedly, as we get into the elevator, she uses her magic card to skip all the stops on the way down, and we descend. “We just… we just click. And bump into each other in the most unexpected ways. And yeah…” I tell her everything that happened these past few days. The date last night, and the outfit picking this morning.

And just as the elevator doors open to the lobby, she whisper-yells, “You’re dating a billionaire!”

“Holy shit,” I say. “I never even thought of that before. I guess I am.”

Weird.

And even though I think Myrtle is probably the most interesting person I’ve ever met and hang on every word she says, I tune her out this time.

Because she’s right. Andrew is a billionaire. And if he’s now my boyfriend… wow. Talk about dating up.

Can something like that work?

I mean… why would he want to date me?

Is it because he still thinks I’m the Sexpert so he’s trying to trap me?

God, I really hope that’s not it. I will die of sadness if that’s why he’s going out with me because… because I think I’m falling for this guy. I think I really, really like him a lot. I caught myself daydreaming about what our kids would look like earlier this morning. And I even scribbled Eden Hawthorne on a piece of paper on my desk as I did it, just to see if I like the way it looks.