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Mitch jammed his finger on the call button again. Then he did it again two or three more times for good measure.
“Hey, uh, just checking in down there. You got an ETA yet? Don’t want you to forget about me,” he said, adding a high-pitched laugh.
If pranks were Eva’s style, he would have checked for her, but in all the years that she’d been his imaginary friend, she’d never once put him in harm’s way.
The elevator shuddered, then moved. If one could call crawling at the pace of a slothmoving. On the plus side, he wouldn’t have to face his dad’s teasing because the fire department had been called.
“Thank you,” he called out, hoping the answering sound was the rumble of the gears and not the dude laughing at him.
All he’d wanted was a smooth start to his day. No hiccups. Just once, he wanted to walk in confidently on his first day and not be dismissed before he got the chance to prove himself.
* * *
SOPHIE
Sophie picked at the snag on her nail. Damn it. She hadn’t even kept the gel in perfect condition for two full days.Traitors.
“Oh good. I hate having to make a new pot.”
As Annette stood beside her in the office kitchen, Sophie shot her a nod, relieved. It was too soon to face Colin again. In the year since he and Annette had started, they’d each attempted to coax Sophie out of her “cell block” (Annette’s words) multiple times. She’d declined the offers of a night out every time. And these days, only Colin still tried.
Sophie had learned her lesson, and she refused to sit through Spice Girls karaoke to prove herself right. No matter how much she wanted to go.
“The new guy starts today, right? Let’s hope it goes better than my first day. Spent half of it locked out of the system, and that was before I had to suffer through that little one-on-one Rufus puts us through.”
No joke. Rufus’s thirty-minute attempt to “consciously coach” her was Sophie’s least favorite part of the week. The man had taken control of the team during Eastbank’s invasion. At the time, he’d had zero experience, no knowledge of what her job entailed, and a desperate ambition that could rival a late-night talk show host on a bad day.
Sophie could still remember the absolute chaos of those first few weeks more than sixteen months ago. The aftermath continued to this day. Only this morning, three cartons of “recently discovered” customer forms had been delivered to her. Recently discovered was code for “we didn’t realize Ian had been hoarding these until we fired him, and we can’t tell if there’s anything important here, so now it’s your problem.”
Story of her life.
“Yeah,” she muttered while filling her cup. The last thing she had time for was training the new guy.
It was going to be a long week.
* * *
EVA
When Mitch exited the elevator, Eva turned to face a chuckling Levi. Thankfully, it was only possible for a human to see their own imaginary friend, and not someone else’s. Otherwise Mitch would have been shocked to know he hadn’t been alone in that elevator.
“Are you done? Or need I remind you that Mitch isn’t under your watch, but mine?”
“I was just having a little fun, baby.”
“You’re lucky I love you,” she grumbled as Levi pulled her in for a kiss. “Did you have to unnerve him on his first day? Working with Sophie is going to be enough, don’t you think?”
“Soph is a teddy bear.” He grinned. “Once you knock down a few walls. I needed to see what he’s got.”
A likely story. “I would think you’d be in there preparing her. She doesn’t handle change very well.”
“She’ll be fine. In fact, I’ve been thinking…”
“Always a worry.”
“I think they’ll get along better than you expect. I’ve been listening to you talk about your boy here for years. They might even be good together.”
Eva narrowed her eyes. “I knew you were listening in while I was talking to Nat last night.”
