“What the Hell-O Kitty? Why wouldn’t you lead with that?” Chantelle gasped.
“Because I am officially so freaked out that I can barely form rational thoughts.”
“Pshaw. That’s just you on a day of the week that ends in Y. I’ll be right over. I need to see this paragon of manhood for myself.” Chantelle hung up.
Ha. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Cliff fell for Chantelle? Chantelle was a teeny, adorable little blonde with a deceptively angelic face. However, she was also the most loyal person Taylor knew – she and Taylor had been BFFs since kindergarten. She would never go for a guy if she knew that Taylor had a crush on him.
She quickly forwarded the phone to the answering service and stood up. A brief wave of dizziness washed over her, and she leaned on the desk. That was the second time this week. Odd. She’d never in her life experienced dizzy spells before. Must be all the stress she’d been under lately.
The dizziness passed, and she grabbed her purse and headed to the bathroom.
As she passed, Shelley stalked out of her office. She was wearing a fitted silk skirt-suit the color of Pepto-Bismol. She was tall and tanned, with perfectly frosted hair, ice-blue eyes, and a tiny little bud of a nose.
She looked down that little nose at Taylor. “You just went to the bathroom. We pay you to work, not take breaks all day long. What if someone comes in?”
“First of all, I haven’t used the restroom since I got here three hours ago. And secondly, it’s more than a little creepy that you’re paying attention to when I go pee.” Taylor stalked down the hall, back stiff, waiting for Shelley to scream something petty at her. Shelley did not disappoint.
“I am not paying attention to when you pee, you freak! That’s gross! You’re gross! I’m telling Perry!” Taylor paused at the bathroom door and turned to face her. “What, exactly, are you going to tell him? That I’m going to the bathroom?”
Shelley’s porcelain skin flushed red with anger, and she glared at Taylor, her mouth opening and closing in a pink-lipsticked ‘‘O’ of frustration as she tried to think of a good comeback. Brandii-with-two-iis stuck her head out of her office door, eyes shining and hopeful, eager to see Shelley bring Taylor down a peg or two.
Shelley and the other sales reps were skinny, attractive girls who weren’t quite pretty enough to model. The mean girls of high school, they’d been raised to think their fashion-magazine looks made them superior – and therefore anyone who didn’t look like them was inferior.
They hated that Taylor – a short, plump girl with a halo of frizzy brown hair – was their receptionist, the person who greeted clients. They wanted someone like them – plastic perfection.
Since they couldn’t get her fired, they satisfied themselves with throwing petty jabs at her whenever they thought they could get away with it – like when Perry Martin wasn’t there. Taylor mostly ignored them – the worst thing about their insults was how utterly predictable and uninspired they were.
Shelley turned around and went back to her office, slamming the door hard. Taylor shook her head and hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
She knew Shelley couldn’t get her in trouble – at least, not for neglecting her duties. Taylor was a hard worker. There was one thing, and one thing only, that she was doing which could land her in a world of trouble. Felony-level trouble. For a brief moment she worried that might be why Cliff wanted to talk to her, but no. He ‘hadn’t looked anywhere near that angry. And if he knew what Taylor did every few months, the police would be showing up, not Cliff.
Anyway, right now she had other things to worry about. She quickly washed her hands in the sink and scrubbed the ink off. She splashed water on her hands and ran it through her hair, taming some of the frizz.
The coffee stain on her skirt was still there, a Rorschach splatter of humiliation. Should she turn her skirt around? No, then it would look like she’d hadn’t made it to the toilet on time. She turned the skirt to the side and winced. What were the odds he’d overlook it? He didn’t seem like the type who overlooked anything. Every time they Skyped, she felt as if his gaze pierced her very soul.
She stared at her face in the harsh fluorescent glare of the bathroom lights. Round, with a mouth that was too full. When she’d bemoaned the roundness of her face as a teenager, Chantelle’s mother Carol had insisted that her face was like the sun rising on a beautiful morning – over and over, until Taylor had started to believe it. Most days.
She freshened up her lipstick and mascara. Another brief wave of dizziness washed over her and she clutched at the counter.
Now she was starting to get worried. Why was this happening? She wasn’t feverish or achy, so she couldn’t be coming down with anything. She most definitely wasn’t pregnant; she’d never had sex with Joel, and it had been a long time since she’d actually been intimate with anyone besides her battery operated boyfriend. A humiliatingly long time.
Could it have been the head injury? When Joel slammed her head against the wall, she’d suffered a bump to the head, but that had been minor and had only hurt for a few days.
All right. She’d find an after-hours clinic to visit later and see if they could figure out what was wrong. She couldn’t afford to take a sick day. She couldn’t give Mr Martin any excuse to fire her.
She hurried out of the room and back to her desk. To her dismay, she saw Shelley standing behind her desk, looking at the computer. She’d forgotten to minimize her screen, and Cliff’s email was there for all the world to see.
“Ooh, Taylor’s boyfriend is coming to visit!” Shelley snickered. “I thought she ran to the bathroom awfully fast. Trying to make herself pretty? There isn’t enough makeup in all of Sephora for that.”
“Taylor has a boyfriend? Who?” Brandii-with-two-iis squawked from her office. “And why?”
Brandii hurried out as Taylor attempted to get to her desk and Shelley blocked her. Taylor flushed with humiliation.
“Move,” she said. “I need to get to work.”
“You mean you need to search for pictures of Cliff on the internet and imagine what he’d look like naked,” Shelley snickered. “I hope you’ve got areally goodimagination.”
Taylor had agreatimagination, thank you very much, and she’d fantasized in intimate detail about Cliff’s naked body. It was plain to see from the breadth of his shoulders and the way his shirt stretched across his back and over his biceps when he moved that he was in incredible shape. Unfortunately, that mental image left her flustered and tongue-tied.
