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“Hi, Eden,” Lydia quips, walking down the stairs towards the landing where I’m still pressed up against the wall. She gives me a funny look. “Everything OK?”
It’s only then that I realize my hair is all aflutter. Strands of it have come loose from my ponytail and are covering my eyes. I reach behind my head, grab my hair to make the hair band tight again, then blow the stray strands out of my eyes and say, “Just fine, thanks!”
Two seconds later I’m up on fifty-one and making my way to Myrtle’s desk, because even though I have no interest in seeing Pierce right now, I have to tell someone about what just happened in the stairs.
The second Myrtle spies me coming towards her desk she laughs.
“What?” I ask, looking around nervously.
“You just fucked him in the elevator!”
“What? No! I took the stairs. And why would you say that anyway?”
She holds a hand over her mouth, her mischievous eyes darting back and forth as she looks at me. “Well, you better go fix that just-fucked hair if you don’t want everyone to think you’re banging the boss’ best friend.”
CHAPTER TWLEVE – ANDREW
The moment I step back into my office and close the door, I see, through the window, a lightning strike out in the distance, just past the mountains.
There’s a storm brewing somewhere.
Once I make my way over to the glass, I stand and look out at the broad sweep of earth that lives just beyond my confinement and think, “What am I doing?” Or I say it aloud. Which I don’t mean to do. But do.
None of this is me. I’m not a CEO. I’m an artist. I’m not a guy who sits in an office. I’m an adventurer. I’m not a dude who presses up impulsively on impossibly cute and unexpectedly hot women in stairwells. I’m a guy who stays in a bloodless engagement until my will breaks and I can’t take it anymore.
Except I’m not any of the things I think I am and I’m all the things I didn’t know I was. At least I am today.
Do you have a charger I can borrow? What the hell was I doing? Rhetorical question. I know exactly what the hell I was doing. I was staring ahead of me at this new part of my life, listening to Pierce freak out about intellectual property and trademarks and thinking about how this is all the kind of shit that I have to concern myself with all the time now, and then I looked over and saw this person sitting there.
This person I saw who looked excited, and nervous, and confused and so, so, so fucking easy to stare at, and I decided to follow my instincts. Which is what I’ve always tried to do. It’s why I left Kentucky for “Yankee Country,” as my mom calls it. And why I left Vermont for Berkeley, or “Hippie Country,” as my mom calls it. And why I got engaged, and why I got un-engaged, and why I kept working on a project that nobody else still believed in, and why I’ve done almost everything in my life.
Until now.
I didn’t mean to build a company. I’m not Pierce. And I sure as hell didn’t mean to run a company. And my instincts told me to just say ‘no.’ There would have been plenty of financial reward if I had just sold the idea and moved on. And it’s not like I needed the money anyway, so…
Maybe that’s it? Maybe it’s actually commitment? Maybe that’s my hang-up? Why I jump from thing to thing, idea to idea? And maybe I’m stupid that I’m only seeing it now?
I’ve been here less than forty-eight goddamn hours. I missed my welcome speech to the team. I haven’t unpacked my office. I’ve barely said hello to anyone. And yet I’ve seen Eden like five times, kissed her twice, groped her once, and yet I don’t know anything about her.
Maybe that’s what’s turning me on?
Shit.
I dunno. But I do know that my phone keeps dinging. I hear another email ding now and look to see yet another message from someone at the US Department of Justice. I’ve already ignored three phone calls and two other emails from them.
Flopping down into my desk chair, I realize I may be a crazy person. Which makes me laugh. I wish I didn’t laugh so goddamn much at things that aren’t actually funny, but I suppose I can get away with it because I have nice-looking teeth.
Sometimes I wish I still drank.
I close my eyes and take a breath, and in my mind’s eye what I see are breasts. Eden’s. From just a minute ago in the stairwell. And from last night in her dress. And…
Her dress. Her sleeveless, clingy, cottony dress that she was wearing. The one that showcased her perfect body. Her perfect and unexpected body that could make it hard to focus on anything else.
