Page 34 of All Out of Love

“As a file clerk. It didn’t pay much, but it was better than cleaning people’s toilets. I kept putting in for a promotion, but nothing became of it until three years later when I worked my butt off, and produced better numbers than anybody else, and they had no choice but to make me team leader in Clerical.”

“Is that the thirteen-year position you told me about?”

She nodded. “Yes sir.”

“So did the lead job pay better?”

“Better, but not great. That’s why I started applying for supervisor every time a spot came open. And many came over. But they would never promote me. I had to train the ladies they did hire. But they never hired me. Until ten years later.”

Grayson was surprised. “Ten years? It took that long?”

“Yes sir.”

“And that was the day you had to fight off one of the founding partners.”

Sadness appeared in her eyes. “Yes sir. Unfortunately.”

“It’s not unfortunate. You did right to fight back. That’s a good thing.”

Toya couldn’t believe he said that. “But you didn’t act like it was a good thing when I was fighting my sister.”

“That’s because you just got out of jail and I was terrified that the police would show up and you’d get locked up again.”

He was terrified? Why, she wondered? But she couldn’t pull herself to ask him that. Everything else, yes. But not that.

“And stop calling me sir,” he said to her. It was more of a deflection from the fact that he had used the word terrified. He felt exposed.

And Toya felt confused. “Why wouldn’t I call you sir? You’re my boss. Well, not my immediate boss. But you’re the big boss. Which is worse. What am I supposed to call you?”

“Grayson. My name.”

She smiled.

“What’s funny?”

“Your name.”

“I don’t look like a Grayson?”

She thought about it. “Actually you do look like a Grayson. But it’s just a funny name, that’s all.”

“Jameesha Latoya aren’t exactly tearing down the household names department either,” he shot back.

She laughed, lifted her glass as if to say touché, and took a sip.

And that was another thing he liked about her. She appreciated jest. And she took everything in stride. Not too high. Not too low. Except when it came to that sister of hers.

“What do people call you? Jameesha or Latoya?”

“I only use Jameesha when I have to use my first name. But most people call me Toya. My mother calls me both.”

“I take it you don’t care for your first name?”

“It’s not the name. It’s the story behind the name. My mama named me after the woman my daddy married when he and my mama broke up. And it wasn’t because she loved the name. It was just to get back at him for leaving her and never marrying her. It’s like she didn’t think about me at all. Just her anger towards my father. I guess it never felt like my name to me.”

Grayson nodded. “People can do the darndest things, Latoya. I get it.”

Toya liked that about him. Because he did seem to “get” her.