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“Oh, no.” Becca whipped her auburn braid off her shoulder as she got up from her bed, which was full of fuzzy, oversized pillows. “Talk it out. You’ll feel better.”
“I don’t think I will,” I said, heaving my bag onto my desk before zeroing in on that stupid picture of Maxim I’d saved from the magazine, posted on my wall right next to my class schedule for the semester and a couple of other clippings and some inspirational posters. “YOU’VE GOT THIS,” one of them read in a very serious bold font.
Did I? Did I really have this? I felt like my life had suddenly spun way out of control, and that all the plans I had been carefully making for my future were now pointless and stupid.
The “YOU’VE GOT THIS” poster was hanging close enough to the photo of Maxim that I sometimes pretended he was telling me that everything was within my reach. That if I just studied a little longer, read a little more, tried a little harder, I would be able to do anything. What a joke. The only thing that really was within my reach was that prissy photo. They’d probably rubbed cooking oil on him to make his chest glisten like that, I thought absently as I tore it from the wall.
“No, what are you doing?” Becca asked, alarmed. “Ruth, put the dreamboat down. You’re going to crinkle him!”
“He deserves to be crinkled!” I raged. “He deserves worse!”
My roommate did her best to wrench the magazine page from me, extrica
ting the thin page from my fingers. The only casualty was a corner that ripped.
“Look what you did!” she fussed, brandishing the image of Maxim at me. The muscles of his chest still gleamed, but the pool background was a little worse for wear. Maybe it was just my interaction with him today, but I noticed new things about the portrait. Like the expression on his face, which I had taken for concentration and dedication, could maybe instead be barely concealed disdain. Arrogance, even. Like he was above all of this. Above being the cover story of Rolling Stone like some kind of rock star of telecommunications.
He was nothing but a big jerk.
“I don’t want him on the wall anymore,” I said, feeling childish and not caring one bit. I’d been treated like a child all day, anyway, at best. And at worst, I’d been treated like an object.
This was nothing like what I’d imagined for this internship. It felt stupid, now, how excited I’d been for it. How much I’d idolized Maxim Volkov and everything his company stood for.
Maybe the saying about avoiding meeting your heroes was true.
“But you love this photo,” Becca said. “What changed between this morning and right now?”
This morning I’d — wow, this was embarrassing to admit, especially after the day I’d had — kissed the photo for good luck.
“Everything,” I groaned, grabbing two handfuls of my own hair and pulling.
Becca slapped my hands away from my head. “You’d better tell me what happened.”
The retelling took no more than ten minutes, which seemed ridiculous for the eternity of anguish I’d endured today. By the end of it, I half expected Becca to tear up Maxim’s photo for me. Instead, she looked at it thoughtfully.
“For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve talked about this guy,” she said slowly. “And now, you get to spend the entire semester as his personal intern. Is there no way that this could actually turn out amazing?”
“If you see a way, would you please tell me?” I asked, taking a heavy seat on my neatly made bed. “Because I don’t see how it can.”
“Maybe your dad has some advice that would help.” Becca got some tape from my desk and carefully returned the photo of Maxim to its rightful spot. “He had experience in the same industry, right?”
“I don’t think Dad was super excited about this internship to begin with,” I said, lying down, not caring that I was still fully dressed in my business professional gear, right down to the heels I’d borrowed from Becca. “He’s not a fan of Max — or his company either, for that matter.”
Becca trilled. “Max? You’re on a first-name basis with Mr. Maxim Volkov, very sexy CEO? Ruth, you’re on a nickname basis with the dreamboat?”
I tossed a pillow at her half-heartedly. “Stop calling him the dreamboat. He insisted that I call him Max.”
“Mm-hm.” Becca batted her eyes at me. “And what did you insist that he call you?”
“He just calls me Ruth Miracle. A lot.”
“Ooh! That’s a pet name. Max has a pet name for you!”
“Becca.” If I could roll my eyes any harder, they’d drop out of my skull. “Ruth Miracle is my full name. He’s just calling me by my full name.”
“So cute,” she gushed, giggling as she dodged another pillow. “Come on, I bet it is. In that sexy accent, too? Oh, my God! If we dye our hair, do you think we could switch places for the semester? You could go to orchestra for me, and I could marry Max for you.”
“Ugh,” I groaned at her, kicking her shoes in her general direction. I couldn’t deny that his accent was sexy. Everything about the man was sexy, even if he had humiliated and infuriated me on my first day. The elevator ride on the way up to his office had been particularly challenging. Max had no sense of personal space, and I had to wonder whether it was culture — or if there was some other reason he’d been close enough to kiss.
