AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lucy deposited her tote and sat at her desk. She pressed her hands to her face and took a deep breath.
She had just confessed she didn’t like the CEO on the day she was hoping for a promotion. That did not bode well at all. Not to mention the looks Annie and Mikayla gave her reminded her of her early teen years, before she was allowed to wear makeup. When all the older girls flaunted their glitter eyeshadow and sticky lip gloss and made her feel left out and judged. Such strong emotions during her formative years had a lasting impact, and those looks in the lobby woke a dormant adolescent insecurity that made her wonder if she’d made a mistake.
Luckily, she kept a stash of emergency makeup in her desk. Sample sizes, demos, castaway colors she didn’t love but couldn’t bring herself to throw out because she’d paid for them. She opened her second drawer and reached behind a pack of Post-its and an extra mouse to grab the little pouch. She unzipped it and fished out a tube of mascara just as someone entered her doorway.
Oliver, her favorite person at J&J and other favorite person in the world along with Nina, smiled, holding an extravagant chocolate cupcake in his hands. A mile of white frosting dusted in gold flakes teetered on top of it; a gold candle stuck out like an exclamation point.
“Hap—” He stopped in his tracks when he saw her, his boyish face collapsing into concern.
Oliver wore his emotions like a picture book: everything exaggerated and obvious, as if to get the point across to less perceptive minds. He claimed it was left over from his days as a theater kid, when he used his booming voice and overstated gesturing to be seen onstage.
It was ironic, then, that he worked at a publicity firm. A good publicist was a master of chaos management, which included the ability to keep a straight face—a reassuring face—when a client landed in hot water. Everything is fine; I’ll take care of it. Words Lucy had said more times than she could count, and almost every time, nothing was fine, and taking care of it gave her three more gray hairs and one fewer year of life. Oliver struggled with the subtlety required by such unremitting composure. He preferred passing judgment via screenshots and DMs, sending Lucy scandalous updates on the latest celebrity mishaps with captions like Good luck spinning this and #canceled. He once told Lucy he could never make it as a publicist because if his client crashed his Lamborghini and puked in the gutter in front of ten cameramen, like Leo Ash once did, he’d have told him to stop acting like a dick and grow up. As such, he remained on the periphery of the chaos as Joanna’s assistant. His candor kept Lucy’s feet on the ground. At work, he was the sane albeit crass and judgmental voice in her ear reminding her that celebrity publicity, although a cog in the mighty wheel of global commerce, was in fact not saving any lives.
Oliver cut off his birthday wish mid-breath. “Are you okay?”
Just like the girls in the lobby, he assumed something was wrong. And there were actually a few things wrong: she had yelled at her mother, gotten a bloody nose from a bra, confessed her dislike of Jonathan, and had her self-esteem mowed down by two twentysomethings all before nine in the morning. But Oliver didn’t know about any of that. His question was based solely on her appearance and, unlike Mikayla and Annie, she felt comfortable confronting him about it.
Their friendship spanned years; they’d seen each other drunk, slept on each other’s couches, shared a Netflix password. He was completely safe. And he was a guy, which Lucy had to admit somehow felt more appropriate to be taking the brunt of her frustration.
She set the mascara down and rounded her desk. She reached for the cupcake. “Thank you. Why do you ask if I’m okay?” She was going to make him say it. She sank her teeth into the creamy frosting without hesitation. Normally, she wouldn’t eat such a thing. In any other circumstance, she would have politely accepted the gift from Oliver, left it on her desk, maybe swiped a finger into the frosting, and then buried it in the trash when no one was looking. But the sugary blob looked like the cure to her strange morning. With ten times her strength, she couldn’t have resisted it.
Oliver frowned at her, bewildered. “I was going to light that and maybe even sing.”
She plucked out the candle and sucked the frosting from it. “This is delicious.” She set the remaining half of it on her desk before she choked on the rich cake, and went in search of water. She felt Oliver’s eyes on her outfit; her flats made her a good five inches shorter than him.
“What are you wearing?” he asked, and there it was. The real question she was waiting for.
“Something comfortable, for a change.”
Oliver arched a brow. He wore glasses and had supple cheeks that were faintly flushed at all times. He reminded Lucy of one of Michelangelo’s cherubs if they were man-size and lived in West L.A.
“You realize the stuff I walk around in every day here gives me blisters and makes my back hurt and leaves huge red indents in my skin, right? That it’s seriously a toss-up between what I most look forward to taking off as soon as I get home: my makeup or my clothes? I don’t know who decided I have to look a certain way to be taken seriously, especially at work, but I think it’s unfair. In fact, I’d probably be more competent at my job if I didn’t have to worry about nylons and shapewear and heels and all of this crap.” She overturned her makeup pouch, having changed her mind on using any of it, and let the contents rain down on her desk.
Oliver watched the tubes roll and a pot of goes-with-everything gold eyeshadow flip open and crack with a furious little fault line. A hint of alarm shaded his face, but of the men in Lucy’s life, he was most sensitive to the frustrations plaguing the female existence.
“That seems reasonable,” he agreed.
“Of course it’s reasonable. I just need to get other people to agree with me so they stop assuming something is wrong if I’m not dressed like Barbie with a full face on at all hours. You should have seen the way you looked at me. And the way Annie and Mikayla looked at me in the lobby. Oh god, I said something to them that I shouldn’t have.” She remembered their encounter, and the other half of her cupcake suddenly needed to be eaten. She sat back in her chair and stuffed it in her mouth.
Oliver snapped into action like a first responder. He shoved her door closed with the tips of his long fingers and rounded her desk. He pivoted her chair and knelt in front of her. His voice softened to a downy whisper. “Lucy, are you having your period?”
She swallowed her chocolatey bite and glared at him. “Oh my god, Oliver. No!”
“Okay! Okay. You don’t have to yell at me. It’s just, you seem distressed and you’re wearing weird clothes and shoving chocolate in your face, so I just—”
She silenced him with another glare. “You brought me the chocolate.”
“You’re right! I did. And I’m... sorry?”
She grumbled and folded her arms, suddenly annoyed. “Don’t apologize; it was delicious. But you know, it’s ridiculously unfair that if my period were the explanation for my mood—which it’s not—I’d have to hide it.”
He blinked at her, confused, with the caution of a soldier crossing a minefield.
“Oliver, you literally shut my door to ask me about a physiological process my body goes through on a regular basis like it’s something to be ashamed of. Like it’s a secret my uterine lining makes a slow escape once a month that feels like being stabbed by hot, twisting knives and all I want to do is curl in a ball and cry.”
He gaped in horror. “That’s what it feels like?”
“To put it mildly, yes. And we’re just supposed to power through like nothing is wrong.” She stretched her arm like it was riding a wave. “We’re not supposed to talk about how much our boobs hurt or that we have to rearrange our wardrobes to accommodate underwear that fits maxi pads for a week each month. We have to smuggle tampons to the bathroom like contraband because heaven forbid anyone know we’re bleeding. We don’t talk about pee string either. I bet you don’t even know what that is.” She narrowed her eyes at him with an accusatory finger, and he leaned back, mouthing pee string? in fright. “If your kind menstruated, I bet we’d only work three weeks out of the month. Cramps would be valid reason for paid sick days—hell, we’d probably have cramp days. You’ve never had a beach vacation ruined or had to sleep in biker shorts so you don’t stain your sheets. You’ve never counted days and panicked when your period was a few late or wondered what you did to deserve it when it lasted twice as long. You’ve never had your mood swing so high and low it feels like there’s no more middle. You are not at the mercy of a cycle you get no say in.”
