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Shelby
Iwas sitting at the table, waiting for my best friend, Diane, to arrive for drinks before dinner. I skimmed over a few emails that I had neglected at the office this afternoon as I waited.
As an interior designer, the emails were never-ending. However, I preferred an email to being on the phone with a client some days. When you got on the phone, people tended to talk too much. They had to rehash stuff like they thought you’d have forgotten what they had previously told you. They were shorter, more concise, and it took a lot less time in an email. In the end, it saved them money since I billed them by the hour while I was working on their design.
However, there were plenty of times that I needed to speak with clients on the phone and see them in person to go over things. The worst part about my job was dealing with indecisive clients, but I understood. It was hard to visualize some designs until they were finished. Most times, if a client would say, “Alright, I’ll take your word for it.” Then when they saw the finished product, they were thrilled with the outcome.
I hadn’t wanted to be an interior designer while growing up, but I had liked to decorate. All my friends asked me to help them decorate their rooms, and after college, once I’d landed my business degree, it was Diane that suggested that I start an interior design business.
It took a while to get Unique Perspectives off the ground, but now ten years later, it was a well-known industry name with many satisfied customers. I also had five other designers that worked for me. Plus four employees that dealt with the dull side of the business. Even though I had a degree in it, that didn’t mean I liked the business side of things.
I stared at the email in front of me. Martha Highmore didn’t think she wanted to go with the floral fabric. Instead, she wanted to do stripes in her formal living room. I didn’t care one way or the other, but if she was changing to the stripes, that changed all the other elements in the room—some very expensive and already ordered. I sighed and set my phone down on the scarred wooden tabletop as a server set a drink down.
I stared at the drink because I already had one and hadn’t ordered a second one yet. I lifted my eyes in question, and the server pointed behind me, “The sexy guy at the bar sent that over. If I were you, I’d go for it.”
I turned, catching a handsome man in his thirties, with dark hair parted on the side that feathered back. He was leaning one elbow on the bar and watching me with a look that could have melted a lesser woman. He smiled briefly, winked, then turned his back to me before he climbed onto his stool. The view from behind was just as lovely as the front view. I was a sucker for a tight ass on a man, and the slacks he wore showed off his buns to perfection. The lean waist and athletic build weren’t bad either.
Maybe once Diane and I finished, he would still be around, and I could take a few minutes to speak with him. Perhaps talk him into going back to his place for a nightcap and a little romp on his couch—although my place might be closer.
Someone bumped the table, and I was startled as I turned to find Diane pulling off her coat. Her huge designer purse perched on the side of the tabletop, and I reached out quickly to keep it from falling to the ground as she growled, “God, traffic sucks! Sorry, I’m late. How long have you been waiting?”
Diane’s light brown hair was frizzy from the wind outside, and her chocolate silk blouse clung to her from the static electricity as she removed her wool coat. She glanced at the two glasses on the table and snagged the one delivered by the sexy man, and took a big swig of what I assumed was a rum and coke.
She winced and then climbed onto the stool. “Thanks for having that ready for me, Shelby. Today was the fucking worst.”
I chuckled, wondering if my anonymous drink buyer had witnessed Diane throwing back the drink he had graciously sent to me. I almost turned to see, but I didn’t want to encourage the man—at least not yet. The last thing I needed was a man hanging off me while Diane and I were catching up. We didn’t get near enough time these days to do so.
“Sorry, you’re having a bad day, and I haven’t been here that long. Just a few minutes. Traffic held me up too.”
She lifted a finely manicured brow, “Traffic? Didn’t you walk?”
“I did, but the crosswalks were absolutely packed,” I replied with a straight face, to which she chuckled and then lifted her arm to catch the server’s attention.
When the same server who had brought my drink stopped by our table, Diane ordered another round of drinks, along with a plate of potato skins, an order of empanadas, a shrimp cocktail, and antipasto kabobs. The woman hustled away, and Diane lifted her eyes to me, “What?”
“You planning on eating all of that yourself?”
“Yes.” She declared as she took the last gulp from the drink and then clunked the glass onto the table, “I told you it’s been a horrible day, and I’m starving—like all the time.”
“I guess so if you’re going to scarf down all those calories.” Something that she very seldom did in public. Diane was always an obsessive eater, but usually in private. She didn’t want people to know that she ate this way, and that is also why she was even more excessive about exercising to burn off all the extra calories. Diane was forever trying to keep her weight down.
I was lucky on that front, as I’d never had to worry much about my weight. I could eat what I wanted, and it didn’t land on my hips or thighs before it digested.
“So, what happened at work today?”
Diane was a paralegal at a prestigious law firm in the city, and if I thought my job was stressful, hers was tenfold. I would never want to work in the legal industry. There was too much to know. Not that I wasn’t smart enough to do it, I was, but the thought of knowing all that legal jargon made my brain ache just thinking about it.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She grumbled and then looked around, focusing on the door, then glanced at her phone. “If I start talking about it, I’ll spend the entire night complaining about what an ass my boss is.” She started typing on her phone then set it down while she glanced around again.
“I already know your boss is an ass.” I paused as her eyes searched the room again, “Are you looking for someone?”
“Yeah, Zeke is supposed to meet me here. I wanted to introduce you to him.”
“Zeke? As in the hot stud that you have been seeing?”
She grinned for the first time since she’d arrived, “Yep.”
“Seriously? Are you finally going to introduce me? Why? I thought you said he wasn’t ready to meet your friends yet.”
