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I sigh, feeling a wave of self-pity rising inside my chest. “I wish she’d see us as younger women to mentor instead of torture,” I confess to my best friend. “Think about how much more Melody could accomplish if she weren’t such a tyrant.”
Carrie nods in thoughtful agreement. “But then she’d have to share her power and influence,” she says in a rueful tone. “And you know what she thinks of that.”
I sigh again. Both Carrie and I are fresh out of college, each of us boasting degrees from fairly well-known schools. In fact, I was even personally recommended to this firm by one of my former professors.
And yet…
I have a secret too. When people think I was in New York a couple summers ago on a prestigious internship, actually I was working as an escort. Scandalous right? But I needed the money. Tuition is expensive, and I took a long, hard look at my budget. As a result, I told everyone I was going to Manhattan to build my resume, but instead, I spent the summer pleasing rich men while raking in the dough.
It’s so awful, I know. Beneath my prim skirt suit and neat hair lies a raunchy woman with needs. Even worse, working for Club Z did something to me, and now I absolutely crave men. I’ve managed to keep it together since coming back to Chicago, but it also means that I’m constantly horny. There, I said it. Yes, I’m a bad girl who needs a lot of cock, especially since I learned to take two men at once when I was living on the East Coast. Mmm, menage felt so good, and I squirm a bit in my seat at the delicious memories.
But at the moment, my current life couldn’t be further from that illicit summer in Manhattan. In fact, it practically seems like something that happened to some other girl in an alternate universe because I’m currently stuck in a cube with beige walls, beige carpeting, a gray desk, and fluorescent lighting. Plus, Concord Design decided to hire me not as an architect, but as a secretary. Isn’t that so sad? I could have gotten this job without my architecture degree, but there you have it. Hopefully, I get promoted to junior project manager at some point, but you never know. Maybe I’ll be an admin forever, filing papers and typing up other peoples’ notes.
Of course, there’s the problem of my manager too. The situation is grim because as Carrie pointed out again just moments ago, Melody refuses to see us as anything other than peons, and the likelihood of getting anywhere, much less moving up the career ladder, looks increasingly unlikely.
I hit one of the computer keys with renewed frustration.
“Okay, easy there, tiger,” Carrie says as she walks around the cubicle wall into my small office space. “Let’s hold off on typing for a few minutes so you don’t break your keyboard.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” I groan and slide my rolling chair back and away from the desk. “Let’s talk about something else for a minute.” I smile at my friend, happy for a short break.
“Well,” Carrie begins coyly, “I went on that date last night I mentioned earlier.”
I raise my eyebrows at my friend. “I cannot believe you agreed to go out with an investment banker!” I shake my head in feigned displeasure, but secretly I’m a little jealous of my friend’s recent string of eligible men. After all, in some ways, Carrie and I look almost like sisters, so I don’t quite understand why she’s doing so well on the dating market, whereas I’m fizzling. We both have thick chestnut hair and large brown eyes. We’re both curvy in all the right places – my body finally morphed from gangly to womanly when I got to college, despite my childhood doubts.
But whereas Carrie is soft-spoken and likable, I sometimes find that I can be a little too assertive in how I speak. On the one hand, I think this is what makes the two of us best friends. But on the other, it hasn’t served me well when it comes to trying to find eligible men in Chicago.
I turn my attention back to my friend, and Carrie’s eyes are sparkling as she speaks. “My date took me to that new spot downtown, the one decorated like a circus. It was so strange but so fun, minus the weird body distorting mirrors everywhere of course, and the fact that the waiters were dressed like circus performers.” Carrie frowns slightly. “Clowns serving you dinner isn’t exactly romantic,” she confesses, clearly realizing that the date wasn’t quite as wonderful as she had originally thought. “In fact, it’s a little creepy.”
“Yeah, I’m with you there. Are you going to see him again?” I ask, internally cringing at the idea of having to go to such a tacky place for dinner.
