AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Very much.” Tim leaned in and kissed the side of her neck, whispering, “I don’t have any more ground rules.”
He reached up her dress and tugged at the lacey waist of her panties.
“One more rule.” She reached down, placing her hand on his. “We don’t have time to take these off. Push them to the side. We’ll have to be quick if you don’t want to get caught.”
He grinned and followed the rules.
4
If one more very hungry-lookingperson asked her if she minded if they smoked, Deep might actually howl. Not that anyone would hear her over the sound of the house band and the tourists outside. Six years in New York should have prepared her for being out on New Year’s. But, if it had done anything, it had shown her just how valuable staying home with her comfy sweats on was.
From across the room, Beckett, one of the jewelry buyers from work, waved her over. Deep took a sip of her drink and fixed a smile on her face. Beckett knew she was looking to get out of the luxury department store scene and had taken it upon himself to offer her up on a platter to anyone who mentioned they were hiring anywhere in the greater New York Metro Area. Hence what she was doing at his party, despite swearing off New Year’s ages ago. Needs must, and she needed to get a new job.
Weaving between Amazonian models, tiny designers, and the strange people they called muses who seemed to travel in packs around genius in the fashion industry, Deep practiced rephrasing, ‘I’m just really burned out’ into something more socially acceptable. Taking one more sip of her champagne, she dodged around the last gaggle of people and stopped in her tracks.
Beckett wasn’t talking to someone from fashion. He was talking to someone from her world. Someone who was very much not supposed to be here.
“There you are,” Becket said, pulling on Tim’s arm to make him turn around way before Deep was ready. “Tim, this is the woman I was telling you about. The one with the science background—”
“I should have known it was you.” Tim’s smile was slow and a little more cautious than the last time she’d seen him.
“And I should have known you’d be here. I hear you’re quite the watch collector now.” Deep laughed. Seeing him didn’t sting as much as she’d thought it would. Over the years, she’d heard his name in some of her college circles or saw him in the news and it felt like someone was poking a sore muscle a little too hard. It wasn’t that she missed him per se, but sometimes keeping her distance felt more difficult than she’d anticipated.
“Oh, well if you two already know each other, then I can excuse myself to grab another drink. I’ll talk to you both later.” Beckett waved at them, oblivious to the emotional smoke bomb he had just set off, then walked away.
Both of them watched him, the peculiarity of the moment stretching between them as if they were back in freshman year until Deep couldn’t take it anymore. “So, how have you been? Outside of the Technocore stuff. I see that in the journal.”
“Oof.” Tim scratched the back of his head. His hair was longer again, but someone had gotten him to stop brushing his curls to death. Probably some stylist for one of those 30 under 30 lists. Hell, that person might be here tonight. She should thank them. “I never really know how to answer that question. Technocore got big so fast, that it’s mostly just wild, with a side of awesome vacations plans that end up just being me looking for Wi-Fi.”
Tim cracked up at his own joke, which somehow made it funnier to her. “So, what about you? Beckett says you want to get out of fashion?”
“Yes, but don’t say it too loudly, or my mother will hear, and the schadenfreude will send her over the edge.”
“So, you want to be a biologist then?” Tim snort-laughed and the sound sent her mind back to their last night together.
“Never. I’m just burned out.” Deep shook her head, trying to clear the memory before it encouraged her to make any more poor choices. Now that time was recognizable, any of their past behavior needed to stay in the past. The stakes were just too high for both of them now. In saving him for later, she may have inadvertently meant sometime in her retirement years at this rate. “Truthfully, I look at the next level of being a buyer, and it doesn’t look fun. This world is cutthroat, the hours and travel schedule is grueling, and I hate dieting.”
“When you feel like that, it’s a surefire sign you need to get out.” Tim nodded, tucking his hand into the pocket of his jeans. They were expensive, and somehow, he’d still managed to let them be wrinkled. His consistency made her smile.
“Exactly. So, I figure I might go back to my roots. Maybe go to one of those coding boot camps or something. Build websites. I don’t know.” Deep wobbled on one heel for a moment, then pulled herself together. “I haven’t really figured it out yet. I’m just feeling around. Obviously.”
“Technocore’s got front-end developer openings.”
“Ha ha.” Deep made sure her voice was as flat as possible, just so Tim knew what she thought of his whole successful-dude-has-job joke. She had exactly no security or software experience.
“I’m being sincere.” Tim placed a hand on his heart with a small thud and actually managed to look pained that she’d think otherwise. “You’d have to come back to Seattle, but if you want to give something new a try with the safety net of a paycheck…”
Tim shrugged and let the end of the sentence fall away as Deep narrowed her eyes at him. Surely he couldn’t be serious, given their history. That felt like inviting a mess into the workplace he’d spent the last half decade building. If nothing else, people would gossip. Given everything else he seemed to have going on in the tabloids, including a recent overpriced pizza bruhaha, did he really want that hassle? If nothing else, people could figure it out and gossip.
For a moment, she just watched his face for tells that he was bluffing, but none appeared. He was serious.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea given our history,” Deep said, trying to sound gentle and not like Tim had missed a key detail. “But thank you for the offer.”
“I mean, you’d actually have to get hired. We have an HR person and all of that.” Tim waved his hand in a circular gesture as if the detail that a company with 1000 employees had an HR person would be a surprising detail. “But I really do think you’d be good at this, assuming the hiring manager agrees. You wouldn’t be working for me. Or even in my direct line of reporting.”
“Thanks, but it still feels like a conflict of interests.”
“I’ve been forced to learn way more about conflicts of interests since starting this company, and I think this would fall into a gray area.” Tim tilted his head to the side, furrowing his brow as if he were going through some mental checklist of ‘bad ideas for company founders.’ Deep started to shake her head again, and he straightened up to add, “If you apply and get the job, we can just keep our agreement as we have it now. We don’t have to talk about it with anyone and you still keep your freedom.”
