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“Ah, the answer to our problems has arrived!” comes the sound of a man behind me.
“This is Jake, he is the third pirate. Jake, this is Brooke. Yay team! Hip, hip…”
“No Jessica we are not doing that…not the hooray thing, it’s weird.”
“What do you mean? It’s a classic though! You know what I mean?”
“Yeah…No… let’s let that live in the past.” He says with an infectious smile, that triggers me to laugh immediately.
Jake is in his early thirties with an intelligent face, round glasses, and twinkling eyes. He offers me a handshake and puts me at ease with an immediate confession.
“Good to meet you, Brooke! I just got hired two weeks before you, so we are both in trouble, but at least we have company.”
Jessica is looking intently, obviously she wants her 3-person team to get along. She picks up a file from a desk. “Look, I need to go see Mr. Halifax. He is going to eat my brains out. Accounts hates us. We are too experimental for their liking and so far, bleeding funds.”
“It’s her first day!” Leave her out of all that! Says Jake gallantly.
“You are right! Oh, by the way can you please help Brooke get her ID so she can meet the big boss today?”
“Oh, I don’t have to see him today,” I am hoping to come across as wanting to save their time.
Jake has news for me, “Ethan Knight meets every new employee, on their first day Brooke. There is no escaping from our C.E.O.”
MEETING THE CEO
BROOKE
Jake is genuinely nice. On the way to the badging office, he shows me the common kitchen and lounge area. He must send out an email which gives me a few minutes to recollect myself in the soothing elegant lounge. The coffee machine looks like a complicated monster, and I am in no mood for technical challenges. All along the wall are comfortable velvet chairs. I sink into one and take a deep breath inhaling and slowly exhaling my issues as mental bullet points.
Issue 1–How am I going to handle meeting Ethan Knight?
Issue 2–How is he going to handle me, knowing his mouth was all over me in that whirlpool?
I don’t have much time to speculate as Jake has returned. We walk over to the badging office. The anxiety on my face is even noticed by the man taking my picture.
“It’s okay for you to smile. You can relax.”
I give a fake smile, to satisfy the badging officer.
As he makes my badge, Jake has clearly noticed my mood.
“Are you nervous about this job Brooke?”
I would rather have him think that.
“Sorry, yes, I am but in a good way…”
“Yeah, the good kind of nervousness. I get it. I get it.” He doesn’t probe and I then make some chit chat about working with green materials. I get my badge and pin it to my skirt pocket.
“Aha, now we are fellow inmates, prisoners of the house of Elysian!”
I laugh, but I get the impression that he really likes working here.
We are soon in the elevator, and Jake goes in first leaning against the gleaming silver walls. “Just push 40 please.”
My mind flashes back to the moment in Hawaii, when Edith asked me to push the button for the Rooftop. I wish now that I had not pushed that button. How simple then things would have been. He would have forgotten the silly girl with a strange smile. There would have been no hot tub or that shared stunning view of the Pacific lit by the moon. No contact with the hard firm chest or his lips.
“Brooke? Can you please hit 40?”
