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“See him? Sure.” Lainey shrugged and pulled out her phone. She typed in his name and pulled up his website, which had his bio front and center with a professionally taken photo. She turned the phone to Jill whose mouth opened in shocked delight.
“Lainey, I asked to see a picture of your boss, not a CGI rendering of the man of my dreams,” she squealed, snatching the phone and shoving the shirt into Lainey’s chest. Lainey wrapped her arms around it and watched her while she stared at the phone. “This is him actually? He’s gorgeous.” Lainey felt a protective instinct at Jill’s ogling. Not protective—jealous. The photo was black and white, so at least Jill couldn’t tell he had eyes the color of seaweed shimmering on the ocean floor. He was obviously the focus of the photo, but he was also only one-fifth of the photo’s composition. He was standing in an elevator as the doors were closed in such a way that they were framing him perfectly. One hand held a blazer that was draped behind his shoulder by a crooked finger. The other was raised as he looked at his watch—a watch that Lainey didn’t know the brand of but could tell cost something disgusting—and his eyes were squinted in an expression of contemplative hurry, like he had anywhere to be but taking a photo. It looked as if he were biting the inside of his thicker bottom lip, and that dependable smattering of stubble cross-hatched his jaw . . . The photographer had nailed it. It looked like it came fromGQmagazine. Maybe it had.
“I guess. I don’t think about him that way obviously. He’s, like, my dad’s age. He’s my dad’s best friend. That’s so gross that you would even say that.”
“Okay, well, if he ever hosts an office party that you don’t want to attend alone, you remember your roommate Jill, who is really more of a friend to you than a roommate, okay?” Lainey decided to ignore her thirsty commentary.
“It’s just that I sort of thought he’d be extra nice to me because he brought me into the position, you know? He asked me. I didn’t ask him. He said I was doing him a favor, that I was the kind of candidate the job market would want to snatch up.”
Jill shook her head and handed Lainey back the phone. “Sorry, I was having ten simultaneous daydreams at once just now. What did you say? That you expected special treatment, so you showed up late in an unprofessional outfit and parked somewhere that no one else was parked even though it was obviously the most convenient parking spot? Do not mess this up, Lainey. That is so not the attitude to approach this with. Be confident, of course, because yes, you’re very hirable, and you should know that and act like it. But this job was the universe’s gift to you for finally letting go of a bunch of baggage named Josh. He was being nice, Lainey. You’re hirable, and so were the four hundred other people that graduated with honors beside you, so you do whatever that man tells you to. That sexy billionaire man. Got it?”
Lainey felt like she had just been hit by a car. She knew Jill hadn’t meant to be mean because Jill never meant to be mean, but she had just unknowingly picked at the exact scab that Lainey was always picking at herself, the idea that even when she was extraordinary, she was ordinary.
“Yeah, got it.”
“Good. Here. This part of my closet is work clothes. Take them and hang them in the hall closet so we can both pick from it. Wear what you want.” Jill gestured for Lainey to hold her arms out and piled clothing on top of them until it was a mountain of silk and khaki and linen. As Lainey turned to inspect the pile in her bedroom, Jill repeated, “Don’t mess this up, Lainey. You’re good at not messing things up. Keep it up.” Her tone was friendly, but those words were worming their way into the crevices of Lainey’s body.Keep it up. She’d been hearing those words since kindergarten, and she had been, in fact, keeping it up since then. She was terrified of what would happen if she accidentally let go.
Chapter ten
Itwasgoingtobe a better day. Lainey knew that because, as she’d left the house alongside Jill, Jill had turned to her and said, “It’s going to be a better day,” and in an effort to protect her own sanity, she was choosing to believe her. That, and if it wasn’t a better day, she was going to scream into her pillow until her head hurt when she got home. She’d left the house an hour early so that she could get everyone coffee before work. That way, she’d be early, Mr. Arnault would be impressed, and Monica would be happy right away as opposed to an hour into the day. It was almost a perfect plan except that she got to work about forty minutes early and was sitting in her car deciding between giving everyone cold coffee or looking dumb. She decided on looking dumb and walked to the building with two hands firmly clamped on the cup carrier. She would not allow the flashing images that were assaulting her brain of her slipping and spilling four venti drinks down the outfit she had borrowed to become a reality. That would remain in her mind, something to work out in a nightmare later.
When she pushed the heavy door open with her back, the building was entirely dark except for a ray of light escaping through the crack under Mr. Arnault’s door.
“Hello?” she called out.
“Hello?” he called back. She knocked on the door. “Come in.”
“I brought everyone drinks. Peppermint green tea,” she said, setting his down on a coaster. He smiled warmly at her, his expression a bit amused.
“Bit early, are we?”
“I guess so,” she responded sheepishly.
“You look nice,” he told her seriously, his eyes glittering form underneath his heavy, dark eyebrows. “Thanks for the tea.”
“You’re welcome. I won’t clock in,” she teased.
“You can put Monica’s latte in the microwave right before she gets here. She won’t notice, I promise,” he assured her.
“Okay, I will.” She left his office, a little thrown off by how he had yet again read her mind. She left his office and sat awkwardly in silence in the break room, waiting to hear the cue of the door opening, so that she could surreptitiously heat Monica’s latte. However, when the door did open and she stood to carry out her quest, people didn’t drip into the office like usual. Rather, they seemed to be blown in by the wind, racing from room to room, all stopping to talk to Mr. Arnault.
“Lainey, what are you working on?” Monica asked her, hanging her coat up and cramming her head into Lainey’s workspace so that their ears were almost touching.
“I’m just unsubscribing from the junk emails like before,” she responded tentatively, sensing it was the wrong answer.
“No!” Monica yipped harshly before breathing in deeply. “Sorry, no, today I need you to do my job while I work on something for Mr. Arnault.”
“What is going on?”
“Someone is claiming they came up with his idea before he did. No way it’s true, but we need to find documentation that can prove it. So, what you’re going to do is check my tasks instead of yours—in my Slack thread, obviously—and just go through it. If you have any questions, skip it. Okay?”
Lainey did just that and found that Monica’s job was surprisingly easy for her. It was calming, in a way, for Lainey to know that Monica wasn’t a super genius she could never live up to. In fact, it was much easier than four years at Vanderbilt had been and almost boring for her. She was mainly emailing people about orders for things around the office they needed, researching online forums to see what sort of medical problems the chronically ill were having that weren’t being solved, managing Mr. Arnault’s calendar, and keeping track of the state of patents and copyrights. As she was getting into the stride of things, she heard the bell above the door ting, and she said without looking up, “Good afternoon! I’ll be right with you. Please have a seat.”
“Nah, I’m good standing,” responded the voice in a bored drawl she recognized instantly. Heat rushed to her face, her stomach hollowed, and she squeezed her eyes shut, wishing the moment away. She opened them slowly and looked up. “I’m still here,” Josh said.
“What are you doing here?” she whined, looking around.
“I wanted to see this new boyfriend that Jill was telling me all about.”
