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I waved to Clayton, the doorman, as I crossed the lobby to the elevator. “No, that’s okay, since she’s already on her way over. That would be rude. Ugh. I just wanted to relax. It’s been a day.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“No worries, Nisha. Have a good night.”
I hung up the phone and turned to Clayton before getting on the elevator. “Clayton, Kaylie Anderson is on her way over to see me. Send her up, please.”
Clayton gave me a thumbs up. “Sure thing, Lacey.”
When I got up to my apartment, I slipped off my heels and sat down for a moment. I wanted to strip out of my work clothes and take a long hot shower, but I didn’t have time for that. I settled for changing into some soft yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt.
When I came out of my bedroom, I heard the elevator, and then Kaylie was breezing in holding some brown shopping bags.
She headed straight for the kitchen. “I brought dinner. Salmon and chickpea salad.”
“Thank God. I don’t think I have the energy to rustle up anything to eat. Sorry, babe, I forgot about the meeting tonight.”
“That’s okay.” She began pulling plates out of the cabinets. “I’m up to speed on all the reports from SRI and I’ve touched base with all our ‘red’ clients.”
Kaylie was our client liaison. She’d been the victim of revenge porn, so she intimately understood many of the things our clients were going through.
She also kept up with the reports from SRI, the company we engaged that helped us scrub the internet using their expertise, resources, and some magic that I didn’t understand to remove and mitigate any online information that damaged our clients and kept it from spreading.
Over the years, our clients had run the gamut of all types of people: teenage girls, older women, and even a surprising number of men. Their tormentors loved to extract maximum shame and humiliation from them by exposing their most private moments to their families, friends, coworkers, employers, teachers, and their communities. That’s where Cyber Angels came in and shut it down and, in some cases, when the client was willing, spent the resources to go after the bad guys legally.
“Any clients we should be worried about?” I moved to her side to help her plate the food.
“No. Everything’s looking okay. I’m setting up a new client with SRI tomorrow and vetting a few more people that reached out to me.”
Now that we had a full understanding of what services our clients needed, we’d been slowly expanding our new client budget. I was in charge of securing the finances and our fundraising efforts. “I don’t have anything new right now on the money side. Our spring fundraiser is moving along nicely.”
Kaylie shrugged as she spooned food onto our plates. “Cyber Angels is running smoothly. That’s all I need to know. I just wanted to get out of the apartment for a bit. Sid is driving me crazy. I just finished weaning the twins, and now Sid wants to knock me up again. The boys are still such a handful.”
My hands froze over the plate. The topic was heading into murky waters for me. I wanted to be there as a friend for Kaylie, but she was hitting all sorts of emotional triggers right now.
She snuck a glance over at me and then asked almost too casually, “Have you been seeing anyone lately? Any hot new prospects?”
“No.” I busied myself by grabbing some seltzer water from the refrigerator. I didn’t even have to ask; I knew that’s what Kaylie wanted to drink.
She sighed. “You’ve been avoiding the subject for a month now. Let’s get it over with. It’s time to rip off the bandaid.”
“What’s the point? It’s over now. Besides, it would be awkward talking to you about your brother.” I grabbed my plate of food and escaped to the table.
She followed behind me. “We’re best friends! You literally picked me up off the sidewalk when I was at my lowest point and you helped me reconnect with Sidney when I was being stupid. The least I can do is listen to you. Besides, you had sex with my husband and my brother. In fact, I heard you were actually married to Bash. So, we’re pretty much related.”
Shit, she sounded so blasé about it, but was she still upset about me sleeping with Sid? “You promised you would never hold that against me. It happened so long ago.”
She had a twinkle of amusement in her eye. “Let’s just say I hope that incident has faded from his memory.”
“I can hardly even remember what his dick looks like anymore. Except for that little—“
She threw her napkin at me. “Don’t use the word little when talking about my husband’s dick. There’s nothing little about it.”
A genuine burst of laughter escaped my lips, and it felt good. “I may have had sex with him, but I’ve never made love with him.” I snickered.
Her nose wrinkled. “It’s creepy the way you say it. Made love.”
It was fun talking about sex with her. Two years ago, she would have fainted at the mere mention of the word. “At least he never made me squirt.”
