by Vi Keeland
I lifted my phone. “By all means.”
Drew took a few steps away and stopped. “What’s the password?”
“Ummm. Fuck.”
“You don’t want me to know your password?”
“No. My password is fuck.”
Drew chuckled. “Girl after my own heart.” Then he typed it in and was gone again.
By the time noon rolled around, my stomach was growling since I woke up late and hadn’t eaten any breakfast. But I couldn’t leave the office and chance missing the furniture delivery company again. When I heard Drew take a break from talking on the phone, I ventured to the file room.
“Do you usually order lunch? I’m afraid to go out and miss the delivery.”
“Sometimes. What are you in the mood for?”
I shrugged. “I don’t care. I’m not picky.”
“How about Indian food? Curry House is a few blocks away and delivers quick.”
I scrunched up my nose.
“You don’t like Indian food?”
“Not really.”
“Okay. How about Chinese?”
“Too much MSG.”
“Sushi?”
“I’m allergic to fish.”
“Mexican?”
“Too heavy for lunch.”
“You do understand what the phrase I’m not picky means, right?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Of course. You’re just picking weird stuff.”
“What would you like to eat, Emerie?”
“Pizza?”
He nodded. “Pizza it is. See? I’m not picky.”
After we finished lunch, Drew took his phone from the charger. Then he reached for mine. “Can I look at your pictures?”
“My phone pictures? Why?”
“Best way to get to know someone is to look at their cell phone pictures when they least expect it.”
“I’m not even sure what I have on there.”
“That’s the point. If you have a chance to clean up your pictures, I won’t be seeing the real you. I’ll be seeing what you want me to see.”
I tried to remember if there was anything embarrassing or incriminating on the phone as Drew slid it from my side of the table to his with a smirk on his face. At the last second, I covered his hand with mine, stopping him.
“Wait. I want to look at yours if you’re going to look at mine. And you better have some embarrassing things on there, because I’m pretty sure I do.”
“By all means. I don’t embarrass easily.” Drew slid his phone across the folding table.
I watched as he keyed in the password and began to swipe through my photos. After a moment he paused, and his eyebrows rose. “This one tells me a lot about you.”
I reached for the phone, but he pulled it back too fast. “What? What photo is it?”
Drew turned the phone so the screen faced me. Oh, God. How embarrassing. It was a close-up of me last week while I was working. I’d had a full day of telephone therapy sessions, and my speakerphone had decided to stop working bright and early on that Monday morning. I didn’t have time to run out and get a new office phone, and by early afternoon I was frustrated with not being able to multitask because one hand had to hold the phone to my ear. So I’d gotten creative. I’d taken two large, orange rubber bands and put them around the phone and my head—effectively banding the phone in place so I didn’t have to hold it anymore. One of the rubber bands ran across my forehead, slightly above my eyebrows and pushed my brow down, giving me an odd, scrunched face. The other rubber band wrapped around my chin, causing the skin to pucker into a very crooked chin dimple that I didn’t normally have.
“My speaker phone died, and I had a lot of telephone calls that day. I needed to be able to use my hands.”
He chuckled. “Inventive. There hasn’t been a good iPhone update since Steve Jobs died. You might want to look into selling them your new technology.”
I crumpled up my napkin and threw it at his face. “Shut up.”
He swiped a few more times and then stopped. This time, I couldn’t make out what he was thinking.
“What? What did you stall on?”
He stared at the photo for a long moment and swallowed before again turning it to face me. It was a full-length photo taken the night I went to a wedding with Baldwin. It was, without a doubt, the best I’d ever looked in a photo. I’d had my hair and makeup professionally done, and the dress I wore fit me like a glove. It was simple—black and sleeveless with a daring, low-cut V that showed off my cleavage and curves. The dress was more risqué than I would normally wear, and I’d been feeling confident and pretty. Although that lasted only about fifteen minutes after Baldwin took that photo, right up until I answered the door to his apartment and realized he was bringing a date to the wedding we’d both been invited to. And that date wasn’t me.
Remembering the sadness I’d felt that night, I said, “Wedding.”
Drew nodded and stared at the photo again before looking back up to me. “You look gorgeous. Sexy as hell.”
I felt the blush creep up my face. I hated having fair skin for this exact reason. “Thank you.”
He swiped a few more times and turned the cell back to me. “Boyfriend?”
That one had been taken a few minutes after Baldwin told me how beautiful I looked and took that full-length photo of me. His arm was wrapped around my waist, and I was smiling and gazing at him as he took the selfie. His date had rung the doorbell right after that shot. The rest of the night was all forced smiles.
“No.”
“Ex-boyfriend?”
“No.”
He looked down again and back up at me. “There’s a story here, isn’t there?”
“How do you know?”
“Your face. The way you’re looking at him.”
It’s pretty sad that a virtual stranger was able to see my feelings after ten seconds of looking at a photo of us, yet Baldwin never was. I could have lied, but for some reason I didn’t.
“We met in undergrad school. He was the TA for my psychology class while working on his doctorate. He’s one of my closest friends. I actually live in the apartment next to him.”
“It didn’t work out?”
“We never tried. He doesn’t feel the same way about me.”
Drew looked like he was going to say more, but just nodded and resumed his picture snooping. By the time he was done, he really had learned a lot about me. He’d seen photos of my two little sisters, including some selfies we’d taken with the dog before I moved to New York. He knew about my feelings for Baldwin, and he was aware of how creative I could be in my need to multitask.
When he slid the phone back to me on the table, I asked, “So…you said checking out each other’s photos would tell us a lot about the other person. What did my photos tell you about me?”
“Family oriented, brokenhearted, and a little bit of a nutjob.”
I wanted to be offended at that last part, but it was hard when he was completely on point. Although I wasn’t going to admit he was right. Instead, I reached for his cell.
“Password?”
He smirked. “Suck.”
“Get out of here. You just changed yours.”
He shook his head. “Nope. It’s one of my favorite words for a multitude of reasons. You suck is grumbled under my breath at people at least once a day. And, of course, who doesn’t love a good suck?”
“You’re a perv.”
“Says the woman whose password is fuck.”
“I made my password fuck because I could never remember what my password was, and every time I entered the wrong one, I would grumble fuck. Baldwin suggested I just make it fuck the last time I was locked out of my own phone.”
“Baldwin?”
Our eyes caught. “The guy in the photo.”
Drew nodded.
For some reason, talking about Baldwin to Drew made me feel uncomfortable, so I changed the subject. Typing suck into his iPhone, I said, “Let’s see what I lear
n about you, counselor.”
Drew clasped his hands behind his head and sat back in his chair, watching me. “Have at it.”
I found the photos icon and opened it. Seeing nothing, I went to the camera app and opened it. Nothing was there either.
“You have no photos? I thought this was an exercise to learn about each other.”
“It was.”
“And what exactly did I just learn about you with a camera full of nothing?”
“You learned I don’t play fair.”
Drew
What an ass.
Me. Not the shapely one I was just caught staring at. Although…what an ass.
Emerie had been leaning over the reception desk to reach for my ringing office phone when she caught me leering at her succulent rear end. The polite thing would have been to look away, pretend I wasn’t checking her out. But what did I do? I winked.
Again. What an ass.
And now, Emerie stared at me as she continued to talk on the phone. Things went one of two ways when a woman caught you red-handed ogling her. She flirted back, or…
Emerie hung up the phone and walked down the hall toward me with purpose. Her face was impassive, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
She stopped at the doorway and crossed her arms over her chest. “Were you just checking out my ass?”
So this was heading the other way, where the object of the ogle calls you out on your shit. I mimicked her stance, folding my arms across my chest, too.
“Do you want me to lie?”
“No.”
“It’s a great ass.”
Her cheeks flushed. “You’re an ass, you know that?”
“Then I must be a great ass. Because it takes one to know one.”
Her stoic face cracked, and she laughed. I liked that she was more amused than annoyed. “Do women tend to find your behavior attractive?”
I shrugged. “I’m handsome and rich. Women tend to find that attractive. You’d be surprised how much I can get away with.”
“You are so full of yourself.”
“Maybe, but it’s true.” I came out from where I’d been standing behind my desk, leaving only about a foot or two between us. “Tell the truth. If I was short, bald, broke, and toothless with a hump on my back, you’d have told me off after catching me looking at your ass.”
Her mouth opened, and she looked adorable trying to come up with a retort even though her face had already told me I was right.
“You’re an egomaniac.”
“Maybe. But an attractive one.”
Emerie rolled her eyes and huffed, but I caught a slight smirk on her face right before her hips sashayed out of my office.
What an ass.
The rest of the afternoon, I was tied up on the phone. Even though I’d cleared my calendar of office consults until next week, word had gotten out that I was back, and all of my miserable clients wanted to update me on their spouses’ latest maneuvers. I worked in an ugly-ass business, but I was damn good at my job. Revenge was what they wanted, and every time I dealt a blow to a wife who deserved it, I mentally got even with my own ex, Alexa, all over again. I probably needed a therapist, but vicarious revenge was cheaper and far more satisfying.
I’d just hung up with a client who wanted a restraining order to keep his estranged wife from burning his porn stash when I overheard Emerie talking on the phone from the reception area. The empty office space carried her voice, and I couldn’t help but listen.
“Queens? That’s the closest you can get me to midtown for under fifteen hundred a month? What if I went smaller? No reception area, just a simple office in a building somewhere?” She paused for a minute. “What’s so funny? Yes, I did think you were quoting me space where more than one person can fit.” Another pause. “No, I’m not from New York. But…but…You know what? Forget it. I’ll call another agent.”
“Trouble finding a place?” I said from behind her.
Emerie spun around. The look on her face was pure exasperation.
“What am I doing in New York?”
“You tell me.”
She sighed. “Long story. I—” My office phone rang, and she held up a finger and reached for it before I could even attempt to.
“Drew Jagger’s office…Who, may I ask, is calling?...Mr. London…”
She looked to me, and I held up two hands in the universal no-way sign. She continued smoothly.
“Mr. Jagger is in with a client right now. He also has an appointment immediately following this one that is already waiting. Can I take a detailed message for you?”
She was quiet for a minute as she held the phone away from her ear and raised her brows. I could hear that blowhard Hal London even standing two feet away. When he took a breath, she politely managed to get him off the phone.
“Did you get all that?” she asked me.
“I did. Guy’s an asshole. I would almost rather represent his cheating bitch of a wife. He keeps me on the phone for an hour every chance he gets. It’s his dime, but I still don’t want to talk to him. You managed to get him off pretty quick.”
“Try pouring on the sweet extra thick. That always throws people off.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
Emerie looked at her watch. “It’s almost four o’clock. I can’t believe the furniture company isn’t here yet. I’m sorry, I’ve been here all day.”
“No problem. I’ll just add it to your rent bill.”
She smiled. “Fine. But then I’m charging you for my secretarial services. I’m not cheap.”
A dirty flash of Emerie playing secretary with me as her boss popped into my head, and the words tumbled out before I could stop them. “I’d pay a lot for your services.”
She blushed, but then pushed back. “You must be a dick to work for, between your big ego and pervy comments. Good thing you’re a lawyer for when you get sued.”
“Did you just call me a dick?”
She bit her plump lip. “I did.”
I chuckled. “You figured that out pretty quick.”
An alarm on her phone began to buzz. She turned it off. “I have a four o’clock call with a patient I have to take. I’m going to step outside to take it. That way I don’t miss the furniture company either.”
“Why don’t you use my office? Might as well get some use out of that desk before they take it back. I’m hard on furniture. I didn’t want to ding it and screw up your returning it. More privacy to talk to your patient.”
“I don’t want to miss the furniture company.”
“I’ll keep a lookout.”
She hesitated. “You don’t mind?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Go ahead. I’ll play secretary for you now.”
It didn’t take much to convince her. I watched her walk down the hall—correct that, I watched her ass walk down the hall. When she reached my office she stopped and looked back over her shoulder, catching me once again. So I winked. I’m nothing if not consistent.
It was a little after four-thirty when the furniture company finally showed up. Emerie was still in my office, so I knocked on the half-closed door to get her attention. She was writing in a notebook while talking with a headset on. She’d piled her long, copper hair in a messy bun on top of her head, and when she looked up, it was the first time I’d seen her wearing glasses. They were dark frames, rectangular in shape, and screamed fuck-me librarian.
At least that’s what I heard when I looked at them. I stared for a minute, getting caught in my own fantasy as she finished up her call.
Her brows drew down as she said goodbye and slipped off her headset. “Is everything okay?”
Were her eyes always that blue? The black spectacles must have made the color pop even more than her fair skin already had. “Uh, yeah. The furniture company is here.”
She looked at me funny, but then walked out to the lobby. After she signed some paperwork, the workmen followed her to my office. They wrapped the desk in moving blankets and
taped them in place.
Emerie sighed, looking on. “It’s a beautiful desk.”
I watched her watching them ready it for moving. “Gorgeous.”
In the last three days, she’d realized she’d been swindled for ten grand, gotten arrested, and found out her dream office belonged to someone else. Yet this was the first time I’d seen her truly saddened. It looked like she’d reached her limit. When I saw her eyes well with tears, I felt it in my chest. It affected me more than I could explain. And obviously it affected more than just my chest, it affected…
My sanity.
Because the bad idea I heard myself suggesting certainly wouldn’t have come out of my mouth had I not had a momentary lapse in sanity.
“Stay. You and your desk should stay. I have plenty of space here.”
Drew, New Year’s Eve, Eight years ago
Some of the best times in life come from bad ideas.
The tall blonde with long legs that stretched like a ladder to heaven? She was definitely a bad idea. I’d been keeping tabs on her all night. She’d come with two friends—all three of them looked barely eighteen. Some local who was a friend of a friend of one of my fraternity brothers had brought them with him. The local had his eye on the blonde, and sometimes his hands, but she seemed to have more interest in getting to know Sigma Alpha guys than him.
I should have been studying for the LSAT. Should have left Atlanta and gone home for break like I normally did. But since it was our last semester in the house, all the seniors in my frat decided to stay for the winter break. One party led into another for ten straight days. And tonight, since it was New Year’s Eve, it was an odd crowd. Most of the students were back home, which made room for the locals. And Daisy Duke and her long legs screamed Georgia peach.
Our eyes caught as I took a swig from my beer. She smiled wide, and I had a sudden craving to eat some fruit. She came to me; I didn’t even have to get up.
“Is this seat taken?” Momentarily confused, I looked to my right and then my left. I was sitting in a recliner in the corner of the living room, watching the party around me. The closest seat was on the other side of the room.
“You’re welcome to sit anywhere you want.”