It wasn’t much. Four walls, a heavy wooden door, and a dark wooden desk. I had a couple of bookshelves, a couple of small windows to make it seem like I wasn’t in prison. The carpet was rough underneath my feet as I slipped out of my heels and sat down in the worn leather chair. Somehow, the leather was still smooth despite how often the chair had been used previously. I sat back in the wrinkled leather and drew in a deep breath. That was my task for the day, getting settled into my office, which meant putting my whopping four books on the bookshelf and hooking my laptop up to my desktop computer so I could sync information between the two devices.
It took me all of an hour to accomplish.
I sat back and closed my eyes, allowing my mind to wander. Ten floors above me was the penthouse floor of the office space, the top floor of Greyson Consulting. And there, in his cushy office, sat Brent—the boy I’d met at a Halloween party when I was eighteen years old.
It had been my first college party. My roommate, Katie, had persuaded me to go. She was the girl that would eventually become my “ride-or-die bitch.” She told me it would be the “party of the semester” and that if I didn’t go it would “solidify my social status for the rest of my college days.”
It wasn’t that big of a deal. But the boy I met there was.
I drew in a deep breath and smiled. Even for twenty years old, Brett had been gorgeous. His steely gray stare had pierced me the moment I’d walked into the party. His thick black hair fell into his face back in those days, swooped off to the side, contrasting how pale his skin was. I giggled at my first words to him when he approached me at the party, offering me a drink.
“I didn't know they made costume makeup that pale. Where’d you get it?”
I’d made an idiot out of myself that night, and yet he’d still stuck around. After wrapping his hand around my wrist and placing my palm to his cheek, I felt like an idiot. He’d rubbed my skin along his, proving to me without words that he wasn’t wearing any makeup. Then, he’d kissed the palm of my hand before easing my arm back down to my side.
A hell of a move. And it worked that night.
We spent the entire night in that small little corner. Him in his jeans and his T-shirt and me in my slutty bunny costume my roommate had stuffed me into. I couldn’t stop staring at him that night. Couldn’t stop fantasizing about what his plump lower lip would feel like on my skin. And despite his lanky stature back in college, he had an enormous well of strength. I figured out that night that he could put me into a wall. Fuck me properly without ever having to take my costume off my body. I went to that Halloween party a single, curious college girl and left as the apple of a man’s eye.
I left that Halloween party as Brett’s dedicated little sweet treat.
I leaned back in my leather chair and slowly opened my eyes. Memories bombarded my mind as my computer dinged. It was done syncing and loading whatever bullshit onto my laptop I needed in order to work from home. And yes, I was required to work from home for my job. No sick days for me. No weekends of my own again. It came with overtime pay, but money wasn’t everything. Sometimes, a girl just needed a day to lie in bed in the same pair of clothes from the night before and sleep the day away.
Gone were those days, I guessed.
I smiled. Some of my favorite memories of Brett were exactly those—simple memories of us waking up in my extra-long twin bed in my dorm room. Trying to sneak him out before the hall managers of my dorm caught him in my room. Eating in the cafeteria together between classes and poking fun at how bad the food was. Scraping quarters together just to go get a cup of coffee on the main drag that ran through campus.
Tucking his thick black hair behind his ear before kissing the tip of his nose.
I smoothed my hands down my face. Fucking hell, things had ended so badly between us. That was probably why I hadn’t seen him, despite the fact that he was supposed to be the one conducting the interview. As a main manager, I reported to him. We’d have to converse at some point in time, whether it be through email or telephone calls or in-person meetings. He couldn’t avoid me forever, if that was what he was doing.
But with how badly things ended between us, I couldn’t blame him. I’d avoid me, too, if I were in his shoes.
The storm that took us out was just as perfectly terrible as our start had been perfectly beautiful. I let too many people get inside my head. Not to mention, his sister was a raging bitch. We’d let too many people fill our heads with too many lies. Katie didn’t like him. Ever since she’d claimed to see him in the coffee shop with another girl, she’d instantly written him off. I’d confronted Brett about it. Asked him if there was someone else. And even though he claimed there wasn’t, Katie kept chirping in my ear.
“I saw him with her again.”
“They were walking across the lawn.”
“Holding hands.”
“I saw him kiss her. I’m serious, Olivia. It’s him. I’d know him anywhere.”
I let her get into my head. And every time I brought it up with Brett, he’d have something to fire back. “Well, my sister said this” or “my sister said that” or “my sister says you’re not good enough for me, but you don’t see me listening to her.” I could have strangled his sister. I loved his family. Every single one of them. They’d taken me in like I was one of their own. From the time I’d first stepped into their massive mansion so Brett could introduce me, they had accepted me into the fold. And it felt incredible, especially after the way I had been raised.
My father had taken off when I was seven and never once looked back. Not for me or for my younger brother. My mother struggled to raise us. She did the best she could, but I watched her kill herself to feed us. I watched her dehydrate herself so we could have the last of the filtered water in the fridge. I’d watched her struggle, day in and day out.
Which was why I needed the job so badly. When I graduated college, I was determined to help her out, to take care of her the way she had taken care of me. I’d graduated with a degree in psychology but didn’t look deep enough into the career fields to figure out what was required of me after that. I’d been too busy sucking on Brett’s face to figure it out. So, once I was slapped with the reality that I needed at least a master’s to pursue what I really wanted to do, all my plans went out the window.
Including Brett, when he broke up with me after my graduation ceremony.
As much as I wanted to hate him for it, I couldn’t. The last year of our relationship had been so fraught with “he said, she said” bullshit that I was ready to end it all myself. Katie was forever insistent that he was regularly cheating on me, and Brett’s sister kept chattering away in his own ear, saying things like I wasn’t good enough for him and how I’d never amount to anything that his mother or father wanted out of a daughter-in-law. It wore the both of us down, and I knew the reason why Brett ended things was because he was tired of the drama.
I had been as well.
Didn’t stop the breakup from hurting, though.
Four years. We’d been together my entire college career. But the second I graduated, reality struck. Brett left, my student loans were due, and I realized I’d never be able to pay them back if I pursued a master’s degree. Even with scholarships, I’d still have to take out loans in order to open my own clinical practice in order to help people the way I wanted to, the way I’d always been passionate about. I’d had no idea I’d need more schooling after four years of college. The only thing I was qualified to do with a Bachelor’s in Psychology was social work.
And that was a world I didn’t want to step into after experiencing it firsthand myself growing up.
“Knock knock.”
“Katie?” I asked.
My best friend’s voice ripped me from my trance.
“Don’t be alarmed, but I come bearing gifts of food and a curiosity to know what your office looks like. Oh, swanky office. I like the cream-colored walls,” she said, grinning.
“I have no idea if you’re being
sarcastic or not,” I said.
“That tired, huh?”
“More like that overwhelmed.”
“With what? I thought you were just training,” she said.
“Doesn’t mean the job isn’t already taking a toll,” I said.
“I think I know why it’s taking a toll.”
I leaned up in my seat as Katie pulled up a chair next to my desk. She divvied out the food, setting my cheeseburger and fries in front of me. She pulled out chocolate chip cookies before handing me my soda, the silence in the air filled with tension.
“Don’t say it,” I said.
“It’s because you’re working for Brett,” Katie said.
“Come on. Can we talk about something else, please? He’s been on my mind all morning, and I’d like to think about literally anything else.”
“All morning? That bad?”
“Yes, that bad.”
“Well, I warned you when you said you were going to interview for the job that this might happen,” she said.
“I didn’t think it would be this bad, honestly. He’s ten stories above me, but it feels like he’s in the office next to me.”
“Have you seen him yet?”
I shook my head. “I’ll have to eventually. My job requires it.”
“What is your job, exactly?”
I plucked a french fry from the pile in front of me. “I’m the overall manager for the consultants Greyson Consulting hires. I keep tabs on their paperwork, approve and deny requests for vacation. I deal with their invoicing. Things like that.”
“So, you’re their secretary?”
“No. I’m their boss,” I said.
“Oh, nice. Wait, so if you’re their boss, that means you have to report to Brett whenever something goes wrong. Right?” she asked.
“Yep. According to my job description, there will be monthly meetings with him I’ll be required to attend as well as weekly one-on-one meetings so I can update him on things regarding the consultants. My first major project is figuring out how the company can expand their consulting practices.”
“And what does Greyson Consulting, well, consult on?” she asked.
“Financial matters. Everything from questions about retirement and investment accounts to helping people manage their everyday finances.”
“And he wants to expand that somehow?”
“Supposedly, investing is changing with the times. Things like robo-investors are starting to become popular with the younger generations. I don’t know—I’ve got a lot of material to read on it before next week. But, yes. My first main project is to figure out how we can expand our consulting services to attract the younger generations,” I said.
“Sounds boring as hell,” Katie said.
“You’re telling me.”
“And yet, you applied for the job.”
“I needed the job. I’m still taking care of my mother, and my student loan bills have to be paid.”
“You’re taking care of your mom? Still? Isn’t that a job for your future stepdad?” she asked.
“We aren’t talking about him,” I said.
“Okay. Then, let’s move on to another question. You think your flame will relight with Brett?”
“That’s what you want to know? The girl who was absolutely hell-bent on convincing me he was cheating back in college, and you want to know if we’ll start dating again?”
“More like, I want to know if you’re going to make a stupid decision with your life again,” she said.
“Well, then the answer to your question is no. You were around when we split up. You saw how badly that went down. Hell, you were there for the entire rise and demise of our relationship. Rumors flying and tears being shed. Yelling in my dorm room over his damn sister and trying to get you to shut up long enough to enjoy my relationship with him.”
“Hey, I know what I saw. And after all the things I saw on campus, I’ll never trust that son of a bitch again. He knew what he was doing. He knew he was playing you, and he knew he could,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “The answer to your question again, Katie, is no. There’s no spark. There’s no interest. There’s no reason for you to panic and start up the rumor mill again.”
“They weren’t rumors, Olivia. I saw him with my own two eyes.”
“Yeah, but you were the only one who saw him. Hell, his sister couldn’t stand me, and even she said Brett wasn’t that type of person.”
“His sister was also a pathological liar. I mean, come on. She tried to convince Brett that the reason you lost all that weight junior year was because you were addicted to cocaine. You had mono,” she said.
“Look, it’s in the past, and I don’t want to dredge it up. Okay? So, can we talk about anything else? Please?” I asked.
“Burger’s good,” she said as she held up her food.
I giggled and shook my head as I grabbed my drink.
“Are you really that worried about me?” I asked.
Katie took a massive bite of her burger, taking time to gather her words.
“I just don’t want you to be blindsided by him again. You were an eighteen-year-old girl smitten with a junior college student at a Halloween party. You followed him around like a slobbering little puppy dog. You’re a strong woman now. You stand on your own two feet. I don’t want to see you reduced back to that little girl just because he’s back in your life,” she said.
“Trust me, I’m stronger than that. I was beaten down my freshman year of high school because of arguments I had with my mother. You know this. She wanted me to go to the community college up the road from home, and I wanted to be in Seattle at the university.”
“But I know you fell in love with him, Olivia.”
I sipped on my drink, occupying my lips so I wouldn’t have to talk about it. How much ending things with Brett hurt, despite the rocky relationship we’d had over the four years we were together.
“That’s the last thing I’ll say about it. All I want you to do is take care of yourself, okay?” Katie asked.
“And you know I always do,” I said.
“Except when it came to Brett. He was always your weak spot.”
“Well, things change. People change. Weak spots change.”
“For your sake, Olivia, I hope they have.”
But even as I rolled my eyes again at her, I knew she had a point. If someone wasn’t telling me Brett was an asshole, they were telling me he was cheating. Or that his family was stuck-up. Or that he loved money more than anything else. I knew better, though. I’d known a sweeter side of him no one else had ever seen. It was why I always rose to his defense. I wanted to think I wasn’t weak to him any longer, but I wasn’t sure if that was true. Hell, he’d been on my mind all morning as I sat ten floors below him in the office building he owned for his damn company.
That didn’t exactly spell out “strong, independent woman” to me.
“Earth to Olivia. You there?” Katie asked.
“Hmm? Yeah. Sorry. Just running down my week in my head,” I said.
“You know I know when you’re lying, right?”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re so lying to me. And that’s fine. Just make sure you don’t lie to yourself. That got you into trouble the first time. We don’t need any repeat affairs while trying to figure out a new job,” she said.
I didn’t even try to fight her on that truth.
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