Overcoming Fear (Growing Pains #2)

by K. F. Breene

  “Hey Sean.”

  Darleen. Darleen and her huge rack. Oh holy hell—what was this? Karma? He didn’t even believe in karma!

  “Hey Darleen. Excuse me.” Sean eased around her, squeezing his eyes shut and keeping his hands in the air as her breast scraped against his chest.

  He met Ray on his way across the yard.

  “Hey…”Ray looked at him askew. “You okay?”

  “No,” Sean said through gritted teeth. “I kissed her. Then got rejected. Now I’m trying to be good. It’s torture. Not sure she’s worth it.”

  A shit-eating smile smeared Ray’s face. “It’s good for you.”

  “I don’t care what lessons you had in mind, Ray, this is not good for me. I’m going to go listen to some racist jokes. I’m hoping they’ll take the wind out of my sails.”

  “Go jump in the pool. It’s cold.” Ray laughed and shook his head. “I like her more and more. But it is worth it. If she ever does give in, you’ll have manners.”

  “I don’t want manners, Ray, I want—“

  Ray gave him a warning look. “You want manners. Go talk to Mable. Tell her you’re German. She just learned a bunch of German jokes. Or Jewish. She always has a million of those.”

  “She is Jewish!”

  “Only when she’s not telling Jewish jokes.”

  Sean shook his head.

  ~*~*~*~

  When Krista got back to the table her face was dry and the outlook was gloomy. The one good thing was that Sean was hanging out with an old woman who yelled a lot. He didn’t seek solace with a young, cute chick. That would have severely ruined her day.

  More so than it already was.

  “What’s going on?” Kate asked through the fog.

  “Sean kissed me.”

  “What?” Jasmine said. Kate just stared.

  Ben got up and tried to walk away, but Jasmine grabbed him by the pants and pulled him back down.

  “This is girl talk,” Ben said.

  “Then you just grew a vagina. This is about a guy you know. We need the male perspective on this.”

  “Then, as a guy, you won’t meet better. He would bend over backwards to help a friend. As a woman, I say steer clear. I would hate to see you get hurt, Krista.”

  “You guys, I said no to him. I kissed him, yes—he’s hot. How the hell do you say no to that?” Kate and Jasmine nodded. It was reason enough. “But after that I said no. He respected that.”

  “That was why he was walking so stiffly. I wondered,” Jasmine said as she looked toward Sean and the lady who was currently nudging him. He was grim-faced.

  Ben got up again.

  “Let him go,” Krista said. “That way I can give you details.”

  “I’ll be with Sean and the racist,” Ben said, scurrying away. Girl talk scared him. Rightly so.

  No sooner did Ben run for his life than Ray showed up with beers.

  “Hi ladies, thought I’d bring refreshments,” he said with a smile as he sat down. “Also thought I would get in that interview.”

  “These are the best interviews I’ve ever had,” Kate said, shimmying to get comfortable.

  “I am generally a tougher sell than Sean, however,” Ray replied solemnly.

  Krista minutely shook her head at the girls. Absolutely untrue statement.

  “We didn’t bring our portfolios, though,” Jasmine said.

  “That’s okay. How about you just give me an example of the hardest project you have ever worked on.” Ray crossed his arms on the wooden table and waited patiently.

  Kate and Jasmine exchanged glances. Then looked at Krista.

  “Aw, c’mon you guys—you’re gonna cite the final project for Statistical Mechanics aren’t you?”

  They both nodded. Ray looked on patiently.

  “Seriously, that wasn’t the hardest project you’ve ever done. Be honest.”

  “She has a point,” Jasmine conceded, looking at Kate. “It wasn’t the hardest project content-wise. I will give her that.”

  Kate turned to Ray. “It was the first project, where we met Krista—“

  “We already knew each other,” Krista interjected.

  Kate looked at her for a beat, waited for her to close her trap, and looked back at Ray. “As I was saying, it was the first project where we properly met Krista. We all knew she was a goodie-goodie who knew all the answers, but we had never come face-to-face with her overachieving complex.”

  “Serious complex,” Jasmine helped.

  “Not serious complex,” Krista defended.

  “Serious,” Kate said gravely to Ray.

  “I’ve worked with her. I agree,” Ray said, just as soberly.

  “Oh good, let’s all turn on Krista just because she wants to do a good job.” Krista threw her hands up in the air.

  “Anyway,” Kate said, “we got put into groups, all met up and discussed what needed to be done. Everything was fine—“

  “What’d I miss?” Sean was walking up to the table with his liquid grace and confident bearing.

  “Kate and Jasmine were just explaining their hardest project,” Ray said amicably. “Apparently, it was the first time they worked with Krista.”

  Sean shined his brilliant green eyes on Krista. With a smile, he sat down next to her, making Jasmine scoot down the bench to give his big body room.

  “Not true,” Krista said in a pout.

  “Anyway,” Kate continued, “we met, outlined the parts each would do, and left the first meeting with names and numbers of everyone else in the group. The group leader was yours truly—“

  “Only because you were the loudest,” Jasmine said dryly.

  “—and I was assigned to make sure everyone did their parts, everything looked good, then we’d all turn it in. Well, the second meeting, when we checked progress and compared what we had, all hell broke loose.”

  “Hell!” Jasmine exclaimed, leaning forward.

  “Not hell!” Krista said, laughing.

  “Hell,” Kate affirmed. “Everyone showed what they had, which was a couple pages of outline. Except for one…”

  Everyone looked at Krista, who turned red.

  “We’d had a week!” Krista said in defiance.

  “We had a week, yes,” Jasmine nodded. “At the end of the term!”

  “Right,” Krista put her arms on the table in anticipation for a fight. “The project was in place of finals. It was a week of studying.”

  “Ray,” Jasmine said, breaking it down. “I don’t know if you remember college. And you are probably thinking we are seriously inexperienced because we are citing a college example. But imagine, if you will, a math major, with a fine point put on Statistics. Imagine the end of the term, when four math-based classes are ending, and finals are right around the corner. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the pressure a student is under.

  “Now, here you have a project instead of a final. A project, Ray. Sure, it’s time-consuming, but you have the internet at your disposal. If you are an idiot, you just have to put more effort into finding the material and putting it together. Kate and I—and all but one of the aforementioned team—weren’t idiots. We had three weeks, and no final. Happy days.

  “Well, after that first week we had a good start. We had other projects, other finals, a million things going on—we were ecstatic with our group of smart people. The professor put the highest grade earners together. It would have been paradise…”

  “Except we got stuck with the highest grade earner,” Kate chimed in.

  Everyone looked at Krista again.

  “I am about to go sit with Mable,” Krista said as she slumped against the table.

  “I don’t advise it,” Sean muttered. Ray nodded.

  “Well, at that second meeting,” Kate took over, “we all gave our materials, which for the most part, was a concise outline.”

  “For the most part,” Jasmine accentuated.

  “Yes, one of us…” Kate looked at Krista, “had the whole damn pro
ject done. It was in a binder, on nice paper, and even had a table of contents.”

  “Ah yes, the itemized table of contents,” Ray said, nodding. “Her specialty.”

  “How else would you find what you’re looking for?” Krista asked reasonably.

  “That second meeting was a debate. Krista against the whole team. Krista’s argument, largely, was that we were slackers.”

  “Well?” Krista said.

  “We spent two weeks with her constantly on our asses—“

  “Constantly!” Jasmine said.

  “—trying to get material barely published. All because the instructor said the only A he would give was for original work. I lost my democratic leadership to a dictator.”

  “You were unfit,” Krista said, looking at her nails.

  “The professor tried to get our work published. Published!” Jasmine said.

  “It was a fucking final!” Kate added disgustedly.

  “We did get published, though,” Krista said defensively. “It was an obscure paper, but I still think that’s pretty good for sophomores.”

  “You’ve been published?” Sean asked incredulously.

  “As a sophomore in college?” Ray added.

  “That wasn’t my aspiration,” Kate said. “It was her.”

  “But you still followed her lead,” Ray noted.

  “You don’t not follow her lead,” Kate shot back.

  Jasmine nodded. “The one guy who wasn’t really our caliber of student, but who still ended up with us because of numbers, was having a hard time of it. He would’ve had a hard time even if the Nazi didn’t demand our first-born children—“

  “Now that…”

  Jasmine talked over Krista. “With the added pressure he was way behind. He had no way of matching our quality or pace. Krista couldn’t have that, of course, and while we all thought he would sink and she would go to the professor and get him reassigned, instead she spent every free second with him, helping him through the project. He did what he could and probably learned more on that project than from any other class in the whole of his college career.”

  “That has nothing to do with your interview,” Krista mumbled.

  “So, regardless that it was in college,” Kate summed up, “we know what it is to work under intense pressure, for unrealistic expectations, for a boss who won’t rest until you turn yourself inside-out to give everything you got.”

  “Which still isn’t good enough,” Jasmine said.

  “I sound like a huge bitch,” Krista murmured as Ben walked up and sat down.

  “Krista is not a bitch!” Ben said, looking at each face.

  He was so serious, and also pale from the jokes he’d heard, that everyone couldn’t help but laugh, much to Ben’s embarrassment and dismay.

  “So anyway,” Kate said, turning back to Ray. “That was the toughest.”

  “Well, I am worried mostly about work ethic,” Ray said after a moment of deliberation. “You two seem to like to live life—which is a wonderful trait. I am thoroughly entertained. But the client we are chasing is one of the biggest. The CEO, who we are trying to sell to, is sharp. He’s not one to trifle with.”

  Krista didn’t mention that trifling with him was exactly what she’d done for most of that wine function.

  “I don’t like life, actually,” Jasmine said frankly. “But if you’re happy with Krista, then you’ll be happy with us. We’ve worked with her a million times. We’ve always delivered. Ask her.”

  “True,” Krista nodded.

  Ray nodded. “Well, Sean approves. From what I hear I will give you a chance. If you can last a week, giving us material we can use, then I say yes.”

  “My interview wasn’t this hard,” Ben said quietly.

  Sean smiled, “You were hired before I even knew your name.”

  Ben looked up quickly as his eyes widened, “What?”

  “Where were you?” Krista asked.

  The change in subject had everyone looking at Ben.

  “What?” Ben asked defensively, bracing himself on the table. “I went to the restroom and then talked with Mary, Ray’s wife. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Just…” Krista looked at Sean, irrationally thinking he should’ve pulled babysitter. “You don’t usually wander off.”

  “Oh,” Ben turned red. Everyone stared.

  “Oh what?” Jasmine asked, a smile spreading across her face.

  Ben turned redder. “Mary, Ray’s wife, said I might like to meet Elizabeth, and then made the introduction.”

  “Elizabeth?” Sean asked with a furrowed brow.

  “Brown-haired, slim girl with black glasses,” Ray summed up quickly.

  “Oh right,” Sean said, focusing back on Ben. “She’s cute.”

  Jasmine threw her pointer finger in Sean’s face. “You didn’t sleep with her, did you? Or date her? Or break her heart in any way?”

  Sean jumped back so he didn’t get stabbed in the eye. “N-no!” he stammered, thankful that was the case. “I’ve only talked to her once, and that was only for five minutes.”

  Jasmine kept the finger and the glare for another second before relenting. Ray had a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Well, Romeo?” Jasmine asked. “How’d it go?”

  Ben turned ghost-white, “She is sweet and intelligent.”

  “Very intelligent,” Ray said. “She works in Mary’s company in Engineering.”

  “Math versus art brain,” Krista said ominously. “I hope you two can find a common ground.”

  “Oh, I think we can manage.” Ben had red spots appearing on his cheeks.

  “Gotta love Mary,” Jasmine eyed her nearly empty beer. “I have a date next week.”

  “What?” Kate exclaimed.

  “She set me up. Someone named Mark?” Jasmine looked at Ray.

  “Ah yes. He’s in product development, I believe.” Ray gave Sean a meaningful look.

  “Oh,” Sean said, nodding. Another competitor. He wasn’t excited about that part of his life merging with Krista, even if it was just blind dates with her friends.

  Jasmine threw her finger in his face again, from which he jumped. “You haven’t dated him, have you? Or broke his heart in any way?”

  Sean laughed, followed by everyone else. “No. I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  Jasmine smiled, “Will I hate him?”

  Sean shrugged and looked away. “He…generally isn’t into the long haul. We’ve…well…”

  “Is he like you?” Kate asked with a blank face.

  Sean couldn’t look directly into the scrutiny. “In some ways, yes. How I was.”

  “So…” Jasmine said, looking at the sky, “not as hot, probably. Not first pick—because Mary seems to really love you for some reason. Ray, you can fill us in sometime. Probably not really worth much, but single.”

  Ray and Sean looked at her wide-eyed. Kate nodded. Ben and Krista pretended they didn’t hear her.

  “Single works for me.” Jasmine shrugged, finishing her beer. “I’m not looking for a Mr. Right, I’m looking for a Mr. Right Now. Maybe he’ll do.”

  With that, Ben changed the subject.

  ~*~*~*~

  The next week Krista saw nothing of Sean. With her head in her work and the constant information they were giving the client, she needed all hands on deck, and unfortunately, she was the only hand. She received emails daily, sometimes twice daily, from Sean or Ray with new requests for research. Always more. More, more, more.

  One time the research was just to prove that Sean was right and John wrong about some dispute. Usually Krista would tell Sean to go fly a kite with a request like that, being that she had enough to do already, but John was a douche. It didn’t matter that she was sometimes his favorite, he was still an ass most of the time. She decided to put all her effort into proving Sean right. He got reports, graphs, Ben’s expertise, and even a mini-survey around the company just to pour salt on the wound. Marcus reported back that John figured out what
she was doing, and made an off-handed comment about only challenging Sean when he didn’t have Krista to back him up.

  The week after, the girls joined the team, much to everyone’s delight. Not only did work get done three times as fast, which was Sean’s wet dream, they also managed to take the art department by storm. With Marcus as their in, Kate and Jasmine made friends like wildfire. They changed everyone’s opinion of Researchers with their jokes and deadpan deliveries. They laughed, they joked, and they poked fun, quieting even Cindy, who was scared to talk shit for fear one of the girls would show up at her desk and fling it back in her face. It was the revenge Krista had always wanted to get, but without actually having to poke her head out of her office to get it.

  The rest of Research would’ve hated them, Mr. Montgomery especially, if they left their cubes long enough to care.

  It was a rough start, though. In the first three hours of their trial, Ray thought he’d been right—the girls would rather mess around than work. That was before Krista walked into their combined office like they’d been there forever and handed them a list of things that needed to be done by day’s end. From there on out, they played as hard as they worked; always enough time to exchange raunchy stories with Marcus in between handling Krista’s onslaught of chores.

  After the first couple of days, when it seemed like Sean and Ray were pleased with Kate and Jasmine, and after the girls got the hook in and wanted to see the project to its end, Krista thought it wise to go over the timeline of how ideas got from the source to the client. It was something Krista wished she’d learned straightaway.

  Krista wandered into their office as they were bickering about some flaw they’d found in the research. Their shared office was overly large so they could lay out all of their work on a table in the corner as they collaborated to fill in all the holes. They were social people, so sharing space would mean less trips to the art department.

  “You girls have a second?” Krista asked as she took a seat opposite Kate.

  “Krista, can you explain to Jasmine why it is important that we figure out the slump in the market during this time period?” Kate pointed at one of the lists they were given.