But First, Coffee

by Sarah Darlington

  “I see. Well, I think he’s a great employee. I think if he does the rest of his job description half as well as he’s working for me, then you’re going to be lucky to have him. My concern is . . . I’ve never been a fan of office romances. They don’t always end well. In fact, most of them end messy as hell, and then you’re stuck working with the person. So, if you like him, Lana, you’ve got to ask yourself—is he worth losing as an employee? Because that’s what you’re risking. But then again, it’s not everyday something special comes along. Trust me, I know. If that something special ever does come along, you fight for it.”

  Just then Nancy’s voice played over the intercom. “Joe Coffee is here.”

  “He just got here,” I said to Abe. “I gotta go.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep my eye on him next week. I’ll try to dig a little deeper into his character and report back. Okay?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Okay, Abe.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up just as Joe came into my office. He was even more handsome than I remembered. His dark hair loose and free. A light beard coated his face as if he decided not to shave the last couple of days. His pretty eyes were intense like always. But it wasn’t exactly a look of relief or excitement on his face when he saw me.

  In fact, he was cold as ice. He came in and sat down in the seat across from me.

  “How was your week?” I asked.

  “Abe’s ahead of schedule. Equipment was delivered and installed today. If I have your permission, I’d like to start advertising and interviewing for positions. That is the next step, right? Will I oversee that?”

  My heart was racing. So, this was how it was going to be? All business. As if nothing had happened between us last weekend.

  “It’s something I usually do,” I answered. “But if you think you can handle it—”

  “I can handle it.”

  I swallowed.

  “Lana, I don’t need my hand held. I know it’s a new job for me, something I’ve never done before. I know I’m jumping in from minimum wage to what, a six-figure salary? But you know my background and you know I’m brilliant. You know I can do any job, anywhere, with ease. You know my shortcomings. You know you can trust me. So, really, why are you hesitating? Let me fucking run with this and do the job you hired me to do. If it’s okay with you, then I’ll be taking the steps necessary to move forward past the construction phase. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss in this meeting? Because if not, then I’m supposed to be meeting with Kirk in advertising in like two minutes.”

  I think my jaw was on the table. He was me—in male form. Take no shit and take no prisoners. I believed him, that he could do this job, that he could ‘fucking run with it,’ as he’d put it, if I let him. But that wasn’t the point.

  None of this talk of business was the point.

  I wanted to know why he slept with me and never called. I wanted to know if our ‘relationship,’ or whatever it had been, was over. It sure as hell felt over.

  “So?” He was waiting on me to answer.

  “Yeah.” I shook my head in utter disbelief. “Fine. Yes, by all means—fucking run with it. Go meet with Kirk in advertising. Just, remember to run all major decisions by me.” There was a stack of Post-it notes on my desk. I might have left them there on purpose. And I ever-so-slightly nudged them in his direction as I sat back in my seat.

  He saw.

  He shook his head no.

  And then he left.

  He just fucking left.

  Tears burned behind my eyes.

  That was it? I’d waited all week for that? Rejection was a bitch and she stung in places I never knew could sting.

  I had to get out of my office before I fell apart. “Nancy,” I said into the intercom, “something has come up. Clear my schedule.” I slipped my shoes back on under the table, grabbed my purse, and left my office.

  “Bye, Ms. Bitt—” Nancy started to say as I passed by her in a blur. Joe was still here somewhere, but luckily, I didn’t run into him on my way out.

  Once I hit the elevators, once I was safely on my way down, the tears started to fall. It felt like a beast was clawing apart my chest. I’d never experienced heartbreak to this magnitude before. I told myself it was stupid because I’d only known Joe for a short period and that I shouldn’t let this affect me, but it still hurt like a mother.

  I hit a random floor number on the elevator, and I stepped off onto a floor to a company I didn’t know.

  They had a very posh waiting room. I sat down in one of the empty seats and quietly cried in the corner. After a moment, the receptionist came over with a box of tissues. She didn’t say anything, she just quietly sat next to me.

  It was what I needed.

  CHAPTER 17

  One week ago . . .

  JOE

  Meet me at Weird and Wired. One hour. That was what Doug’s latest text said.

  Lana had left after our perfect sex in the garage, and now I knew it was time I faced the music.

  I drove rather than walked.

  I parked and entered Weird and Wired. Sure enough, there was Doug, sitting at the very same table Lana and I had sat at not long ago. The only difference was that he was now minus the leggy brunette he’d been with earlier.

  Scooting out the chair across from Doug, the wooden legs scratching against the brick floor, I sat. He was calm and quiet. He slowly sipped a coffee while I wondered why he picked a public place for a meeting like this.

  I tried to keep calm myself, despite my drumming heart, as he reached out and placed his cell phone in front of me on the stainless-steel table.

  On it a video played. No sound.

  I glanced down briefly.

  “Shit,” I breathed, flipping it over before I had a chance to see more than a blur of skin.

  It was porn. Two people fucking.

  “I don’t want to see that shit,” I hissed at him in as quiet of a tone as I could manage. My blood boiled. Now I understood the public setting.

  “It’s been uploaded.”

  “What?”

  “The video. I’ve uploaded one of your sister’s videos to pussypounders.com,” he spoke barely above a whisper so only I’d hear him. “It already has over fifty-thousand views. Can you believe that? Fifty-thousand in only one hour. Of course, of the five videos I have in my possession, I picked the only one where you can’t see Kitty’s face. The one where she has a bag over her head and you only see her body. So, here’s how this is going to work . . .. You’re going to be honest with me, and maybe I’ll find it in my heart to take the video down before it reaches one-hundred-thousand views. If you aren’t honest with me, I’ll upload a second video. Hell, I think the one of your sister being fucked in the ass is my personal favorite.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “Get my point?”

  I buried my face in my hands. “Jesus, Doug, I don’t know why you hate us so much.” I’d never felt so defeated. At this point, I was willing to do whatever he wanted, so long as no one had to see my sister like that.

  It all started almost two years ago, when Kitty was dating the asshole in the video—Zane. Zane, the sick fuck that he was, liked to make video recordings of my sister when she was at her worst. When they broke up, he sold the five videos he had to a porn website. Kitty came to me crying and begging for help. Of course I would help; I would do anything for my sister.

  I’d already known Doug. I met him years earlier when I was still in high school. I met him the night his cousin Leo Maddox and I got drunk in public and got arrested. Leo called Doug, and Doug made that little incident disappear. Doug gave me his phone number back then, saying if I ever needed a friend, to call him.

  So, years later, when a time came that I was desperate and needing help, I thought about that night and called Doug. Before Kitty’s videos had a chance to ever be uploaded, Doug bought them for me. All five for one-million dollars. I didn’t have that sort of money since I’d sto
pped talking to my parents not long before all of this went down.

  Since I couldn’t pay Doug back, he said he’d keep the videos. And someday in the near future, he’d let me pay him back with a favor. Well, it was the near future, and destroying Lana was the favor.

  “I don’t hate you, Joe. I hate Lana,” he said simply.

  “Why?”

  He clicked his tongue. “Not really any of your business. Now, start at the beginning and tell me why you were in here today with Lana clutching onto your hand like you were her boyfriend.”

  “I’m not her boyfriend.”

  “Then what are you to her?”

  This was painful for me because I didn’t want to tell Doug anything. I wanted to protect Lana. I wanted to jump out of my chair, across the table, and beat the ever-loving shit out of this man. But what other choice did I have? “Last weekend we shared a kiss. This weekend I invited her over to my house, and one thing led to another, and we had sex. It was just sex. At least on my end.”

  “It only happened the one time?”

  My heart was beating in my throat. “Yes.”

  “Who initiated it?”

  “Um?” Why did he want to know this? “Me, I guess.” I thought about it more. “Yes, me,” I answered definitively.

  He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I think this might be our golden ticket. If we can twist it into sexual harassment . . .. I mean think about it . . . why did she even hire you in the first place?”

  “I thought you had someone on the inside who planted the idea.”

  “I do. It was mentioned. Briefly. But Lana ran with it. I listened to the audio a few times from your initial interview. You were kind of an ass to her, you do realize that? And now I hear she slept with you, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Joe, think about it, you’re vastly underqualified for this job. Yet this woman hired you anyway. She hired you because she liked the way you looked. She hired you because, from day one, she wanted to fuck you. How certain are you that you initiated that first kiss?”

  I clenched my jaw.

  Doubt. It was seeping into my bones.

  He reached across the table and flipped his phone over. The same video still played. I was about to go off on him for again showing me something I could never unsee. But then, on second glance, I realized it wasn’t Kitty in the video.

  What?

  “I never uploaded it,” he said. “That’s not Kitty. That just some random video of someone else screwing that I found quickly before you got here. I made up my comment about it getting fifty-thousand views. I’m not that evil, Joe. And here.” On the table he set a thumb drive. “As a show of good faith, I want you to give this to Kitty. It’s the fifth video. It’s the only copy. Tell her to burn it. Tell her that guy—Zane Bishop, the guy she’s with in these videos—should be behind bars for the things he did to her when she wasn’t sober.”

  Well, holy shit, Doug Maddox wasn’t a complete monster after all.

  “Does that mean no one has seen this but you?” I asked.

  “Me. Zane. And maybe a handful of people at the porn website he originally sold them to are the only ones who have seen them. Tracked down Zane as well, to be sure I had the only copy. After I finished with him, I know now with certainty that I have the only copies.”

  I didn’t know how to process this new information. Still, I picked up the thumb drive, pocketed it, not about to let Doug change his mind and take it back.

  “We’ll be in touch,” he said, standing. “In the meantime, think about what I said. About Lana. She’s not as innocent as she seems. Trust me, I fell for that innocent act of hers too. Java Beans was my idea. She was my friend and she stole my idea. I just want the justice I deserve. Maybe I’ve been going about it the wrong way. Blackmailing a friend—that can’t be the solution. Maybe it’s time we worked together on this.”

  So now Doug and I were suddenly friends?

  He shrugged. “Let me know what you want to do from here,” he said as his final words. Then he walked away from the table and left Weird and Wired, leaving me unsure of what to believe.

  Was he being honest? Or simply trying out a new tactic of manipulation? Had Lana stolen his idea for the company? Even if she had—it was only coffee, not much of a novel idea.

  With that seed of doubt growing, still unsure what to think of Doug’s new niceness, I took the thumb drive home to Kitty so she could destroy it.

  No matter what, at the end of the day, even if he’d given me back one of them, Doug still had four more videos he could use against us.

  CHAPTER 18

  One week later, present day . . .

  JOE

  The seed of doubt Doug planted had grown. All week long I’d festered over every moment, every conversation with Lana, in my head, debating with myself, trying to figure her out. Trying to decide if Doug was full of shit, or if he made a good point.

  Had Lana hired me, not because she thought I’d be right for my new position, but because she wanted me naked and in her bed?

  I’d already been used by one woman; I wouldn’t be used by a second. And little did Doug know, he really struck a nerve by suggesting that this might even be a possibility.

  I walked into the Friday meeting, not caring what Doug heard through the microphone, but searching for answers of my own.

  That was why I’d hit her with the ‘fucking run with it’ comment. Because if she didn’t have faith in me as an employee, there was no chance she’d let me ‘fucking run with it,’ and put her company in jeopardy. She’d micromanage the crap out of me. But, as it happened, she gave me the green light. She said I could take over my job as long as I ran all important decisions by her. Seemed appropriate and fair enough, something any boss would say. The real question was, would she follow through? Would she trust me to do the job she hired me to do?

  Our conversation ended, and Lana sat back in her seat. But as she did, her hand briefly touched the stack of Post-it notes she had sitting on the table. Clearly, she’d left them there on purpose. Her eyes met mine with a silent plea.

  I was hurting her. I saw it. And she needed a note from me to confirm that we were okay. But we weren’t okay.

  I shook my head no.

  The meeting ended.

  Needing a moment to regroup, I left Lana and went straight to the bathroom. I really did have a meeting with Kirk in advertising next, so I didn’t linger. And as I exited the bathroom, I saw Lana step into the elevators.

  She didn’t see me.

  But she looked as if she were on the brink of tears, as if she couldn’t escape the building fast enough. Something in me broke. The urge to chase after her and wrap her in a hug hit me hard, nearly knocking me to my knees. I’d been such an asshole to her just now. And what if, just maybe, everything that I felt for her, she felt too. This thing between us, what if it was real? What if it was pure? What if I just ruined it because I let doubt get in my head?

  I realized now that I’d meant what I said all along. I had her back. Doug meant absolutely nothing to me. Lana meant something. Even if she was using me only for sex, I found she still meant something—not sure what that said about me, though. Nevertheless, with this new kick in the ass, I walked into my meeting with Kirk from advertising. It was time to weed out who in this office was Doug’s other spy.

  ***

  Nancy. I decided it was Nancy. Most of the other people, after researching them one-by-one, painstakingly, had been with Lana for more than a couple of years.

  Nancy, however, has only been with Lana for one year.

  She also was from New York. Her Facebook page said otherwise, but she had a hint of an accent. Since I spent a majority of my middle school to high school years growing up in New York, I knew it even if she was trying to hide it.

  Was she trying to hide it?

  Was she his other spy?

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Monday morning and I was back on site with Abe. I picked up, thinking it was Nancy call
ing, ready to try to feel her out, but for the first time, Lana was calling me directly.

  “Hi Joe, it’s Lana. I’m calling to check in. How’s advertising for the new positions going?” It sounded like she was outside as she spoke, since I heard the sound of cars and people in the background. It was noon. Maybe she was on her lunch break.

  “Fine,” I answered. “I spoke with Kirk on Friday, like I said I planned to. He posted the job positions online. I think everything is in motion that needs to be in motion.”

  “Good. Let me make this clear—it’s not that I don’t trust you to make good decisions and handle this process on your own, because I do. But I’ve overseen the opening of ten other stores. You’ve opened zero. I have experience with these things. For example, you need to hire the store manager first. He or she will become your second-hand man in this process. Ideally, I’d like you to promote one of our assistant store managers from another location for this position. Conduct interviews in-house first.”

  “Lana,” I said softly.

  “Joe.”

  “Lana,” I tried again.

  “No.” She wasn’t letting up. “I don’t know why we’re struggling with this. I’m all about you ‘fucking running with this’ as you said. Believe me, this is why I hired you. But I want to teach you to fly first before throwing you into the wind. Does that make sense?”

  “And I need you to have faith me.”

  “I do! The drive-thru location, that was your idea. I’m trusting you with it. I’m going to trust you with every other step in the process, too. I know you’re capable of doing all of this mostly on your own. But please, remember that I’m a valuable resource you can utilize. We don’t need to communicate through Nancy. You don’t need to go to Kirk asking questions that I can answer directly.”

  I guess Kirk had relayed our conversation back to her. But she made a good point—I was avoiding her. I was asking other people questions that she could have helped me with instead.