"It was." Wasn't it? Six years later and I was still thinking about him while spending quality time with my vibrator. But I'd also learned the painful truth, in those intervening years; that two people could have sex together and have two completely different experiences.
"Well, I thought he sounded like kind of a dick." Holli sipped her cola. "He stole your plane ticket, Sophie."
That... was true. And I often overlooked that crucial point, not because hot sex excuses theft, but because it turned out to be the best thing to have ever happened to me. In a way, I felt like I should thank him. "If he hadn't stolen my plane ticket, I wouldn't have gone to NYU. I wouldn't have met you. We wouldn't be living this super fabulous life."
"I wouldn't be so quick with the 'super fabulous life' stuff, if my boss had just gotten fired," Holli pointed out. "What are you going to do?"
That was the million dollar question, wasn't it? I sipped my coffee - it had a greasy sheen on top - and grimaced. There wasn't exactly an agony aunt column that could deal with this kind of shit.
I couldn't drink the rest of the coffee. I couldn't even sit still. "I have to bail, Holli. Are you going to be around tonight?"
She nodded as she swallowed. "Yeah, in all evening. Don't stress out today, okay?"
I couldn't agree to that, and Holli knew it. We said our goodbyes and I headed out onto the street. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. A beautiful October day in Manhattan. I hated when the weather refused to match my mood.
As I waited in line at some no-name deli to pick up the bagels, my mind drifted over and over that night six years ago. I'd met Neil - or Leif - while waiting for my plane to Tokyo out of LAX. I was supposed to have gotten on a plane to New York, to start college at NYU, but at the last minute I'd chickened out, and charged an international flight on my emergencies-only credit card.
He'd been forty-two, super duper old by my naive, eighteen-year-old standards. But he'd had the two things going for him that I most desired in a man. He was older than me, and he had an English accent. When our flight got cancelled, I spent the night with him, doing things I had only read about on the internet. In the morning, I'd woken up to find him gone, my ticket to Tokyo with him, and four thousand dollars wrapped up in a note that advised me to get the next plane to New York. I'd been furious, and yeah, six years later, I was still pretty peeved about it. He'd had no right to change the course of my life that way. He hadn't even known me. But if he hadn't done that, I wouldn't be where I was now.
That realization made me furious all over again. Where I was now was soon to be jobless and working for a man who'd fucked me once and didn't seem to remember me. In a single morning, everything had gone from great to horrible.
In my ride up to the office, I made a resolution to not think about that night. Obviously, Neil hadn't, so why should I? I would not remember the sound of his voice, low and close to my ear, telling me all the things he was going to do to me. I would not remember his hands on me, or the feel of his naked skin. I would not remember my hands tied behind my back, or ice cubes on my -
I might as well have thrown the bagels in the trash and headed straight to the unemployment office, if that was my strategy. There was no way I would forget any of that, especially working with him every day.
Every day until you train your replacement, I reminded myself as I passed my desk. Penelope still wasn't in. Had someone tipped her off? Had Gabriella tipped her off? Why wouldn't she have called me?
I rapped on the half-open door. He was already on Gabriella's phone, talking confidently about the May issue. I wondered if I would still be here then, or if I would see it on the newsstand and start crying right there in front of the box I would be living in. Neil glanced up, then away again as he motioned me in. The eye-roller was looking through a rack of sequined miniskirts, stopping occasionally to pull one out and drop it on the floor. He looked up at me with pursed lips.
Oh, so we're going to play the "I don't know you, but I hate you already" game? That was fine by me. I wasn't best friends with everyone in the office and I wasn't about to start now. I raised my chin as I strode to Neil's desk and dropped the bag of assorted bagels and condiments neatly on the desk.
He covered the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand. "Thank you, Sophie."
I nodded and stepped back before turning away from the desk. I frowned at the eye-roller, who pretended he wasn't keeping tabs on me. Then it struck me where I had seen him before. In the pages of Vanity Fair, always at some party or another in the Hamptons or a trendy TriBeCa loft. He was Rudy Ainsworth, costume designer for the Metropolitan Opera, among other illustrious companies. What was he doing pawing through Michael Kors minis?
That mystery held my fascination for about thirty seconds, until I had closed the door to Neil's office behind me. Then it hit me. He'd said, "Thank you, Sophie."
And I hadn't given him my name.
Chapter Two
Remember that promise I'd made to myself, that I wouldn't think about how I'd had sex with Neil? Yeah, after I decided that he was just pretending not to recognize me, that promise flew right out the window.
We assembled in the main office for the big announcement. Elwood & Stern had purchased Porteras from our former parent company, but the format and the styling would stay roughly the same. Neil addressed everyone briefly then let members of the new management team take over. While they talked about gradual changes to policies and procedures, Neil looked around the room, clearly assessing each employee he’d purchased.
All I could think was, I bet everyone can tell I've had sex with him.
Of course they couldn't possibly know that, but I knew it. And that was enough. I went through the morning in an insane state of hyperawareness and total paranoia. When Jake stopped me on my way through reception to ask what I thought about the new boss, I practically shouted, "I don't think about him!" before I could stop myself.
"He's not Gabriella," I said, because it was a safe answer, and true in every context. Neil had spoken to everyone in a natural, unthreatening way. If Gabriella had been there, she would have eviscerated him with lasers from her eyes.
"Did you hear he's nixed the Versailles shoot?" Jake swore under his breath. "I know it's shitty to complain about losing an all-expenses-paid trip to France, but that was supposed to be my crowning achievement here. I might have gotten a book deal."
For over a year, Jake had been orchestrating a massive photo shoot at the Palace of Versailles. Designers had submitted special pieces. It all had been meant as a framework to showcase Jake's essay on pre-Revolution French fashion and its influence on contemporary design.
"What?" I took him by the arm and pulled him aside, so we didn't block the flow of traffic as the office resumed normal operations. "He's cutting it?"
"No, he's not cutting it." Jake leaned his shoulder against the wall. "But we're not going to France. His idea was to shoot on a set, with the models in Baroque frames. 'The flavor of French nobility, without the expense of French nobility.' And I can't really say I blame him. I mean, if the magazine is doing poorly - "
"How poorly?" I interrupted. It was something I was dying to know. If Porteras was going down, why hadn't we heard rumors about it? People were consistently rooting for us to fail, because we were, without a doubt, the top.
Jake frowned. "He didn't say. I don't think we'll ever know the whole story."
No, we probably wouldn't. But that was no excuse for me to start thinking well of Neil Elwood. "Canceling the shoot is bullshit. That spread was your baby, and now this guy just comes along and stabs it in the throat?"
Jake's frown deepened. "Ew."
Okay, maybe I should have left out the baby stabbing. But I couldn't stand it if Jake turned Team Neil in one day. I'd seen how everyone had gone from nervous about the fates of their jobs to being charmed by their charismatic new boss within seconds. It seemed unfair, and I was totally taking it personally.
"I am leaving!" Cassidy, one of the copy
writers, pushed past us carrying a carton that appeared to hold her entire desk.
"Whoa, Cass, what's wrong?" Jake caught her as she stalked by, and she whirled on us. I can only assume she was so full of venom that it had to go somewhere. The fact that we were the ones who milked her fangs was just bad luck.
"I am not going to work for him! I came here to work for Gabriella Winters." She lifted her chin a bit when she said that holy name. "Where's the prestige in working for a magazine owned by the same people who publish three major tabloids and All Woman Weekly? That's a fat people magazine!"
Cassidy could drag "fat people" into several syllables by extending the consonants. She said it like, "fffffffat peopllllle," as though her rage over their very existence caused a chronic speech impediment.
I thought of all the size twenty-eight dresses hanging in my mom's closet at home, and I realized I wouldn't miss Cassidy all that much.
But she did have one good point. Porteras wasn't just a fashion magazine, it was the fashion magazine. It was fashion, and what got printed in its revered pages dictated what was worn by the Western world. Would it still be respected and admired by the people who mattered if it shared a parent company with magazines that paid top dollar for paparazzi shots of pregnant celebrities in bikinis?
I went back to my desk and checked my itinerary for the day. A lot of stuff got crossed off by virtue of my boss not being my boss anymore. I wouldn't be driving Gabriella's dog, Empress Catherine, to her pedicure. I wouldn't be attending a luncheon meeting with the Calvin Klein advertising people either, which was a shame. I leaned my elbows on my desk and contemplated Penelope's empty one across from mine. Where the hell was she?
My iPhone alerted me to a new text. I didn't recognize the number, but I could guess who it came from when it said: May I see you in my office?
I rose and took a deep breath. I hadn't even realized Neil was behind the closed door. Probably in there with the testosterone brigade, still.
When I knocked, Neil called, "Come in."
I stepped into the office, and my mood flipped from relieved that his goon squad wasn't with him to dread that I was in his office with him, alone. As nerve-wracking as it was to speak to him in front of people, it was even worse on my own. He didn't appear to be uncomfortable at all. His jacket was off, his sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up, and he smiled at me with genuine warmth as I stood in front of him.
Well, of course he wouldn't be uncomfortable. He didn't remember having sex with me. Or he did. I'd decided that him knowing my name was definitive proof, but it really wasn't. He could have just asked someone while I was out getting bagels.
He gestured at the sophisticated white chair in front of Gabriella's desk. "Have a seat; there are some things we need to discuss."
I held my breath. He did remember me, after all, and he was just waiting for the right time to bring it up. Now he was going to fire me.
"First of all, lunch." He leaned back in Gabriella's chair. I never realized it tilted, because she had always sat up so ramrod straight. "No red meat, no MSG."
I almost sighed in relief. Not fired yet, and as a bonus, he’d given me a somewhat specific request. I reached for the notepad beside the blotter and gestured to the pen beside it. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all." He watched me as I wrote down "No red meat. No MSG," on the top line, then continued, "I'll usually have breakfast at home, so you don't have to worry about that. I will be having lunch in today, though, and I need this - " he pushed a manila envelope across the desk, "- to the clerk's office at City Hall before closing."
I took the envelope and dutifully wrote "Clerk" in my notes, my pen hovering over the paper as I awaited his next instruction.
"That's all," he said, and I looked up to meet his amused expression. "I'm not a demanding boss. I may need you to bring me coffee or mail something occasionally, all the usual assistant's duties, but I'm not going to send you all over town caring for my dog."
"Do you..." I cleared my throat. Someone had told him about Empress Catherine's frequent trips to the holistic vet. "Do you not have a dog?"
His lips quirked. I remembered that half-smile so well. Just like six years ago, I couldn't tell if he was smiling because he thought me utterly ridiculous, or if he liked me.
He'd smiled like that when I'd finally gotten up the courage to cross the seating area by the gate. I'd felt so gross and unattractive after my first flight of the day, wearing a faded pair of comfortable jeans and a black "To Write Love On Her Arms" t-shirt. I hadn't straightened my hair, just pulled it into a sloppy ponytail. I'd wanted so badly to sound grown up and world- weary. I'd gestured to the gate and said, "First time going to Tokyo?"
And he'd smiled that mysterious half-smile and replied, "No. But I bet it's yours."
The man before me now was six years older, with a few more lines on his face and little more gray in his hair. But he still made my traitorous knees weak. I was caught between hating him, and wanting to jump into his lap. Not my finest working girl moment.
"No," he replied, the tilt to his lips never fading. "I do not have a dog. Do you have any other questions?"
Was he playing with me? I couldn't tell. But the way I saw it in that moment, I had nothing to lose.
"Yes, I do." I envisioned myself saying, “Did you once pick up a girl at LAX, fuck her brains out, and take her plane ticket?" But my mouth seemed to be, wisely, in agreement with the part of my brain screaming, No! No! Instead, I asked, "Do you know when Penelope is going to be back?"
"Penelope?" He frowned a moment. "The other assistant, right. No, I believe, um, Ms. Winters has retained her services outside of the company. Or so Human Resources has informed me. One of my staff will take over for her."
I wondered if he could hear the rage building up inside me, like steam in a tea kettle. My vivid imagination conjured up a caricature of my head morphing into an angry cartoon boiler whistle. "Gabriella..." My throat stuck closed. I had to stop to clear it.
Neil jumped directly in. "Took her along." He paused, understanding transforming his puzzled expression to one of concern. "She... didn't offer?"
"No." I pulled down the front of my coffee-stained jacket. "No, she did not 'offer.' Will that be all?"
He seemed momentarily perplexed at my curtness, like he'd never seen actual human emotion before. Very quickly, he said, "Yes, I believe it will, Sarah, thank you."
Sarah? That was it. The cherry on the shit sundae that was my day. My career. Hell, my entire adult life. The woman I had thought of as a mentor apparently thought of me as office furniture. The man I'd compared every potential lover to for the past six years didn't remember having sex with me. And judging by the fact that he couldn't even remember my name, my job was looking more temporary by the second.
"Are you quite well?" Neil asked, alarmed.
I wasn't well at all. I was going to do the most dreaded, horrible, career killing thing it was possible to do at Porteras. See, I have the bad luck to be one of those people who cries when they're angry. And right then, I was furious.
When I'd first started working for Gabriella, I'd been second assistant. The girl who had been first assistant got left at the altar, and returned to work the same week they started shooting for a June bridal feature. She had dabbed her eyes a little too obviously, and within a week, everyone was talking about "Miss Havisham" the jilted spinster who'd had a total mental breakdown at work. I could not cry, especially not in front of Neil.
I got to my feet, and he rose as well. I backed away with a hand at my throat, desperately afraid he would try to touch me, comfort me. There was no way I could take that. "I'm fine. I just... choked on my own spit."
Smooth.
I turned and hurried to the door. How dare Gabriella choose Penelope over me? She could have offered me the job. Hadn't I been a good assistant? At least good enough that she could have given me a heads up before I'd been ambushed by the new regime.
"I know you must be very upset. P
erhaps you'd like to take the rest of the day - "
I turned. "You're right. I am upset." I weighed the pros and cons of what I said next, and the meter landed directly on fuck it. If I ended up working at Cats Monthly, so be it. I looked him dead in the eye and said, "Crown Plaza. Los Angeles airport. That's why I'm upset."
The color drained from his face. I took a second of sadistic pleasure from his sudden and obvious discomfort. If he didn't remember me before, he sure as hell remembered me now.
And then I realized, nothing had changed. I had just blown off my job, but Gabriella wouldn't be sitting outside my apartment, begging me to come work for her. Life wouldn’t magically return to the way it had been yesterday, and I still had a latte stain down the front of my fifteen hundred dollar jacket.
I had never so badly wanted the floor to open up and swallow me as I did at that moment. Neil tried an apologetic smile, and when he couldn't keep it up, he looked away, out the huge windows I'd personally spot cleaned for smudges for the past two years. "Yes. Well. As I was saying, perhaps you should take the rest of the day. We'll talk tomorrow."
I left and closed the door behind me. I hesitated beside my desk, trying to decide if I should clear it out right then and save myself a trip. But that would require staying in the office a moment longer, and that was something I couldn't stand to do. I got my coat and purse and left without saying a word to anyone.
* * * *
In times of great crisis, I can always count on my very best friend to point out the silver lining, to talk through the problem at hand, and to bring some perspective to the chaos that is my world.
Also, to do all that while providing much appreciated weed and booze.
"Whether or not he recognized you the moment he saw you, he does at least remember you," Holli squeaked out as she exhaled a truly impressive cloud of pale blue smoke. "And you didn't recognize him from pictures in magazines. Face it, Soph, it's not like you guys had some kind of lasting commitment and he forgot you. You were a one-night stand."
The Boss Page 2