Keaton
I closed the door, locked it, and found myself slumping against it. I barely even had the energy to go forward into the apartment.
“Keat?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I called back. Within a few seconds, my sister’s smiling face appeared around the corner.
“So? How was it?” she asked, practically dragging me by the wrist into our small kitchen. I threw my work bag down on top of the circular table that only just fitted our space – I was constantly walking into it in the dark – and dropped into one of the chairs.
“Exhausting, humiliating, and awful,” I told her. I covered my face with my hands.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, her hands slowing down in their search for whatever she wanted from the cupboards. She sank into the chair opposite me. “What happened?”
“Where do I even start?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure I was only hired because I was the last available candidate. The boss didn’t even show up to the interview, and the agent who did said he’d sent everyone else home. Then they wanted me to start right away and I didn’t even have time to prepare.”
I glanced up to see a sympathetic pout on Clara’s face. “Poor Keat. You didn’t get to make a color-coded schedule or anything.”
I knew she was teasing me a little bit – but she was right.
“No, I didn’t! And I didn’t have time to grill Fernando on details of the office.
They wanted me to make a coffee with this horrible, expensive, professional-barista-type machine and I couldn’t figure out how it worked! I made a mess everywhere!”
Clara winced. “It can’t have been that bad.”
“You don’t think so?” I eyed her savagely. “After I gave him the coffee, my new boss asked me if I had somewhere else to be. Then he sent me home.”
“Ooh.” Clara made an even bigger wince. “Okay. Maybe it was that bad.”
“And you haven’t even heard the best part.” I rolled my eyes. “You know late last year when I went to that job fair, and there was a rude asshole who told me to fuck off?”
Clara nodded expectantly.
“It was him!”
Her mouth parted in a perfect O of disbelief. “No! Your boss?”
“My new boss!” I threw my hands up in the air. Then I sighed. Dramatics over. Time to tell her the truth. “My new boss for the foreseeable future, since I actually need the job. And, don’t tell Fernando, but I kind of knew all along.”
She frowned. “You knew what?”
“I knew he was an asshole.” I gave her a guilty look. “I figured out who he was after that fair, and then I realized Fernando had an in with the company, and… don’t hate me, but I think I can get some hidden camera footage out of this.”
Clara’s face paled slightly as she stared at me. “Fernando could get in trouble.”
“No way,” I exclaimed. “He didn’t know. I made sure even you didn’t know.
Don’t tell him now, and he’ll still be in the dark.
Once this all comes out, I’ll make sure to tell them it was nothing to do with him.
Actually, I already did. I told my new boss I knew Fernando but that he didn’t put in a word for me or anything, and he wasn’t in the interview.
And Ace – the guy who hired me – at least seems friendly. ”
“Well, that’s something,” Clara said. “Maybe you can switch over to Ace’s desk if a position comes up and actually still get a career out of this. Then you won’t have to sell any footage anyway.”
I noted the dark rings under her eyes. She’d been spending a lot of time chained to her laptop lately.
The almost bitter note in her voice reminded me that I wasn’t the only one struggling with work.
I decided now wasn’t the time to argue about whether I was or was not going to sell any footage (especially because I was).
Over the years, there had been plenty of times when I had to make choices I didn’t want to in order to put food on the table for both me and Clara.
I hadn’t burdened her with those choices back then, and I wasn’t going to start now.
It was time to change the subject. To talk about her life instead of mine. “Have you heard anything back from that producer yet?”
She shook her head. “I keep telling myself it could be weeks before I hear anything and not to constantly check my emails, but…”
I smiled. There were some things that Clara and I had in common – apples that fell from the Dunbar tree. “You keep refreshing them at three in the morning just in case?”
She groaned. “Yep.”
I got up and grabbed a takeout menu from where it was stuck on the fridge with magnets. “Well, how about we celebrate our mutual torment by ordering in tonight?”
Clara made a face. “Sorry, Keat. When you said you might be out late tonight, I made plans with Nando.”
I tried not to let disappointment flare in my chest. It made sense for her to fill her time. She spent a lot of evenings with Fernando, anyway. They were dating. That was only natural.
When I’d been seeing Jordan, I’d been the same way.
It was just my newly single status that made it sting a little that Clara was leaving me behind.
“Right, sure,” I said, trying to make my smile feel easy and not obviously stitched on. “It would mess up my meal plan if I ate something different tonight, anyway. Wouldn’t want my precooked food to go bad.”
Clara laughed and rolled her eyes at me in that way that only family can, knowing all of your quirks and foibles and being able to tease you for them without it meaning that they don’t love you. My heart pinched and swelled at the same time. Because she was my sister and I loved her.
Because we were all we had.
“I’ll see you later if you’re still up when I get in,” she said, getting up from the table. I only then noticed her purse, sitting on the counter behind her. She was all dressed up and ready to go. She must have been waiting for me to come home before she left.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. The smile felt more genuine this time. “But I’m going to bed early so I can get a head-start on tomorrow, so don’t rush home on my account.”
She threw me a wave and she was out of the door in an instant, leaving me standing at the counter alone.
I opened the fridge and eyed my carefully boxed and labeled pre-made meals. Lasagna again. That was fine.
Just fine.
I sighed, scrubbed my hand over my face, and tried to find that famous Dunbar smile from somewhere inside.
Tomorrow was a new start, and this time I wasn’t going to disappoint my new boss so much that he made me go home early.
“Good morning, sir,” I said smartly, stepping through the door and into Mr. Harvey’s office.
The space was just like its owner: spartan and quiet, with every piece of décor allowed its own space to breathe.
The smooth black surface of the vase in the center of his bookshelves was like a single word, no punctuation, no unnecessary frills.
He looked up at me with a grunt.
His expression was frosty. I could feel something inside me telling me to turn and run – a sixth sense that knew when danger was around. I stood firm and even tried a brighter smile. “Is there anything you need this morning? Maybe a coffee?”
He grunted again. “I had a coffee two hours ago,” he said.
I tried not to let my mouth drop fully open in surprise.
It took me a moment to regain my composure and clear my throat. “I see,” I said. “I didn’t realize you came in so early. Do you… need me to start coming in earlier, too?”
There was a long pause. I wondered if I’d said something wrong. In fact, from the way he was staring right at me, I began to think I was about to get fired.
“I would enjoy having my secretary available at all times,” he said. The words came out slow as if he begrudged having to say them. “But my schedule is different every day.”
Oh. A bit of a dilemma, then. I thought about it for a moment. “Do you know when you’ll be coming in for the morning when you leave at night? What I mean is – when we leave the office, might you be able to tell me what time to come in the next day?”
He blinked at me for a moment. “You’d be willing to work those kinds of hours?”
I had a feeling already that there would be a lot of hours, but there were three things Mr. Harvey didn’t know about me.
One, I was broke, and the fact that this job paid by the hour meant that I would be happy to log as many hours as possible at the end of the month.
Two, I had absolutely no life right now outside of work, given that I’d broken up with my boyfriend, Clara was dating Fernando, and most of my friends were in the film industry – meaning I’d see them when we next worked on something together.
And three – the closer I got to him and the more time I spent in this office, the better opportunity I would have to get some good footage to sell.
“Sure!” I said. “That’s the job, right?”
He sat back in his chair as if he was appraising me with new eyes. “Right.”
That was all agreed, then?
“Okay,” I smiled. “So, just let me know tonight what time you need me in the morning. As for right now…?”
“Just take my messages and allow no visitors until after lunch,” he said. He paused. “You can use the coffee machine.”
He said it as if he was graciously bestowing a gift on me, so I wasn’t going to turn it down. Besides, that was what I had been waiting for – a chance to show him what I’d spent my evening doing, reading the screen of my phone over the top of my microwaved lasagna.
I walked to the machine, expertly pressed three buttons, put my cup under the nozzle to receive the coffee, lifted it, raised the lever, moved my cup, added the milk, and frothed it with the frother.
I couldn’t resist sneaking a glance his way as I carried my beautifully prepared cup across the room.
I wasn’t quite expecting just how transformed his face would be.
I almost dropped the cup – which would have been a complete tragedy – and hurried back to my desk so I could close the doors behind me and have a moment alone. More than a moment, actually, since he didn’t want to be disturbed until lunch.
Seated behind my desk, although it still didn’t quite feel like my desk, I could replay the image of his face in my mind. Eyebrows raised, mouth slightly parted, almost something like the edges of a smile playing around his mouth.
When he wasn’t scowling, Oliver Harvey was…
Well, beautiful.
I cleared my throat and took a sip of my coffee. It tasted as good as it looked. The milk had cooled it instantly to a drinkable temperature, and the zing of caffeine through my blood instantly made me feel more alert.
If he was going to be looking at me like that again, I was going to need it.
It was almost an hour before anyone called or came to my desk, but when they did, I was glad to see a familiar face. Ace rolled up in front of me and rocked on his heels, charmingly informal as he always seemed to be, with his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his suit trousers.
“Is his lordship available?” he asked, cocking his head at the door.
“No, I’m afraid,” I said, smiling but being careful to make no comment about the title. “He’s not to be disturbed until lunch.”
Ace blew out a sigh that stirred a few loose hairs over his forehead. “Fine,” he said. “When he does come out, can you tell him that the contracts have been signed for that new deal? It’s all in the bag.”
“The Ridley Angus deal?” I asked. I hoped Ace couldn’t see the stars that were probably shining in my eyes. I’d been so excited when I’d heard them talking about him yesterday, it was no wonder I’d fumbled the coffee – even without knowing how the machine worked.
I didn’t know a lot about sports, but just about every gay man in the world had to know who Ridley Angus was.
With a body like that and the face to match, who could see him even once and not want to know more?
Especially given that, as a sportsman, most of the shots of him on the internet featured him in some variation of sweaty, working out, shirtless, or all three.
He’d been playing for years, and I’d even had a poster of him on my wall at college.
It was the kind of poster you could get away with having up without alerting your straight college-assigned roommate that you were interested in the abs, not the ball skills.
Well, maybe the ball skills, but just a different kind.
“That’s the one,” Ace said. He leaned on the wall by the side of my desk, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Don’t let Harvey see that look on your face. He’ll be livid if he knows you’ve got a crush on his star athlete.”
I couldn’t stop my cheeks from flaring up so red I thought I might explode. “Why not?” I heard myself ask and regretted it immediately. He could probably hear us through the door, right?
“I didn’t tell him about you,” Ace said. “None of his business. But if he starts to realize I’m slowly populating the office with queer folks, he’s going to end up thinking that we’re becoming a gay agency, and he won’t like that.”
I frowned. Was I working for a homophobe? “Why not?”
Ace chuckled – probably at the fact that I’d asked the same question twice in a row. “He wants us to be the best sports agency in the world, nothing else,” he said. “No gimmicks. No other things added to the title. Just the best sports agency.”
“Huh.” I tilted my head to the side as I thought. “That’s why there’s not much about his private life online, right? To avoid distracting from the work.”
“Exactly,” Ace said. “And –”
The office doors beside us were wrenched open, causing both of us to swing our heads around. My boss stood framed in the doorway, hands still on both handles, glaring at us.
“If you’re done gossiping about me,” he said, then fixed a glower on Ace. “Message about the contracts received.”
For once, even Ace looked cowed.
He straightened up, seemed to only just hold himself back from making a salute, and nodded sharply. “Right,” he said, and then turned and almost ran down the corridor.
Leaving me alone – facing down the wrath of the boss I’d only been working with for a day.
“So,” he said, and his tone was icy. “You’re gay.”