Chapter 3 #2
team. It would be a major change, but it was a change Emmy craved like the first bite of a ballpark hot dog. Earning that
position would put her one rung higher on the corporate baseball ladder, in a place where even fewer women had ever set foot.
After a round of interviews and presentations, their boss Alice, the assistant director of research and analytics, was going
to submit two candidates to the department director to make a decision.
Emmy knew Alice was on her side. She’d pulled her under her wing the day she stepped in the door. Emmy was almost certain
she’d make it to the final round—they were due to find out in mere minutes—but after that, she couldn’t say what might happen.
She guzzled a long sip of her coffee as the sound of clicking heels approached from down the hall. Alice’s calling card. Emmy
never wore heels to work. She didn’t like them to begin with, and one more thing to remind everyone she was an imposter in
Boys Town would not work in her favor.
Alice always wore heels, and Emmy had to assume it was because she didn’t care what anyone thought.
“Oh good, gang’s all here,” Alice said from the doorway. She and the director only occasionally traveled with the team. They
spent most of their days deep in the bowels of the stadium entrenched in strategy sessions. Today, Alice wore a smart navy
skirt suit and patent slingbacks. Baseball ran in her blood the same way it did in Emmy’s. Her great-uncle was among the first
Black players to join the major leagues.
Most people in the organization had some tether to the sport.
Gabe was an all-star pitcher in college; Silas’s cousins played professionally in Japan; Pedro had been obsessed with the sport since childhood; and Emmy.
.. well, Emmy’s connection to the sport was one of the personal things she didn’t discuss at work.
Among her colleagues, only Alice knew because Emmy had gotten weepy after one too many happy hour beers on an important anniversary, and she was the only one not afraid to ask the Only Girl why she was crying into her Blue Moon.
Emmy could tell by the look on Alice’s face now she was about to deliver the news they were all waiting for right then and
there. No need for a special meeting or even to close the door.
People tended to get to the point in their industry. Conversations that uprooted lives in a snap happened on the regular.
( Sorry, kid. We’re sending you back down. Or, You’re being traded to the Cardinals. Hope you enjoy St.Louis. ) Emmy sometimes felt bad the numbers she produced were the driving force behind these decisions and often had to distance herself
from thinking too hard about what they meant. But still, there was no real sense in beating around the bush.
“After careful consideration, I’ve made my decision as to who’s moving on to the next round for the senior analyst position,”
Alice said.
The four of them stared at her in anticipation. Emmy’s heart beat double time.
Alice pointed at her and Gabe like she was calling them out of the dugout. “Jameson, Olson, you’re moving on. Torres, Ishida,
keep up the good work. Final decision will be made at the end of the month.”
The air in the room hung tense for several seconds. Emmy vibrated with simultaneous joy and frustration. She couldn’t say
she was surprised it was she and Gabe, but she’d hoped it would be anyone other than him. The battle was already lost, and the idea of losing to Gabe Olson—again—made her want
to scream.
Pedro eventually broke the silence with a loud exhale. “Well, glad that’s over, huh? Congrats.” He gave Gabe one of those dude-bro half-hug backslap things as if he’d already won and as if Emmy wasn’t standing right there too.
“Thanks,” Gabe said.
“For sure. And I guess fair warning to watch out, Jameson. Now that you’ve got Gabe Ruthless on your tail here,” Pedro said,
and nodded at Emmy. “ You’ve heard the rumors ,” he stage-whispered like they were in a horror film.
Emmy frowned, and Gabe scoffed.
“ Rumors , Torres,” Gabe said, and slapped him on the back.
“Sure. Tell that to poor Mikey Walker,” Silas chimed in with a sly grin. “Last I heard, he’s selling solar panels after you
got him fired.”
Gabe shook his head with a half smile but made no further comment.
“We should go out this weekend to celebrate,” Pedro said. He directed the statement at Gabe and Silas, in indication the invitation
extended to Silas too.
“That’s a great idea!” Alice chimed in from the doorway where she still lingered. “I’ll buy you all a round of drinks for
the work you’ve put in so far.”
They all turned to her. Despite Alice’s smile, Emmy felt like she was crashing a party that hadn’t even happened yet. The
three men awkwardly shifted their weight while Emmy stared at her feet. To her surprise, it was Gabe who broke the silence.
“That would be great. Thanks, Alice.”
“You bet. Friday night. I’ll be in touch.” She swept out the door with an efficient nod.
Emmy could feel them looking at her, and before the awkward tension made her say something that would make it even more awkward,
she followed Alice into the hall.
“Alice!” she whispered as she hurried to catch up to her. She was already halfway back to her office, her clicking heels snapping
off the floor.
“What’s up?” she said when Emmy caught up. “Congrats, by the way.”
“Thank you,” Emmy said, still flustered. “Why did you do that?”
Alice’s face flattened into a frown. “Move you to the next round for the promotion? Because you deserve it.”
A warm rush of pride washed over Emmy, but now was not the time. “No, not that. Why did you offer to buy us drinks?”
Alice arched a knowing brow at her. “Because they wouldn’t have invited you if I hadn’t. They were halfway done making plans
already.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to hang out with them.”
“Emmy, that’s not the point. You know how things go around here. Hell, I taught myself to golf so they’d stop making decisions
on the course without me. I’m pretty good now.” She proudly tilted her head.
Emmy grumbled, knowing the proverbial they Alice referred to meant all the men they worked with, but really, men in any corporate setting. She’d been around long enough
to know if she didn’t purposely insert herself in extracurricular activities, she’d get left out. Most of the time, that was
fine with her, because her liver quivered at the mere thought of a pub crawl through the Gaslamp, surely the night out that
Pedro would have planned. But on more than one occasion, she’d heard her team talking about the round of golf they’d played
with the director, or she found out they had critical information about an upcoming trade she didn’t because they’d learned
about it over drinks she hadn’t been invited to. Those were the times being the only girl worked to her disadvantage the most.
Alice was right: Emmy needed to insert herself so she wasn’t left out—yet another thing that required extra effort. With a
promotion on the line, face time with her colleagues was probably a good thing.
“It’ll be fun,” Alice said, and softly punched her in the arm as she began to walk away.
Emmy tried for a smile, but it came out more of a grimace. She suddenly needed a break from it all, which did not bode well, seeing as it was only minutes into Monday morning.
She left the hall and headed for the communal kitchen. On her way there, she opened her group chat with her parents and Piper
and shared the news.
I made it to the next round!
Piper instantly responded, surely still in her sweatpants and working from home. She wrote content for tech companies and
had worked completely remote for nearly five years now. Their mother, a nurse at a VA center, would be slower to respond,
and their father, a nearly retired accountant, was more likely to call her later than respond to a text, though he’d told
her he always read them.
Woo hoo! Piper wrote. You and who else?
Gabe Olson.
KICK HIS ASS.
Emmy laughed out loud at her sister’s message as she reached for a bag of crunchy cookies from the snack rack. Aside from
the snacks, the small kitchen with golden walls held two round tables usually littered with crumbs, a set of uncomfortable
chairs, a coffee station, a fridge with fermenting leftovers no one except Emmy ever cleaned out, and a microwave that often
smelled like reheated Thai food thanks to their department’s communal favor.
“Smiling again, Jameson?” Gabe said from behind her.
She slightly jumped and turned to see him entering the kitchen with his own smile.
Her smile dropped into a frown. “Did you follow me in here?”
“Of course not,” he said, and joined her at the snack rack.
His cologne swirled around her when he lifted his arm to reach for the rack.
He always smelled like someone had zested an orange over cinnamon bark and amber.
The zip of citrus was strongest in the morning, like now, and faded to a warm, spicy scent as the day wore on.
She knew the profile so well because she sat beside him all day, and the fresh, leathery fragrance did something heady to her that she did not care to admit to.
He grabbed a bag of salted rice cakes, and she snorted a laugh. “What’s funny?” he asked.
“You’re so desperate to hide the fact you followed me that you’re pretending you came in here for food, and now you have to eat that sorry excuse for a snack.”
Gabe scowled at her as if it weren’t true. “For your information, I love rice cakes.”
Emmy folded her arms and blinked at him. “Prove it then. Eat them.”
“I will,” he said with a cocky tilt of his head. He pulled the bag open and plucked out a sad little wafer. He popped it in
his mouth and noisily crunched. “Mmm, these are so good.”
Emmy watched him with a satisfied smirk. “You know what’s better than a rice cake?” she said over the sound of tearing her
little bag open. “A cookie.” The mini chocolate chip biscuit made an even more satisfying crunch because she knew he was eating
something far inferior.
They stared each other down, each chewing their respective snacks. A muscle twitched in his jaw with every bite, drawing her
attention to the chiseled nature of his face. He had chocolaty brown eyes and obscenely full lashes. Like the kind she’d pay
someone at a salon to glue to her lids. His chin had an annoying dimple in it, and his cheekbones may well have been arches
in a cathedral. The symmetry of it all was simply unfair. And then there was the rest of his body that Emmy had to force herself
not to look at because wow he was in shape, and how dare he wear shirts that so specifically showcased his arms? It was rude— he was rude. And there would be no fraternizing with the enemy!
Gabe blinked like he’d been studying her just as intently. Then he cleared his throat like he might have been choking on a
rice cake. When he managed to find his voice, he said, “I really came in here because I wanted to say congrats. On making
it to the next round.”
“Oh,” she said, thrown again. Was this some kind of backhanded trick to make her lower her guard? An attempt at weakening
her walls so he could swoop in and steal her job? Just in case, she wasn’t going to let on she was suspicious of him. “You
too.”
“Thanks.” He popped another rice cake in his mouth and crunched it. “Sorry I’m going to have to beat you though.”
Emmy kicked herself and glared at him. She should have known he was putting on a front. “You’re such an ass, Olson.”
He grinned at her. “Hey, you never told me what you did this weekend.”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“Sorry,” he said at the bite in her voice. “Just trying to keep things friendly.”
She snorted. “We are not friends.”
He ate another rice cake. He folded his arms over his broad chest and gave her a rather unfriendly stare. “I said friend- ly , not friends. There’s a difference.”
Emmy finished her cookies and folded her own arms. “You’re right, there is. We’re colleagues and tolerate each other at best.”
“Well, now we’re more than colleagues.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. We’re competitors.” He narrowed his gaze and lowered his voice. He moved a fraction closer to her and brought his disarming
scent with him. “And I don’t lose, Jameson.”
Emmy glared at him, holding her ground. He was trying to intimidate her, and she would not let him have the satisfaction. Nor would she let on she thought he’d already won the promotion.
In that moment, she decided she was going to fight tooth and nail. Hell or high water, reputation be damned, she was going
to do whatever it took to beat him.
She stepped closer and lowered her own voice to a menacing growl. She was a solid nine inches shorter than him, but with the
way he flinched, she knew she’d made her point. “Well, that makes two of us, Olson, so this should be interesting then, shouldn’t
it.”
A grin curled his lip. “Indeed, it should be.” He found one more rice cake in his bag and crunched it in her face.
She scoffed with a roll of her eyes and stepped around him. She walked back into the hall, ready to return to her desk, when
she got a text.
Her mother had responded.
Fantastic news! She added a little confetti emoji.
Emmy smiled at it and saw her most recent message from Axe Murderer below it.
The Flamingo Lips like The Flaming Lips, get it?
Last night, she’d used the Ha Ha reaction at his latest bird-band pun instead of texting back because he’d sent it at nearly 11p.m., and she knew they’d
have texted all night if she didn’t end it and go to sleep.
Now, before she could allow herself to overthink if sending him a message about her good news was too much when they hardly
knew each other, she wrote one and hit send.
This week is off to a good start! Good things happening at work!
He almost immediately responded.
Congrats! Me too!
Really? That’s awesome! Congrats!
He hit the heart reaction, and Emmy’s heart took a swan dive to her toes and back.
Did he just love her message?
It didn’t mean anything, she hurried to convince herself as her face heated. The heart reaction was a step above the thumbs-up
for like , and good news on the job front was worth a heart. Maybe he was simply excited. She couldn’t blame him. She was excited too.
And he was probably busy and needed to get back to work, much like how she’d ended their conversation the night before so
she could sleep. It wasn’t anything to read into.
But she knew, even as she tried to convince herself differently, that the little heart would be bouncing around her brain
all day.