CHAPTER TWO
For the second time that evening, I was caught off guard by the way words had unintentionally spilled out of my mouth. It was entirely unlike me—I was the kind of person who was careful with what I said at work and who I said it to.
Immediately I began to consider the potential consequences and worst possible outcomes. What would Adrian think of my request to pitch? Would he be annoyed? Turned off by it? Angry? I couldn’t predict his reaction, and that made me uncomfortable.
I shouldn’t have said anything. I was ready to tell him “Never mind” and beat a hasty retreat from his office.
Despite what I’d promised Claudia, I wasn’t ready.
“Shoot,” he said.
My mouth went dry, and I couldn’t form the question. This was too big and scary. I could feel sweat beading up on my lower back, and I pulled my blouse away from my skin in an attempt to cool off.
He looked at me expectantly, and I couldn’t do it.
“Not ask you, tell you,” I amended. “I found a receptionist to replace Amy.”
Amy had quit suddenly earlier today, with no notice, and we needed someone to cover the front desk.
“Who?”
He was asking which temp agency I’d called. But I had forgotten. While I never let anything fall through the cracks when it came to an event, the same wasn’t true for everything else. Event planners were notorious for running other people’s events extremely well while the rest of our lives were often out of control.
Needing an answer, I seized on the only one I could think of. “My friend Vella.”
“Which agency is she with?”
My brain went completely blank—she wasn’t currently with a temp agency, although she had been in the past. “She’s been with a few different ones. She’s done this before.”
“Sounds good. Have her here first thing tomorrow and get everything squared away with Human Resources.”
“You got it,” I said.
He nodded and his gaze returned to his computer screen. Recognizing that I had been dismissed, I headed back to my desk.
Why was I so afraid to ask Adrian for what I wanted? Of course I couldn’t tell him about my crush—that would be unprofessional and uncomfortable and someone would have to pry that particular secret from my cold, dead hands. If I were ever forced into a confession about it, well, that was what deathbeds were for.
But I should have been strong enough to tell him that I wanted the opportunity to pitch. That I was more than ready to have the title of event planner. I had put in my time, and even Claudia recognized that.
I needed to take the next step. Somehow I was going to have to get a lot braver where Adrian was concerned.
For right now, though, I needed to focus on the next impossible thing I needed to accomplish.
I had to convince Vella to take the job.
When I got back to the apartment, Vella wasn’t home yet. She’d been doing gig work lately, delivering takeout and groceries.
She’d had more jobs than anybody could reasonably count, as she changed her career aspirations approximately every three months. She had recently reenrolled in college since she’d decided she wanted to be a professor of Russian literature.
This was after she’d graduated from cosmetology school to be a hairstylist, and prior to that she was going to specialize in cybersecurity programming and had been interning at a tech company.
Before the internship she’d had plans to be a math teacher, a veterinarian, an acrobat in the circus, a professional wrestler, a neurologist, a bar owner, a writer ... The list was ever changing and apparently endless, and she moved around to different internships and schools depending on her whims.
We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. I had found her listing for a roommate online while I still lived in Alabama and I’d initially assumed we would share the bedroom. When I arrived I discovered that she had a dining alcove that would be my space. It was relatively large, but I did not have any privacy. Just a room divider.
Vella scared me a little bit, too—she looked like a more murderous Wednesday Addams. Jet-black hair, heavy eye makeup, always dressed like she was about to attend a funeral.
Given what I’d heard about real estate in New York City, I should have been suspicious that she was charging me so little. I later discovered it was because she hadn’t been able to get anyone else to agree to move in. I assumed that was partly due to her one rule—under no circumstances was I to ever, ever go in her locked bedroom.
I had slept with a butter knife under my pillow for the first few weeks because she was so unlike anyone I’d ever met that I feared a bit for my safety. I probably should have grabbed a more heavy-duty knife, but I was pretty sure that I’d accidentally stab myself while sleeping.
But the apartment was only a couple of blocks from work, so I told myself that I could buck up and deal with my situation.
My overactive imagination did not help my resolution, though, especially when I came up with so many different scenarios for what she had hidden in her room that she didn’t want me to see.
We had lived completely separate lives, barely even speaking. I’d wondered how she could jump from job to job while affording rent and finally asked her about it.
“My father covers my rent,” she said with a glum tone that indicated she wasn’t on the best of terms with her dad.
“What does he do for a living?”
“Violates the planet.” At my raised eyebrows, she added, “He owns an oil company.”
I never would have guessed that Vella came from that kind of money.
After we’d lived together for about four months, everything changed. I came home one night to find Vella lying in the middle of our living room, arms and legs spread out like a starfish.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to ask or not, but I couldn’t help myself. “Are you okay?”
She turned her head toward me. “My grandfather just died. He was the only person in my family who was nice to me.”
I sat down next to her on the floor. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”
She considered my words and then said, “I want to go to church and light a candle for him.”
I attempted to conceal my surprise. “I didn’t peg you as being religious.”
“I’m not. But church was important to him, and I think it would make him happy to know that I’d done it.”
So we found a nearby church and went in and took turns lighting candles. We stood there in silence for a minute or two.
“Who are you lighting a candle for?” she asked in a solemn voice.
“My aunt Louise.”
“When did she pass?”
“Oh no, she’s not dead, she’s just a really bad person,” I said. “I don’t think she’ll ever die. I’m pretty sure she’s just going to change form.”
A couple of beats passed, and then Vella started to giggle. I couldn’t help myself and laughed along with her. The fact that we were doing it at such an inappropriate time and place made the giggles worse. We got some disapproving looks and had to go back out to the sidewalk, where we collapsed against each other, hysterically laughing.
We opened up to one another that night, realized how much we liked each other, and had been best friends ever since.
People always seemed surprised when they saw us hanging out together. That was probably because we were like what would happen if you opened up an internet browser and did an image search for total opposites . She was dark and gloomy and scary, and I was overly optimistic and loved everybody and blonde.
Well, I used to be blonde. It had been actual eons since I’d last dyed my hair, and my brown roots were just my hair color now.
I got on my laptop and had started making a list of ways to convince Vella to take the job when she breezed into the apartment, slamming the front door. “Are you interested in hearing what our neighbors were loudly discussing at five o’clock this morning? I recorded them. I’m going to download the file and send it to them with the title ‘You Two Should Break Up.’”
Our neighbors had ridiculously loud arguments, and while I understood that the noise of people around you was part of living in an apartment building, they seemed to consider it their particular mission to be as obnoxious as possible. I used earplugs to sleep through their early-morning fights, but given that her bedroom adjoined theirs, Vella was directly in their arguments’ flight path and couldn’t escape the sound, no matter how many white-noise machines she used.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what I should do to get revenge,” she mused. “Remember when I was in that grunge band? I was considering going over to my storage unit, getting my amplifier and my electric guitar.”
“You’re planning on annoying them with your bad playing?” I teased, but her face was completely serious.
“No, I’m going to leave the guitar on top of the amplifier, turn the volume all the way up on both, and let our lovely, considerate neighbors enjoy the high-pitched shriek of feedback for the next twelve hours. Or maybe I’ll put superglue in their locks.”
“Could you not plot out loud?” I asked her. “I’m not married to you, so I would have to testify against you.”
She nodded. “Right. I’ll keep my plans to myself, and that way when you bail me out of jail, you can honestly say you had no knowledge of my successful and hilariously on-point revenge schemes.”
“I will be happy to bail you out.” I paused for a second and then said, “And maybe in return you can do something for me.”
Vella had gone into the kitchen and was opening and closing cabinets, as if she were trying to find something to eat but nothing sounded appealing. “I told you, you have to ask me about your outfits before you leave for work if you want me to fix them.”
“Oh, ha ha,” I responded sarcastically. “You’ve already done that joke earlier this week, by the way.”
“It’s one of my greatest hits. When you see Taylor Swift in concert, you want her to play ‘You Belong With Me,’ don’t you?”
“You listen to Taylor—” I cut myself off. That wasn’t the point right now. I had to persuade her to take the job at Elevated, and I knew she wasn’t going to want to because she’d once compared working in an office to being actively and continuously tortured.
“Did you just get home?” she asked suspiciously, breaking me from my train of thought.
“Adrian was still working. If he’s there, I have to be there.” I was trying to sound factual, but even I could hear the defensiveness in my voice.
“Why does he have to work so late when you’re the person who does everything?”
It was the second time in the last couple of hours that someone had said this to me, and I didn’t handle it any better the second time than I had the first. “I don’t do everything. Adrian does stuff.”
“Name one thing.”
“He ...” My mind went blank. Secretly, I had wondered on more than one occasion what he did all day. But surely he wouldn’t keep me there so late if he was just messing around on his computer.
“Does nothing,” she finished for me. “If he was my boss, I would set his hair on fire.”
“Why is it your first instinct to light someone’s hair on fire when they annoy you?”
“Why isn’t it yours?”
Again, we’d gotten off track. “If you want to see what he does, come work with me. The receptionist quit and I told Adrian that you’d take the job temporarily until we find someone new.”
I squared my shoulders, expecting that I’d have to spend the rest of the evening convincing her, but she surprised me by saying, “I’d love to be your receptionist.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes, really. When do I start?”
“Tomorrow, at a time you’re unused to. It’s called ‘morning.’”
“I feel like my sarcasm is rubbing off on you.” Vella said this approvingly, and looked at me the way I imagined a mother lion would as her cub made its first kill.
Shrugging, I said, “I have to speak to you in your mother tongue. And please remember that you’re going to be the face of Elevated, so you have to get along with people.”
She rolled her eyes at this. “I know how to get along with people, Everly.”
“Knowing and doing are two entirely different skill sets. You have to be nice.”
“I was nice once. It wasn’t for me.” She pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer and popped it into the microwave.
“Then be less scary,” I suggested.
“I’ll see what I can do. Do you have the show cued up?” she asked.
I nodded. Vella and I had been watching television shows from different eras. We were currently on the 1970s and had been watching The New Adventures of Wonder Woman . We’d just started season 2.
The microwave beeped and she pulled her food out, cursing as she burned her fingers. She put it on a plate and came over to join me on the couch. I held up the remote, intending to press play, but stopped.
“All kidding aside, you really do have to behave.” I didn’t want to lose my job because Vella let a raccoon loose in the duct system after someone stole her afternoon yogurt.
“I will, I promise.” She hesitated for a second and then, like she couldn’t help making another joke, added, “But if Adrian makes me mad, is it okay if I set his hair on fire?”
“No, because despite my joke earlier, I don’t have enough money to get you out of prison if you get arrested for arson and attempted murder.”
“Fine,” she playfully grumbled as I started the show up. “But I absolutely will put superglue on his keyboard if I see him being mean to you.”
That seemed like a fair compromise considering her original intention.
And while I knew Vella was more bark than bite, it worried me that maybe I’d just made a big mistake.