24. Hi! Hello. Hey…
Hi! Hello. Hey…
In the week after my great matchmaking triumph, I slog through my days in a daze. I try to maintain some semblance of my old routines, but it’s nearly impossible to do when I come home expecting to relax on a sofa and have to make do with a living room full of patio furniture.
Angie and I try to make the most of our plastic wicker recliners, except they recline a little too much. By the time we finish binging our favorite hospital drama on a ten-year-old flat screen donated by one of our neighbors, we’ve developed one hell of a neck ache.
“I hope those thieving bastards are enjoying our couch,” Angie says, adjusting her lawn chair for the hundredth time, “because when I get my hands on them they’re going to wish they never set foot in — Yo!
Carina!” She snaps her fingers in my face.
“Please tell me you’re not stalking Rumpelstiltskin again. ”
I set my phone down discreetly on my lap. “It’s not stalking. I’m just checking to see if Michelle updated her Stories.”
So far, Michelle has posted exactly one photo pertaining to her new relationship status exactly sixteen hours ago (not stalking. I’m a data analyst and can’t help keeping track of numerical data).
It wasn’t much of a photo. Just a heavily filtered selfie and a slice of some guy’s arm, whom I’m positive must belong to Rhys. The photo is 90% Michelle’s face and 10% arm, captioned, “Hot date with the Boo.”
‘The Boo’ is Rhys, right? It has to be…
Michelle likes selfies, yet she’s strangely private about her love life (though she has no qualms about airing out my dirty laundry. Still bitter).
And obviously, it’s not as if I could monitor Rhys’ socials, as he doesn’t have any.
“If you’re so hooked on lover boy’s progress,” Angie says, “why don’t you just text him.”
“I can’t text him anymore.”
“Why not? You’ve had no qualms texting him all the live-long day before.”
“That was before.”
Angie sips her iced tea patiently. “Before what?”
“Before he and Michelle hooked up.”
She frowns, trying to piece together the puzzle of my logic. “So?”
“So... They’re an item now,” I pause. “I think. They’re probably in that honeymoon period of the relationship where they’re camped out in bed for days.”
“So,” Angie arches a suggestive eyebrow, “you think they’re having wild animal sex and you don’t want to disturb them?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Given the state I left them in, I’m pretty sure they’re getting to know each other,” I clear my throat, “biblically.” But I prefer not to think of them having wild animal sex.
It doesn’t sit well with me, and it’s not because I’m a prude.
Even though getting Rhys laid was part of our deal, I’m just unreasonably bothered by the notion.
“So you text him, ask how it’s going,” Angie says, “like you’ve been doing. What’s the big deal?”
I shake my head. “He’s busy.”
“Yeah, we know he’s busy. In between banging the girl of his dreams—”
“Angie!” I hold up my hand, disgusted. “Please.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Puritan Pearl Clutcher. In between making sweet, sweet love to his darling Michelle, he can take a few seconds to reply to you, his friend.”
“We’re just coworkers.”
She clicks her tongue. “Whatever you want to call it. For a moment there, it seemed like I’d have to fight him off for bestie status, but...”
“I can’t text him.” I sit up straighter, my shoulders tensing.
“Why not?”
“It’s weird now.” I can’t put my finger on it. Things have changed. A line had been drawn in the sand that day at the cafe. Now that we both got what we wanted out of it, it doesn’t make any sense to continue dragging this charade out any further.
“I can’t keep texting him,” I explain. “It might piss off Michelle. She already accused us of ...” My hands flutter uncertainly. “Being a thing. I don’t want to mess things up for them.”
“Suit yourself.” Shaking her head, Angie returns to flipping through the Netflix menu. I suspect she likes hunting for what to watch more than actually settling on a movie. “We need to get a new TV, STAT,” she mutters. “I can’t watch movies in 480p forever.”
I sit in silence, the wicker lawn chair digging into my thighs, feeling unsettled by Angie’s silence after she just implied that Rhys and I were more than just secret coworkers. Or friends. “I’m happy for him.”
“So you’ve been saying,” she says, eyes fixed on the screen.
“I really am.”
“Girl, I’m not doubting you.”
“Just so we’re clear.”
She side-eyes me. “We’re clear.”
“Because it seemed like—”
“Hold that thought,” she says, swinging her legs off the chair and ending the conversation. “I need to pee.”
I fold my arms over my chest, grumbling.
I don’t think she needed to pee at all. Still unsettled, I pull up my text chain with Rhys, scrolling through our past conversations, growing sentimental as I re-read our many adventures and misunderstandings.
My cheerful, emoji-filled texts, followed by his curt replies.
Our first meeting, when I formed my first of many unflattering opinions of him.
When he propositioned me for a makeover so he could finally date a woman, and I mistook his proposition for an advance.
The cougar bar...
I sigh, fondly reading over Rhys’ frantic text for dating advice while I was puking my guts out in the parking lot.
Our partnership was rocky, and we butted heads more often than not. In hindsight, it was actually pretty funny, like a bad road trip that you couldn’t wait to end, but now that it’s over, has supplied you with a lifetime of bar stories.
Can it be that I miss him?
No...
If a person could miss a pain in your neck, which I don’t. Any sane person wouldn’t. Why would I ever miss such an infuriating, socially inept, uncharismatic man? I don’t even like working with him. I don’t care for the bland way he laid out my slide deck.
The last text I sent him was a picture of Sam’s dick. It’s unfortunate that this sad little prick is the last memory he’ll have of me.
Cracking my knuckles, I type:
Just wanted to see how you’re doing.
No. Wait. The winky face is too presumptuous. It implies a familiarity we no longer have.
I nix the winky face. Delete the sentence. Replace it with:
hi!
“Too cherry,” I mutter, “he hates that.”
hi...
“Too suggestive.” Delete.
hi.
“Too mean.”
Delete.
hi
hello.
hey
sup
Delete. Delete. Delete.
In a fit of rage, I set my phone down on the milk crate standing in for our coffee table and stomp toward the balcony to appreciate my slice of the ocean view, text unsent.
* * *
I’ve been thinking about Sam’s dick a lot recently, chewing it over in my mind, and getting madder and madder.
It’s Sam’s audacity that really lights me up like a blazing torch, the thought that he could slip me a picture of his unimpressive prick and expect it would tempt me to bang him.
The ego! The entitlement! Personally, I would never dream of taking a snapshot of my genitals and propositioning my employees with it. It’s just plain bad manners.
Now that I’ve made my distaste known, he’s taken the coward’s way out and pretended the dick wasn’t intended for me. As he’s supposedly slammed with ‘work,’ he’s canceled Tuesday’s board meeting, to be rescheduled one month from today.
On the bright side, I have extra time to prepare for the rolling out of the ASSET, Phase 2. But it also lands me in a purgatory of anxiety and anticipation. I just want to rip the bandage off already; now it seems like I’ll have to live on pins and needles for an entire month.
It’s an understatement to say that he’s made the workplace uncomfortable for me while he flits about life, unbothered and unscathed. Oh, if we can all have the privilege of sending photos of our privates and expect other people to deal with the consequences…
Obviously, as the nepo-baby-CEO of his father’s company, Sam isn’t going anywhere while I’m expendable. He probably expects me to quit in order to avoid any future awkward run-ins.
If he expects me to fade quietly into the night as collateral damage to his degenerate actions, he’s certainly underestimated me. If he wants to make things awkward, I’ll make things super awkward... for him.
Truth be told, now that I know more about the ASSET, I don’t like my job and wish to quit. But quit on my own accord. I object to being forced out because the CEO has grabby hands and can’t keep his dick in his pants.
So even though I would like to quit, I can’t quit on principle.
And that’s the corner I find myself in.
On Monday, I slip into the office as if nothing had happened.
I’m strung tight, flinching at every sound like a meerkat sniffing out a hyena.
Even knowing that Sam rarely shows up at the office unless there’s a board meeting, I’m still ready to dive into the woman’s bathroom at the first sight of his shit-eating grin.
Even my direct reports noticed the change in my behavior. We’re driving back from lunch, a delectable Japanese curry place which I would normally wolf down. Today, I poke around my food, barely managing three bites of my katsu chicken.
“Are you stressed about the presentation?” Paulina, sitting shotgun, peers at my clenched-jaw profile.
“Not at all,” I say, white-knuckling my way through the freeway.
“I’m just minding the traffic.” My gaze swings to the rearview mirror just in time to catch the other three, crammed into the backseat, whispering amongst themselves about me.
Had I known I would be chauffeuring a bunch of twenty-two-year-olds around L.A.
on a weekly basis, I would’ve sprung for an SUV.
Poor Lily, being the slimmest of the bunch, gets the middle seat between Luke and Ramin.
“You didn’t touch your lunch,” Lily notes.
“I wasn’t hungry.” Without warning, I slam my palm on my horn as a Mercedes cuts me off.
“Uh, boss?” Ramin clears his throat. “You seem more agitated than usual. Are you sure everything’s okay?”