by Lila Monroe
“How’s work going?” she asks once we’ve ordered, her brand-new-highlights gleaming. I only hope I look as good as her in twenty years. “I read online there are a bunch of budget issues at the newspaper.”
“You read online, huh?” I ask with a knowing look.
“You’re not the only one with a talent for investigating,” she says, smiling. Then she frowns. “I don’t want to pressure you, honey, but shouldn’t you be getting your resume out there? If the paper’s going to fold—”
“The paper isn’t going to fold, Mom,” I interrupt. “The new CEO is going to make sure of it.” I smile, I can’t help it. “He’s great, actually.”
My mom’s eyes narrow. “How great?”
Right away, I realize my mistake—she’s the person who knows me best, and it shows. “I mean—” I start, but my mom cuts me off.
“It’s not good to date at work, Natalie. What’s the expression? Pooping where you eat?”
“Mom!”
“I’m just saying,” she defends herself, spearing a radish with her fork and pointing at me with it. “It’s a distraction, it risks your career, and it makes you seem unprofessional to your coworkers.”
“Jeez, Mom, tell me how you really feel.” I poke at my own salad. “In any event, you don’t have anything to worry about. Nothing’s happening. I don’t think he’s even interested.”
“Well, if he’s not, he’s an idiot,” my mom says, her face softening as she reaches for my hand across the table. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know I’m hard on you about your career sometimes. I just don’t want you to give up your dreams, that’s all.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Like you did?”
“My dreams changed,” she says, shaking her head. “Marrying your dad, having you and your brother—those were the greatest joys of my life, you know that. But I’d be lying if I say I never wondered if I could have had a career, too.”
“I know,” I promise, squeezing her hand before letting go and reaching for my iced tea. “I’ve got no intention of losing sight of my dreams, I promise.”
Still . . . there’s no reason I can’t have a little extra-curricular fun on the side, right?
We finish our lunch and hug goodbye, and I make my way down the crowded street and back up to my cube. Justin’s back from his meetings—I can see him through the windowed wall of his office with his dark head tilted over a file, all sharp jaw and long eyelashes, muscles shifting slightly inside his starchy button down as he reaches for his coffee cup. Just for a moment I let myself imagine knocking on his office door after hours and telling him exactly what I’ve been thinking about the last few weeks. Laying all my cards on the table.
And leaving all our clothes on the floor.
By the time I finally look back at my computer I’ve got half a dozen new emails to reply to, and I’m shocked to realize the better part of ten minutes has passed. My mom’s right about one thing, at least—I’m totally distracted. Maybe she’s got a point about the rest of it, too. After all, my position is pretty precarious right now, and I need to be hustling for every break I can find.
Including the spicier ones.
I pick up takeout sushi and a bottle of wine on the way home that night, preparing to settle in and finish all the work I didn’t quite get to while I was ogling my hot boss across the office. Lucinda is just bringing her mail in when I unlock the front door, dressed for the occasion in a slinky black silk robe and a pair of matching slippers with little kitten heels. “Natalie!” she says. “How are you, darling? I got an eyeful of you and your gentleman caller on the stoop the other night.”
“Oh!” I feel myself blush, mortified. “Sorry, Lucinda. I’ll take it inside next time.” If there is a next time, at least. My horoscope is not looking promising in that particular department.
“Nonsense.” Lucinda raises one drawn-on eyebrow, mischievous. “To be young, and in love . . . what is there to hide about something like that? In fact, I rather enjoyed the show.”
I . . . don’t know how to take that, exactly. “Well, I wish I could promise you an encore,” I manage after a beat, “but a repeat performance is pretty unlikely. I don’t think anything’s going to come of it.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Lucinda says, tapping me lightly on the shoulder with the catalog in her hand: Frederick’s of Hollywood, I note, impressed. “You have a good night, darling.”
Inside, I put on my comfiest leggings, pour myself a glass of wine, and settle in on the couch to work on my new astrology column. To tell the truth, I’ll be sad to give it up: I’m finding it pretty fun, coming up with all the crazy predictions and hints. It’s second nature now—Proceed with caution, Capricorn! All that glitters isn’t gold—plus, of course, a part of me wonders if Justin is still reading them every morning and taking my advice to heart.
Not that I’m writing the Aries forecast with him in mind. Not at all.
I’m just finishing up the latest column when my email pings with a message from Poppy. She’s sent the info on the freelance client she mentioned at breakfast this morning, the one who wants an extra-explicit love note to send to her husband in an effort to spice things up in the bedroom.
Well! I take another sip of my wine, crack my knuckles, and try to get my head in a sexy place.
It doesn’t take long.
I can’t get any work done because all I’m doing is thinking about you, I begin, my mind immediately going to Justin, and how I’ve been panting for him across the office floor.
All day long I’m distracted—imagining your mouth on my breasts . . . Your fingers between my legs . . . the weight of your body on top of mine.
I need to feel you inside me, and soon.
Phew!
I pen a couple more increasingly racy paragraphs before taking a break to get a snack—and, OK, a glass of ice water. I’m feeling pretty hot now at my own powers of imagination . . . and where those powers lead.
Right back to Justin.
I can’t help but imagine the two of us rolling around in that gigantic bed of his, him dragging my arms up over my head and trailing a line of kisses across my rib cage. I think of his thumb pressed against my pulse point. I remember how strong his hands felt on my—
Get a grip, Natalie.
I gulp down the rest of my wine and send off the night’s work, then pad into the bathroom to wash my face. I’m just about to climb into bed and queue up my Netflix account when my phone dings with a text from Poppy:
Why did you send me a bunch of horoscopes?
???? I type back, yawning.
The doc you sent was Pearl’s column?
I stare at her reply, confused. Then all at once, a horrifying wave of dread washes over me—twenty stories tall and completely overpowering, like something out of a natural disaster movie. Crushing freeways, smashing tall buildings, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake. OK, maybe I saw 2012 on cable the other night, but still!
No, no, no!
I swallow my mouthful of toothpaste in one minty gulp. I couldn’t have.
Oh God, please don’t let me have—
I dash back out into the living room and yank open my laptop, scanning frantically through my outgoing mail. I click on the last messages I sent, and check the attachments.
Oh yes.
I did send the astrology column to Poppy. And I sent the love letter—
The steamy, sultry, I need to feel you inside me love letter—
To Justin Rockford himself.
11
Natalie
“OK,” I say out loud, pacing back and forth across the apartment as my cat eyes me with alarm. “This is fixable. It’s got to be fixable. Every problem has a solution, so logically—” I break off.
There is no logic, not when you just told your boss you want him inside you.
Holy crap, what am I going to do?
Could I Uber across the bridge, sneak into his apartment, and delete it off his laptop? Could I light his who
le apartment on fire?
Hell, could I light myself on fire?
But none of it is any use, because email lives on in the cloud. “The Cloud, Sally!” Even if I did have the stomach for self-immolation, the good people at Apple have ensured Justin will get my X-rated missive from beyond the grave. I could tell him I got hacked, maybe, but what kind of hacker sends dirty love notes? Hackers send requests for wire transfers to dispossessed Nigerian princes, and porn viruses, not—
“Porn viruses!” I shout, so loud and sudden I startle Sally right off the couch. She darts into the kitchen, her tags jingling, glaring at me with deep and abiding hatred from underneath a barstool. “That’s it!”
I take a deep breath and dial Justin. It’s late to be calling my boss, even on a Friday, but maybe that’s good, right? It’ll make this seem like a real emergency. “Hey,” he says, his voice low and deep and infuriatingly sexy. Even through my haze of panic, I wonder where he is—and, OK, what he’s wearing. “Everything OK?”
“Sort of,” I tell him, my voice high and squeaky and just this side of maniacal. “Listen. You haven’t checked your email recently, have you?”
“Uh, nope,” he says, sounding intrigued—the exact opposite of what I want to happen. “Why, what’s up?”
“That’s great!” I say, a full click too loudly. “You shouldn’t. Because there’s a virus in the message I sent you.”
“A virus,” Justin repeats. “In your email?”
“Yup,” I tell him, slugging another glass of wine for liquid courage. “A terrible one. Awful. Eats your whole hard drive, turns your computer into a useless hunk of junk. Sparks come out of the motherboard. Flames, even. Shooting out. You could be electrocuted!” OK, so maybe I’m overplaying this a tiny bit, but I need to be absolutely sure he doesn’t open the damn thing. “So just, um, delete the email you got from me without looking at it, OK? Like, now. Seriously. Do. Not. Look at it.”
“OK,” Justin says slowly. I figured he’d be out at a bar, but the only background noise I can hear is the faint hum of the stereo. “I won’t.”
“Are you sure?” I can’t help but press. “I mean, did you hear the part about the flames shooting out? Because—”
“Natalie!” He’s laughing now. “I won’t open the email, OK?”
“Oh, thank God.” I sink back down onto the sofa, weak-kneed with relief. “I mean, just because I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen. Like, to your computer.” Wrap it up, Natalie. “OK!” I say brightly. “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Not opening the email. So as long as you’re . . . not opening the email, I guess I’ll, uh, let you go.”
“OK,” he says. I can practically see him shaking his head in confusion on the other end of the phone. “Have a good night.”
“You too.” I hang up, sitting for a minute in the quiet apartment while I wait for the adrenaline rush to wear off. Once it does, though, my whole body going boneless and exhausted, I’m surprised to find I’m actually a little bit . . . let down?
Disappointed, even.
It’s not that I wanted Justin to have read that sexy message—after all, didn’t I just make a total ass of myself trying to prevent exactly that?
It’s just that there’s a tiny part of me that can’t help but wonder what might have happened if he had.
I need to feel you inside me, and soon.
Welp. I ignore Sally Albright’s incredulous stare as I pad off in the direction of the bathroom. Looks like I’m going to need to take a cold shower before I get into bed.
The next day is Saturday, thank God. If last night’s misadventures made anything clear, it’s that I need a break from work—and from Justin in particular. April and I meet up with Poppy and Dylan around noon, at a new brewery that just opened up in Greenpoint. It’s a converted warehouse with a huge beer garden out back full of picnic tables and yard games. Galvanized planters full of tall flowering shrubs ring the perimeter, creating the illusion of a verdant oasis far from the city. It’s a gorgeous day, breezy and fall-like without being too cool, and I push up the sleeves of my white featherweight V-neck and tilt my face up to catch a few of the summer’s last rays. “OK, all the blogs were right,” April admits approvingly, smiling as a Matt Bomer lookalike strolls by with a sweet-eyed golden retriever at his heels. “This place is actual heaven.”
We order our beers and find an empty table near the back corner of the patio, and I fill them in on last night’s shenanigans. “And he bought it?” Poppy asks when I’ve finished, her eyes wide and incredulous. “A computer-exploding virus?”
“Of course he bought it,” I tell her, popping a French fry into my mouth with a smile. “I’m extremely convincing.”
“I dunno, Nat,” Dylan offers, taking a sip of his lager. “Feels like you’re kind of tying yourself into knots for nothing, doesn’t it? Like, I don’t know this guy, but if I had to bet, I’d guess he’s not about to be mad about opening a random sexy email from a cute coworker at ten o’clock on a Friday night.”
I shake my head, shuddering at the thought of it as I pop a fried pickle chip into my mouth. “He’s totally off limits,” I remind Dylan. “He’s my boss.”
“That you’ve already made out with—twice,” April points out helpfully.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” I say crisply. “And now we’re keeping it professional.”
“Except for the occasional smutty email.” Poppy grins, standing up and collecting our empties. “Another round?”
We spend the better part of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine, working our way through the beer list and playing a couple of rounds of bocce at the court set up at the far end of the patio. This place is a notorious meat market, and even though I’m definitely not looking to meet anyone—last night’s near-miss was more than enough romantic drama for one weekend, thanks—I’m happy to be April’s wingwoman, sipping my pale ale and chatting idly with a couple of guys. “So what do you do?” one of them wants to know, once he finally takes a break from talking about the future of tech startups long enough to ask me a question about myself. When I tell him I’m a reporter he grins.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, taking a step closer. “You gonna write a front-page story about me?”
I’m trying to think of a nice way to tell him that I can’t imagine filling even a paragraph about him, when I happen to glance through the crowd and almost choke on my beer.
Because strolling across the patio—and right in our direction?
Is Justin.
He’s with his cousin Charlie and his girlfriend—Luce, I remember from that mortifying night in his loft—and he looks amazing, dressed down in jeans and a simple gray tee that hugs his body just right.
He sees me before I can look away. “Hey,” he calls out, looking surprised.
“Hey yourself.” I introduce the three of them to my friends—all of whom look more than delighted by the opportunity to scope Justin out in person.
“Pull up a bench!” Poppy urges, waving them closer. “What are you guys doing all the way out here?”
She and Luce launch into a conversation about a New York City blogger they both like who did a piece on the brewery earlier this week, the two of them fast friends, while Dylan and Charlie chat about some new research Charlie’s been working on. It’s April’s turn to buy a round, which leaves me face to gorgeous face with Justin. “Decided to spend your weekend schlepping all the way to Brooklyn, huh?” I can’t help but ask.
“Took the subway and everything,” he says with a grin. “It was worth the trip.”
His eyes meet mine, and just for a second I’m pretty sure he isn’t talking about the fried pickles. Then he glances around the patio, taking in the outdoor fireplace and the hipster girls in their prairie dresses, a dachshund in tiny doggy aviators lounging on the sun-warmed concrete. “Seriously, this place is great.”
Well, I think, reaching for my pint glass. Maybe it was the fried pickles after all.
Eventually the h
orseshoe pit opens up, so we grab our beers and wander over to play a few rounds. Poppy wipes the floor with all of us, but I get a few good throws in myself; I’m clinking my glass against hers in celebration when a hand lands on my arm.
“Nice form,” someone says—the startup guy from earlier. “We meet again.”
I plaster a fake smile on my face. “Well, it’s a small bar.”
I angle my body away, hoping the guy will take the hint, but no such luck. “Any interest in another round?” he asks, taking a step closer and nodding at the horseshoes.
Maybe if it was axe throwing, I think and don’t say. That’s when I feel an arm around my shoulders. “Hey babe,” says a deep voice in my ear. I whirl around and there’s Justin handing me a fresh beer with a wry, just-play-along smile on his face.
“Thanks, handsome,” I tell him with a grin.
Justin lifts his own cup in the direction of my would-be suitor. “Cheers,” he says pleasantly. The guy nods and mumbles something unintelligible before slinking away.
“Thanks for the assist,” I tell Justin once he’s gone, blowing a breath out. “I thought I was going to have to spend the rest of the afternoon listening to him talk about how American Psycho is a modern masterpiece and women just aren’t funny.”
“Figured I should bail you out before he asked if you fell out of a vending machine,” Justin says with a smile. He slides his arm off my shoulders, and I can’t help but feel disappointed. Give it a rest, Natalie, I remind myself. He’s not your actual boyfriend.
But then he takes my hand.
I whirl to look at him before I can stop myself, surprised, but Justin only shrugs. “Insurance policy,” he says lightly, like it’s just that easy. Somehow, I manage a nod.
