“See you tomorrow.”
“Have a good night, Celeste.” He turned back to his article. I looked back at him, my hand on the doorknob.
“Night,” I replied.
“Close the door on your way out.” He said without looking up. I did and sighed in relief once my back was pressed against the cool metal of the elevator walls.
One day down. The rest of my life ahead.
CHAPTER 7
Celeste
That was how the first month in London went. Kieran and I took the tube to the office most days. I spent all day reading, annotating, and ignoring Isaac’s fidgeting in the other room. Sometimes I sat at my desk, sometimes in the chair I’d perched next to the window.
Every day, without warning or predictability, Isaac would call me into his office, demanding I drop everything before his all-important thought “went away.” I took down his notes while sitting on the large couch in his office. He would dictate to me while pacing the room, punctuating his thoughts with expressive gestures.
Sometimes he would give me files of dictations he recorded after hours, and it was nearly impossible to make sense of his rants. I much preferred the in-person summoning because I could suggest the endings to his thoughts in real time, or ask him questions that would force him to his thesis much quicker.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like this back and forth, even though a small part of me resented being at his every beck and call. I hadn’t worked under anyone’s orders in years, and it chaffed my ego that he grew impatient when I didn’t appear immediately when summoned.
Yet, watching him work, being a part of his process was… it was exciting to me. I was learning how to see things from new perspectives, see Russia from a much larger point of view.
I came to understand how his mind worked in those weeks. He thought in circular patterns, taking details from different sources and connecting them in a round-about way to his original thought. This was why he needed me. To make lines out of circles so that his writing would be less dense and more palatable for publication. And—I hated to admit—this was making me a better researcher and writer. Listening to Isaac was teaching me how to broaden my scope and find circles where I previously would only have seen lines.
So, despite having to control my eye rolls, and learning to ignore his impatience, I appreciated my new role in the company. My new role at Isaac’s side.
I would read the dense history; he would read current events. He would dictate; I would comb for citations. I’d hand him my notes at the end of the day; he would stay late every day to read through them. Some days he would request that I dictate my notes as he read along. This was the reserved rhythm of our relationship.
I never left the comfort of the office. Not even to eat. I would rather be placed on a bed of snakes than make small talk with co-workers. I met them all in passing that first week, but I was still waiting for the speculations about me to die away. I hated the way the circumstances of my being there lingered in the cubicles, cafe, and meetings. Kieran reported weekly that if I never came out of my office and mingled, I would never be more than that American who left the states in scandal. But I still didn’t have the energy to put on a show for everyone. I chatted when I ran into people, but I avoided the break room as if it were covered in venereal disease.
He left the office almost every day. He was never on time, but always stayed late. Sporadically he would leave to go running at the gym downstairs, which I found out I had a membership to by virtue of being an employee of HRI. He’d always come back showered and slightly rumpled. He’d stand in my doorway, damp hair and smelling like typical men’s soap, with a latte in one hand and his gym bag in the other. Most of the time he'd swap his dark-rimmed glasses for contacts, leading me to believe he wasn’t a morning person and probably couldn’t fuss with contacts while also running late. I didn’t blame him, contacts are a pain to put in and I found myself wearing my glasses much more often. We had that in common, I guessed, but never had the nerve to bring up.
I hadn’t gained the courage to go to the gym, though. The thought of running into Isaac down there made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t bring myself to be seen in spandex by him, our relationship still being in the buttoned-up, work-only phase. But I did miss running. I missed lifting weights. I’d practice Pilates and yoga in my room at the apartment, but it wasn’t the same as getting soaking wet from exhaustion.
There was a wall between us. And we danced around it like two predators sizing each other up, trying to outsmart the other. As if knowing anything personal about one another was forbidden. Which I came to know was not, as the office was full of friendships that continued after work. Everyone who came by was greeted with Isaac’s happy aloofness. But with me, it was strictly business.
At least it was easy… and predictable. I never had to be witty or funny, and he never tried very hard in that regard either. We just worked. And worked. And bought each other coffee. And worked. If we happened to find ourselves laughing together it was also… always about work.
Oddly, I found comfort in that.
As the weeks went on, he at least eased up enough that he would come into my office instead of calling out for me, or standing in my doorway. Isaac always knocked, but never waited for permission to enter. He’d come in ranting about something or other and I’d just flip open my notebook and wait for him to work out his ideas aloud. I took it as a sign that he’d warmed up to me.
It was a little endearing, actually. To watch him pace the room, a shark in a too-small tank, his blue gaze never reaching me until he was finished with his thought. He never made eye contact when he was going on about something, just waved his arms and tore through his hair with his long fingers, cuffed his sleeves, revealing that tattoo, or tied his shoes. I watched him fidget and pace and pause and pace again. With more and more frequency, I was finding a faint smile on my lips as I watched him.
Today’s topic, how deep was the bank corruption in relation to oligarchs and the economy.
“If we had access to the accounts we could monitor any suspicious transactions,” I bit the tip of my pen cap, a gross habit I had from childhood.
“And how are we going to get that?” He was pacing my office, again, as usual. The man never sat still when we had our daily briefings.
“We can’t, that’s the point.” I set my cappuccino down. I uncrossed my legs and grabbed my laptop.
“Know any good hackers?” Isaac asked with a sidelong glance at me, catching me off guard. I rolled my eyes in response and we shared a sarcastic smile. He turned away and continued.
I was busy googling how to hack into bank accounts, barely listening to him, entertaining the idea of hacking onto the dark web for him. I was deep into scrolling through websites the FBI was definitely going to flag me for when my thoughts fell out of my mouth before I could catch them. “I don’t know any hackers, but we can start sleeping with the oligarchs. Drug them. Use their phones while they sleep, maybe. I don't think I can learn the dark web before our deadline.”
I looked up at Isaac, who was frozen mid-step. My heart stopped. Whoops. I had a terrible habit of not thinking before speaking once I was comfortable around someone.
Isaac’s mouth dropped and he threw his head back and laughed. “That’s brilliant. I think I’ve seen that film before. I’d make a great sugar baby.”
“I'm sure there are a few closeted, repressed ones, that would have you.” I shrugged, acting like I wasn’t mortified, burying my face back into my laptop. “How to become a sugar baby for Russian Oligarch,” I said as I pretend-typed it into google.
Isaac approached my armchair, eyes sparkling with curiosity. “What’s it say?” He asked over my shoulder, his hands bracing the arm of the chesterfield chair, his mouth inches from my ear.
I pulled my head away from him and shot daggers out of my eyes, “I didn’t actually type that. Do you want the FBI showing up?”
He frowned but didn’t stand up, his weight sti
ll leaning into me. “Well, shit. What’s our next real plan?” Promptly, our friendliness dissipated into the ether. Walls up. Business as usual. If I were attracted to him, he’d be at an indecent distance from my face. We were close enough that I could smell the mint candy he’d been eating earlier.
“Make friends with a banker in Moscow? Find Sarah Taylor?” I shrugged, looking back to my screen. He stood and we stewed together over what we would write, what we could write, about where the money was going, how it was being washed, what was it buying. All of the questions we needed answers for.
Isaac sighed. “I truly hope she isn’t dead.”
“If you’re right about them being mobsters, they wouldn't just let her live. Not if she knew all the illegal things going on.”
“She's the one part of the chain that never made any sense." Isaac paced to the door connecting our offices. He leaned against the doorframe and began uncuffing his sleeves, rolling them down as he continued. “They all have wives, which protects them if they get caught because they don't have to take the stand. Yet, Sarah stayed a girlfriend for how many years?”
“Uh,” I opened up our file on Sarah Taylor, a Brit notoriously linked to an oligarch whose name was on the tip of my tongue.
Isaac rapped his knuckles on the glass door. “Doesn’t matter. It's just a hunch. Besides, the women never admit to knowing anything. Anyway, I’ll be scouring social media in the other room. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find her secret accounts.”
Back to our usual programming. No horsing around in this office. Well…. Just not with me. He joked just fine when Kieran stopped by to take me home. I was a little jealous of that. The days sometimes dragged on because of the lack of humor between Isaac and me.
My Friday or Saturday nights were spent going out with Kieran and her friends, sometimes Jackson. I repelled every guy who approached me. Because, so far, men still made my blood run cold and all I saw when they sauntered over and tried to woo me was Anthony.
Smug, disgusting manipulators. Liars.
No thanks.
All men were trash and I wanted nothing to do with them. I was happy to grind up against my new girlfriends or spend the entire weekend curled up in my bed healing my wounds.
“I feel like I’m broken,” I confided in Kieran one night as we dissected my feelings about some blonde guy that approached me the night before. We were curled up together on the couch in the living room, watching trash reality television. She handed me a spoon and we both moaned at that first bite of ice cream.
Ice-cream never failed to please.
“Well, it was only like six weeks ago that your entire life went up in flames. You have every right to mourn that,” she scooted closer to me, stuffing her freezing feet under my legs. This was our ritual. Nurse the hangover Sunday morning and have a four-hour therapy session Sunday afternoon.
I felt a little guilty that I took up so much of Kieran’s time now, but she assured me that she and Jackson saw enough of each other. Which was true. Kieran was scarce in the evenings, she slept at Jackson’s or Jackson slept here. I sometimes felt guilty shitting on men when she seemed so perfectly happy with him.
I looked to her and sighed. “I know. It’s not that I’m not giving myself space to feel sorry for myself, or be sad that… you know… the future I imagined is non-existent. Because I do, and then again…I don’t. God, sometimes I even feel thankful. But when that guy came up to me, I felt nothing. I should feel something, right?”
“Nothing how? Like, depressed? Numb?”
“No…Up here,” I pointed to my head, “I feel rage. What I meant was down there, I feel zero percent attracted to anyone. Honestly, I’m disgusted by the guys who hit on me. I don’t even… you know… with myself anymore.”
“What? Wait.” Her eyes grew wide and she put down her spoon. “You never paddle your pink canoe?”
I shook my head.
“Haven’t fanned the fur? Not once?”
I cackled. “If that means masturbate, no. I don’t feel like it. I’m broken.” I covered my face. I was mortified. I wanted her to have the answer. “I one time tried to force myself and it was like giving myself rug burn. Almost the worst sex of my life.”
Kieran paused. I could see her wheels turning. “What about Isaac?”
I almost snapped my neck in half I whipped my head around so fast. “No!” It came out a little too aggressively.
“Okay, down kitty.” She grinned. “I’m just saying he’s like sex incarnate. I’ve certainly gawked at the gym. At one point I was running like a hundred kilometers a day just to catch him after work.”
“I remember you saying that.”
“Oh, and that one gray suit he wears, with the tight front.” She sucked in a breath and fanned herself.
I knew exactly the one. He’d worn it on Thursday.
“My God, I swear it looks at me first.” She squealed. “I cannot understand how you inhabit the same space as him and don’t just… lust.” She pinched my side, tickling me. I swatted her away, giggling.
“That's my point. I’m broken.” I shrugged.
“Apparently,” she raised her eyebrows, enjoying my discomfort.
“There’s nothing there,” I added. “We’ll make a good team, I think, after the initial growing pains are over. I know objectively he’s hot, but I don’t… feel it.”
“You’re both nerds!” She pointed an accusing spoon of chocolate ice cream at me. “Neither of you has left that office in a month and there’s not even any good gossip to show for it.” She let out an exasperated huff. “Doing your jobs,” she scoffed, “like squares.”
“It’s what I’m paid to do. I can barely keep up with the amount of reading he gives me.”
“Well, I’d pay you twenty pounds to shag him and let me know how big it is.”
“Kieran!” I smacked her.
“Celeste, I’m a taken woman. But I must know!”
“Jeez, Kieran. You’re terrible.” I rolled my eyes. “I definitely have not thought about the size of his… nope. That had never crossed my mind.”
I’m a liar. I had thought about it, but only for a split second. It didn’t count.
“Maybe you should. Curiosity might just make your kitty purr.” She ran her fingers up my thigh giggling, pleased by having caught my obvious lie.
“Ah!” I yelled covering my ears. “If you’re so desperate to know, then you corner him in the locker room and find out.”
“Oh? See? Your imagination’s still intact, you’re not all broken!” Her hand rested on my thigh and she gave it a gentle squeeze. I liked the way she touched me when we cuddled. I felt comforted by her closeness.
“I did not fantasize—that is not,” I stammered. Giving her an obviously exasperated deep breath, I reorganized my thoughts. “I do not imagine anything having to do with Isaac Thompson besides strangling him from time to time for keeping me late.”
She grinned devilishly, “Kinky.” She added, with the familiar mischievous twinkle in her eyes, “I would get a leg over, but he stopped indulging in office flings ages ago…” She was baiting me. “Have you ever caught him staring? You’re entirely fuckable in those pencil skirts.”
Do not engage. Ignore. Repeat. Ignore. I shook my head. I hadn’t caught him staring, but I didn’t want her to know that a tiny, minuscule, microscopic piece of me wanted him to.
It was so small that it didn’t count anyway.
“He’d be a terrible rebound anyway. I imagine he’s kind of a dick sometimes.”
“Sort of. He gets my nerves… but he’s just really demanding in the I’m-all-important kind of way. We’re all work, no play.”
“Just wait till the real writing starts,” she warned. “He turns into a mad man. One of his past assistants quit because she couldn’t take it. He made her stay the same hours he did, called her at all hours of the night to work, yelled at her all the time, stuff like that. He’s brilliant. But he’s a total arse about his work. I’m glad I don’t
have your job, is all I’m saying.”
“He hasn’t done any of that to me, yet.”
“Well, maybe this little co-author experiment will make him more bearable.”
“What’s the difference? I feel like all I’m doing is reading and taking notes like an assistant. It’s not really my work.”
“I guess we’re going to find out,” she gave me an exaggerated worried look that screamed yikes.
“How’s Payton been?” Kieran asked.
“I steer clear of him. He steers clear of me.”
“It’s better that way,” she replied. “He’s super nice, but he’s a gossip.”
I could tell. That's exactly why I stayed in my own lane.
CHAPTER 8
Isaac
Adjusting to Celeste being around was easier to ignore than to analyze. With my wandering thoughts mostly under control in the office, we worked excellent side by side. She did everything I asked. I did everything she asked. We worked mostly in silence if I wasn’t dictating or we weren’t debating. Our conversations were stimulating and I loved hearing her perspective on history. I even learned a few things about Russia as it pertained to Latin America.
She was the perfect co-worker.
However, there was a completely unavailable coldness to her that made me awkward and unable to form any sort of friendship. I snapped at her sometimes, ensuring she’d never think the thoughts I did.
I wondered if that made it worse—this attraction I felt.
If the fact that she was completely uninterested in me, and sometimes even annoyed by me, made me want her more.
By the second month, Celeste wasn't just a pretty fantasy I could turn off. She was slowly creeping into my nights without warning. I dreamt of her sporadically, naked and breathless under me. Then had to face her hours later and forget that my mind had perverted the sight of her pen biting to… other things. Pretend like my subconscious wasn’t cataloging her habits for later consumption.
It was wrong. And I was a complete creep for it.
See You Monday: An Office Romance (Weekday series Book 1) Page 6
