by DD Prince
I say nothing. I make as little eye contact with people as possible. But, people are looking at us. Through the lobby, and then on our floor as well. People saw me arrive on the back of his motorcycle, my arms around his abs.
His hard abs. My body was plastered against his strong broad back. Why didn’t he take the Crossfire to work? I’d bet money, if I had any, that the motorcycle was intentional, to create more opportunities for touching.
He was walking beside me as we passed Bill, but as we did, Aiden moved closer to me. Now I’m going to be pegged as sleeping with the boss. Fabulous.
“Uh… thanks for that,” I say as we get to my cubicle.
His eyes hit mine and there’s awkwardness. Something weird is crackling between us. I wasn’t being awkward or sarcastic. I do appreciate him making that statement to the security guy and I think he gets it because his expression changes and he jerks his chin up and then goes into his office.
***
It’s four o’clock and nothing has gone wrong today. Nothing. It’s been an exceptionally good day. He hasn’t been in his office, so I haven’t felt the burn of his stare into my back or the urge to keep looking over my shoulder at him to see if he’s staring or not.
Ally brought a cornucopia of pastries and baked delights for Friday treats and for lunch, and Mr. C bought several large pizzas to celebrate the fiscal year end.
I’m thinking about the weekend, about walking the neighborhood around the building to see what else is a close-by amenity. I can’t spend any money on the weekend, and Ally’s already told me we’re having dinner at hers and Meryl’s apartment and then going clubbing Saturday. Sunday, maybe we’ll spend our day down at the pool or pack a picnic and go to the beach.
Alice pops by and hands me an envelope.
“Company Amex card.”
“Oh?” I ask.
“It’s for any NYC-related expenses or other CC expenses. There’s an expense guideline sheet in your onboarding binder. If you do have to use it for any personal expenses, you have to report that when you submit a copy of your statement and you can’t carry a balance on this card, so you have to pay any of your own spending by the due date of each statement.”
“Oh, okay.” Relief is flooding me.
“Expense reports are due at the end of each month and expenses are reimbursed directly into your bank account by the fourth of each month. Be aware all copies of bills are kept on file, so any line item details of purchases will be recorded.” She gives me a meaningful look.
“Roger that,” I smirk.
She smirks in return. “Call the number on the card to activate and pick your PIN#.”
Good to know. I won’t use it to fill my Kindle with romance books, then.
Phew. Phew!
I am more than relieved to not have to stress so much about money until payday next week. And I’m relieved that I don’t have to borrow money from anyone for the work trip.
Mr. C stops by my cubicle and smiles big.
“I saw that article you posted for us as a guest blog on that marketing resource library. Who wrote that?
“Me.”
Aiden walks by and heads into his office. His door is open, and his eyes are on us.
“It was fantastic. Nicely written. It’s gone viral.”
I smile. “I saw.”
“Good work, Carly.”
“Thanks, Mr. C.”
Yay.
At 4:30, everything is winding down. People are excited about the team building dinner and the weekend and I’m so looking forward to sleeping in, in the morning.
But, then I hear my name barked.
“Carly! Get in here.”
Aiden. At his desk, biceps bulging, face like thunder.
I step in.
“Did you reset the Lingo budget?”
I tilt my head. “No.”
“We’re spending $17,000.00 over our original budget.”
My eyes bulge. “We what?”
“This got set to 17K per day sometime in the last day. We barely use Lingo ads. You know something we don’t?”
“I didn’t reset the budget, Aiden. I did go in two days ago and changed all ads to contextual instead of search engine, though. It was set at 100% search engine, which is likely why the campaigns were bleeding money.”
“This search engine is number six. Six! If anything, the budget should’ve been slashed, not boosted. You need to run budget changes by me.”
“But… I didn’t touch the budget,” I defend.
He spins his computer around so that I can see the screen. And I see it, a budget of $18K per day.
My hand covers my mouth.
“Did you go on the dashboard?” he asks.
“Yeah, I did. I uploaded a new ad. I uploaded new leaderboards on four platforms the day before yesterday. Ally made those fantastic banners.”
“Then, you screwed up and set the budget wrong.” He’s typing, clicking keys.
Did I? I’m stunned. I don’t think I’d be so careless. I always triple check settings that are changed for anything I do.
“I fixed it,” he grumbles.
“I honestly don’t think I did that. I could contact their helpdesk. See if there’s a glitch.”
He shakes his head. His father is in his office doorway now.
“What’s this?”
My heart sinks.
“One sec,” I say and dash back to my desk to have a look.
I hear Aiden filling his father in and Aiden sounds utterly irate about it.
I click through a few screens and my eyes nearly bulge out of my head. I click through to our internal lead manager software.
I rush back in there.
“Um, excuse me.”
Mr. C turns around and his eyebrows are up.
“I honestly don’t think I made that mistake. I’m extremely careful. But, if I did, it may have been serendipitous. And only because I told it to switch to contextual.”
“Because?” Aiden pushes.
“Because the conversion rate on the new Lingo ad is 64% and we have four new leads, sixteen newsletter sign-ups since this morning. One of them is someone from Babylon Unlimited. Isn’t that Franklin’s number one customer?”
Mr. C’s eyes light up. Franklin is our number one competitor.
Aiden gives me a look that makes my blood run cold.
What the heck?
“Well, interesting…” Mr. C is scratching his head. “Who at Babylon?”
“I’ll check. I’ll send a message to the helpdesk at Lingo to trace that budget increase activity, but it might have worked out okay after all. They pushed it out via contextual ads in their email. Their search engine is outdated, yes, but they still have a huge following on their business email suite. A lot of big companies still use that email, so I flipped the switch to push our ads to email and their contextual network, but I didn’t change the budget. Unless they can prove we did this, I’ll be able to get them to credit us.”
Mr. C claps his hands. “I’m calling Brad in Miami. I want him running with the Babylon thing. When does that newsletter go out?”
“Tuesdays,” I reply.
“Is the next newsletter done?”
“It is. Queued up and all scheduled,” I say.
“I wanna see it. Can you get me a draft? We may want to strategize for a special copy going to the Babylon address only. Aiden, you and I need to talk with Brad about that. I’ll schedule a Saturday call.”
He smiles at me and rushes off.
Aiden is shooting lasers at me with his eyes.
Why?
Why would he be mad about this, unless he wanted this to be a screw-up of epic proportions. Unless…
Did he just try to fuck me over?
My mouth drops open. He straightens up.
“I’ll call Lingo,” he says. “Find out what happened.”
“Oh, you will, will you?” I fold my arms across my chest.
He gives me an evil glare. So evil.
/> He totally tried to fuck me over. Why? What the hell did I do to this guy?
“You…” I start. I’m not sure how to even begin with this.
“Watch it, peaches,” He warns. “You probably wanna stop right there.”
I glare at him. “What did I ever do to you?”
He says nothing. This fucker.
Oh. It’s on. It’s on like Donkey Kong.
Carly 2.0 engage. Fuck me over? Fuck me over when I’ve done nothing but try to do my job? I don’t think so.
I don’t know what I’m gonna do about it yet, but if I’m this new me that I keep proclaiming myself to be, I have to do something.
Ally’s suddenly in the doorway. “Bus is here!” She’s unable to contain excitement. “Let’s go suit up and shoot some fake lasers at one another!” She pretends to shoot Aiden with a finger gun.
My face is hot. I’m staring at him.
He’s staring back at me. He’s as cool as a cucumber.
“It’s 5:15 on a Friday of our very first week. A long, long week. We need to go shoot. I’m stealing her!” she announces and tugs my hand.
He says nothing. Just keeps his eyes on me. A cold, hard stare.
I go with her, feeling sick. Sick to my stomach.
I tell her I need five minutes to send some details to Mr. C.
I fire him off a copy of the upcoming newsletter, the email address of the Babylon Lingo signup, and then close down my laptop.
I meet her in the lobby at 5:30 sharp where everyone without their own car or who wants to have a designated driver gets on a bus.
24
AIDEN
I’ve had the day from hell and it’s put me in a foul mood.
I wanted to rip the head off that fucker security guard that morning after getting Ally’s early morning mile long text telling me it’s been bugging her since it happened and that she’s a bit psychic and thinks this guy means harm.
It sounds whacked as fuck, the psychic bit, but she says Carly was in the gym and the guy turned out the lights and scared her and then was being creepy with her.
I make the guy wanna shit his pants, then have Carly on my bike with me, which I like too fucking much, and that pisses me off a little.
I get to work, and Bill in IT looks at her and I remember him chatting her up yesterday, staring at her tits, and I wanna bite his head off for even setting eyes on her. I’ve become possessive over a girl that’s not even mine.
And then it’s firefighting all bloody day long.
First, I had to put out a fire in Miami with the sales manager there. He’s quitting, won’t tell us where he’s going, but he’s trying to take business with him. Yes, I’m marketing, but I’m next in line to run this thing and so I keep my eyes on every department. My father was mysteriously absent during this, asking me to handle it.
I couldn’t get to my safety deposit box at lunchtime and then had a conference call with a sales guy and a prospective client in Miami because the old sales manager isn’t touching a new lead with a ten-foot pole and our VP of Sales here at head office was in the middle of some other emergency.
I see Austin in the men’s room after that and tell him I’m running to my safety deposit box and I’ll be in his office after.
I’m wrong about what time the bank closes and miss it by two fucking minutes so I’m about to call Austin to tell him and I realize my phone is down to 3% power, so I head back to the office instead.
I get there and just before my phone dies, I get a text from Jude.
“Don’t trust the girl in your apt. Call you tomorrow with details. She’s working for your mother.”
What the fuck? My phone is gonna power down any minute, so I rush back to the office and I’m almost to my door when I hear my father’s voice. And he’s congratulating Carly for doing her job.
And it pisses me off. Working for my mother? Really? I don’t know the details yet, but I’m fuming.
Fuming like I can’t remember fuming in ages.
I get upstairs and see her with her fuckin’ halo over her head while my father is congratulating her, and I get ugly inside.
So, I plug in my phone in my office and open my other laptop, then start to fuck with the Lingo numbers, which was part of the multifaceted plan I’d already concocted to get rid of her. I call my brother from the office phone and tell him I missed the bank and we’ll do it Saturday.
And the Lingo thing fucking backfires. In a big way, because half an hour after I flip that budget switch, I call her out for it and find out the ad she posted may have brought us an in with Franklin’s biggest client. Of all fucking things to happen. And it might’ve even happened without the cash injection into the budget, so it might’ve been all her. Her knowledge of the best way to leverage Lingo’s ads and Pinky’s fancy new banners.
I stopped the ad after only a $2k spend.
***
At 5:25, I’m getting ready to wrap up my day and go to the fucking team-building thing when I notice my phone isn’t charging. It’s dead. I jiggle the cord. The cord must not be working.
My desk phone rings. Jude calling.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Hey man. Can you talk? Couldn’t get you on your cell.”
“Yeah, man. It’s dead.”
“Your mother got pulled over for a DUI yesterday. Three o’clock in the afternoon. Liquid lunch. With your ex.”
“The fuck?”
“Your mother left lunch with Sienna Greer and went through a stop sign. She got pulled over and it led to her spending the night in jail. She slapped the arresting officer across the face. Pulled rich bitch shit.”
“No.” I’m laughing. This is fucking gold. Amazing how one bit of news can change the mood of your day.
“Please tell me you saw.”
“I didn’t.”
“So… there’s no video?”
“’Fraid not.”
“Damn.”
“Yep.”
“Well, holy fuck.” I shake my head. “This’ll cost my father an arm and a leg in lawyers.”
“For sure.”
Wow, Audra. Slapping a cop. What a piece of work.
“So, what’s the story with Carly Adler?” I ask.
“Still digging.”
“Still digging?”
“I’m not finding much. Confirmed she has her Bachelor’s Degree in Business with a marketing concentration. University of Buffalo. Lots of parking tickets. Always paid, but she’s a little speed demon. Working-class parents. She’s got a junkie for an older sister who’s had some legal problems, who’s about to get picked up for violating her probation. Carly just broke up with someone a few days before she headed to Cali. Two-year relationship with a guy who works in an insurance call center. Really nothing exciting so far.”
“What about your text?”
“My text?”
“The don’t trust the chick in your apartment text?”
“When?”
“Couple hours ago.”
“What the fuck?” Jude sounds genuinely perplexed. “You gonna be at the office long?”
“What the fuck, Jude?”
“I didn’t send it. You gonna be there a bit?”
“Maybe twenty or thirty minutes. Got a work thing I can’t cancel.”
“Be there in ten. I didn’t send the text, Aiden. I wanna see your phone. Don’t use it until I get a look.”
“What the fuck?”
“See you in ten.”
“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” I say, and then I get a few things done, pack up, grab the still-dead phone, and head downstairs.
When I hand it over, I tell him I couldn’t get the phone to charge. He tells me he’s got the same cord and asks for my password. I tell him my phone doesn’t have one and he reprimands me for it. He tells me to grab myself a burner phone and text him the number. He hands me another business card of his, so I’ve got his number handy.
It’s Friday, close to six o’clock, and the place i
s mostly empty. Forty of our people are at the laser tag place. I glance at my watch. I need to be there by 6:30 for it. The games start at 7:00 and my father wants all the leadership team to be there.
I really don’t have time for this shit, but it’ll give me a chance to talk to Austin. Talk to my father.
And shit. Carly’s gonna be there, giving me that sass after me tipping my hand unintentionally today.
She was both confused and betrayed-looking. And then she looked absolutely furious.
The fire in her eyes got me really fucking hard, too. At that stage, I’d given up the idea of fucking her because instead, I was going to destroy her, and the hard-on pissed me off.
Now? Fuck… I can’t process this shit yet. I need facts.
***
I swing by an electronics store and buy a disposable phone. My third phone in a fucking week. Bella smashed that first one last weekend.
Jude said he suspected my phone was cloned. If so, someone has it, access to my texts and address book. Whoever it is also obviously has the ability to fake texts.
Jude is on the case. I make a call from the new phone to get my service on my existing phone suspended temporarily so whoever has access can’t keep getting calls and texts. I head to the laser tag place.
Why would anyone want me to think Carly is fucking me over?
Who the fuck has been listening to my calls and reading texts, and for how long? It had to have happened sometime after Sunday, because that’s when I got the new phone.
My mind wanders back to my conversation with my Dad the night before.
He likes her for me. Whoever heard that doesn’t like that. I don’t know why.
But, fuck, I’m kind of relieved that she isn’t fucking me over. Why, I don’t know, maybe because it means I can still fuck her, where a few hours ago I could only maybe hate-fuck her.
She’s not gonna wanna touch me with a ten-foot pole now. In fact, she’s probably gonna try to get revenge on me for this afternoon. Unless I explain.
And now I don’t wanna hate-fuck, though she might wanna do that to me. I smile. I could dig that.
I shake it off. I’ve got to deal with this thing for work, talk to my brother. Figure shit out.
