by Natalie Rios
“Princeton. Followed by Harvard Business School for my MBA.” Well, shit. That’s the exact education my cousin Ellie and her husband received and they’re two of the smartest people I know. Can’t knock him on that front. “You thumb your nose at community colleges and state schools, yet I’m the asshole?”
“My mother used to be a stripper. I thumb my nose at no one,” I sputter, much to his shock. “You’re the one insinuating I’m a moron because I don’t know how to operate a copy machine.”
He recovers quickly though. “Or take minutes. Or answer a phone. Or dress in appropriate work attire. You don’t know any of the basics of working in an office environment. The fact we had to have an entire meeting without a copy of the agenda distributed to every individual present-”
“Oh my god! Your brothers didn’t have a copy of the agenda!” I erratically wave my arms around. “Oooh! The horror! What is the world coming to? Think of the children!”
“Is completely unprofessional,” he snarls over me. “They came over here, expecting a copy of the agenda to be waiting for them. In business, you need to exceed or at least meet people’s expectations. Anything below a customer’s expectations means you’re likely going out of business soon.”
“These weren’t customers, they’re your brothers! And neither of them seemed all that put out by what happened.”
“Oh, really?” A favorite phrase of his, apparently.
“Really.” In that moment, my brain registers just how close his body is to mine. We must have moved towards each other sometime during our argument because I have to crane my neck up just to meet his gaze. My chest is heaving in and out so hard, it’s practically bumping up against his.
For the record, Brody Connors is not hot. Nope. From this vantage point, it’s very obvious he’s fucking gorgeous. Stunning brown eyes all lit up with passion, a plump bottom lip, and just a hint of a five o’clock shadow. I want to run my fingers along his chin, just to see what it would feel like against my fingertips –
Wait. What are we doing? Oh, yeah. We’re arguing. Because he’s an asshole.
“Kyle likes to take notes along his agenda items and Tanner likes to keep a physical copy to help him remember what was discussed later on. Just because they didn’t express their disappointment doesn’t mean you should assume your mistake was okay. And you’re wrong, by the way. I don’t think you failing as an office assistant makes you a moron.”
“What does it make me then? Because you obviously have some sort of problem with me.”
“It makes you a spoiled brat who’s coasted through life with Mommy and Daddy handholding you along the way. You’ve spent your adult life racking up frequent flyer miles, staying in five star hotels all around the world. You have a degree from Yale, but no applicable work skills. Hell, you lack life skills. Can’t even make a halfway decent cup of coffee. The only thing you seem to have accomplished in life is becoming a tabloid staple. Not exactly something to write home about.”
Ouch. His assessment hurts. Even though he’s echoing what my parents said the other day, his words sting so much more. My family can say whatever they want about me and it usually just bounces right off me. But a stranger? I hate how much strangers still get to me.
“Well, you, sir, are an egotistical ass. Who the hell insists on being so formal at work? And it’s my first day! You could’ve at least shown me where the copy machine is-”
“Ahem.” A throat clears behind us and we both jump back a step. Whirling around, I spot a short middle-aged man sporting a beer gut and a chef’s hat standing behind us. “Excuse moi.” Ugh. Fake French accent. Major pet peeve of mine. “Brody, I thought we had a meeting scheduled for two.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! I vaguely remember Mr. Connors saying he needed to cancel his meeting with Jacques. How could I have forgotten about Jacques? Extra French name befitting of an extra fake French accent.
Sucking in a breath, Mr. Connors glares at me like he’s ready for round two. “You forgot to call Jacques?”
“Obviously,” I snap. “Unless your employees frequently just show up unannounced at your office demanding meetings.”
Mr. Connors looks like he wants to strangle me, but turns his attention to Jacques instead. “I apologize, Jacq. My new assistant must have forgotten to call you. I had to cancel our meeting today. Would you be able to reschedule for some other time?”
Jacques looks like he’s ready to get the fuck out of here. Understandable given what he walked in on. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to get in the middle of all this either. “Uh, oui. Would next Monday at the same time work for you?”
“I’ll make it work,” Mr. Connors promises. Jacques bolts out of the room with an impressive alacrity given his girth. Leaving me once again alone with Satan. Who wastes no time laying into me. “Didn’t cancel with Jacques and no copies of the agenda. Did you take care of any of the things we discussed this morning?”
“Again with the damn agenda! You need to get over it. Like it’s my fault the stupid machine jammed and I couldn’t fix it quickly enough to have the copies ready.” Really, he needs to know how completely unreasonable he’s being.
“Wrong again. I told you to have those agendas ready first thing this morning. You had between 7:30 and 11:00 to print them. You chose to wait until the last possible second to do it. Had you made them at 7:30 when I first mentioned it, you would have had the entire morning to figure out how to clear the jam. What were you doing out here during all that time anyway? Since you obviously weren’t doing the job I’m paying you to do.”
The truth would only validate everything he’s said about me. So I make up a lie. Just call me Liza Minnelli. “Reading the employee manual.”
“Oh, really? Reading the manual?” With that smug expression back on his face, he crosses his arms and leans against the copy machine. “How about a quiz?”
“A quiz?” My mind blanks, not at all expecting him to suggest something like that. “What is this, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”
“Come on. You read the manual, right? Should be a piece of cake. Easiest 100% ever.” Not happening. My last quiz attempt was an epic failure. Spinning on my heels, I stomp back to my desk and pick up my purse before making my way to the door. “Where are you going, Miss Kensington?”
“If this is how you treated your other office assistants, no wonder they all quit!”
“Your shift doesn’t end until 4:30,” he yells at my back as I storm through the hall. Fuck that. Handsome or not, I’m not putting up with this asshole for another second.
Whipping out my phone, I immediately dial the other asshole in my life. “Hey Jackson.” Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Chapter Four
“Charlotte.” Jackson sounds annoyed already, which doesn’t bode well for me. We haven’t even gotten to the awkward part yet.
Unsure how to broach the subject, I try to gauge how much he knows first. “So...have you heard yet?”
“About you being cut off? Of course. It’s all over TMZ and Page 6.” Vultures, I tell you. Pecking at my felled and wounded body before I’m even completely dead.
I let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, funny thing…I’m in Maine now. I found a job at a resort here.”
“That’s great.” He doesn’t sound enthused. “But...I know there’s a but coming, Charlotte.”
“But my boss is evil!”
I tell him everything, from the coffee catastrophe to Satan chewing me out for the jammed copy machine. Once I finish, I blink, startled to realize I’m sitting outside on a bench. I don’t even remember leaving the building.
“Isn’t that crazy?”
“Hmm,” Jackson responds. “And you’re calling me because...”
“Because I need a job. I can’t work like this and if Mom and Dad insist on going through with this charade, I need a way to make money until they come to their senses.”
Let me explain something about my brother. As my twin, you would expect
him to be the closest person in my life. And in a way, he is. We have that freaky twin connection you hear about where you can read each other’s minds. And it’s not just thoughts, but feelings too. We just know when the other one is happy or sad. It annoyed the shit out of our parents when we were kids.
Unfortunately, besides our looks and telepathy skills, Jackson and I have virtually nothing in common. Our personalities directly conflict, to the point where we don’t understand each other.
It wasn’t always like this. Jackson used to be a total slacker. In school and in life. No goals or dreams, coasting through life relying heavily on family money. Like me. Then, I don’t know what happened.
Someone must have lit a fire under his ass and about a decade ago, he approached Dad about opening a nightclub. Did the whole business proposal and presentation thing. The club was an instant hit and he’s since been able to expand to a second location in Ibiza.
Jackson seems happy with his success, but he’s become more...I don’t know, distant, I guess. Superior, almost. Unsympathetic, for sure. He doesn’t approve of my constant traveling, frequently calls me immature and self-absorbed, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this whole cutting me off business had been his idea in the first place.
Knowing what a jerk Jackson can be, I really shouldn’t be surprised by his next words.
“Let me get this straight. You’re quitting your first and only job on day one after being horribly insubordinate and failing to do anything your direct supervisor asked you to do and you expect me to want to hire you?” There’s a bark of laughter on his end of the line. “Had it been me, I would have fired you twenty times over.”
“You’re taking his side? Over your own sister?” His words floor me. “I would never take a stranger’s side over yours, Jax. Never.”
“Don’t call me that.” He hates his childhood nickname, along with any other reminders of his life before he became a serious business owner. “By your own admission, you dozed off while he was going over his schedule and then spent the entire morning fucking around on the internet. You were unprepared for the meetings you attended and forgot to cancel another. You actually yelled at him, in the office, where another employee walked in on you. Swore at him and made a damn fool of yourself, by the sound of it. Then to cap it all off, you walked out in the middle of your shift. There’s no taking sides when you’re clearly in the wrong.”
“He’s a pompous jerk who won’t even allow us to be on a first-name basis!”
“So he’s a bit more formal than you’re used to. Doesn’t make it right for you to blow off your duties, the ones he’s paying you to do.”
This conversation has steered way off course. “Whatever. Enough about Satan. I need a job at the club.”
“Charlotte,” my brother groans.
“Preferably New York, though Ibiza might be cool. I don’t speak Catalan though, so that could be a problem,” I ramble on.
“Charlotte.”
“But I’m fluent in French and I’m sure there are plenty of French tourists I could talk to. It might even come in handy, having an employee who’s fluent in French-”
“Charlotte! Enough! You seriously think I would hire you? After everything you just told me?”
“You’re not listening to me! Brody Connors is the devil! Today was all his fault and had he been a halfway reasonable human being-”
“You would have magically known how to fix the copy machine?” Jackson cuts in. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have admitted all the bad stuff before asking him for a job.
“Why is everyone so obsessed with the copy machine? It jammed on me, end of story.”
“This isn’t about the copy machine. Look, Charlotte, do you think I get along with everyone I work with?”
Stupid question. “Well, yeah. You’re the boss. You can hire whoever you want. Naturally you would hire people you like.”
“I wish,” he snorts. “I hire people based on skillset and whether or not they’d be an asset to my company. That means there are a few bad apples in the bunch, just like with any other business. People I don’t want to grab a beer with after work, but they do a good job and know how to keep it professional and cordial. This is another reason I don’t want to hire you. Say I give you a job as a bartender and you don’t get along with your shift manager. What happens then? Do you walk out on your shift? You’ve already done it to this Mr. Connors guy.”
“Don’t use what happened today against me, Jackson! You know I’m not like that.”
“Oh, yes. I know exactly what you’re like. Immature, irresponsible, spoiled, inconsiderate, unreliable, entitled, unmotivated-”
“That’s not true!” The immature and spoiled part I’ve heard from him before, but those others are new and overly harsh. “Not counting today, I’ve never been irresponsible or inconsiderate.”
“You want me to go there? Okay, let’s go there.” Jackson sounds pissed off and I get the feeling I’m about to be chewed out for the second time in one day. “Just last year, you stood up your alleged best friend Liz in Las Vegas. Left her there all by herself.”
“That wasn’t my fault! A volcano erupted and Iceland grounded all of their flights. Look it up.”
“What the hell were you doing in Iceland when you damn well knew Liz was waiting for you in Vegas?”
He’s going to hate my answer, but it’s the only one I’ve got. “Traveling.”
“Traveling,” he repeats. “Because, of course, you needed to take a vacation before a vacation. Everyone does that, it’s completely normal.”
“You might not like to travel, but some people do. I had no control over the airport or the volcano. Liz understood and got over it. Besides, it was a one-time thing.”
“One-time? What about a few months ago? Mom and Dad’s vow renewal ceremony? You arrived five minutes into the ceremony, after we’d already waited over an hour for you to show up.”
“I was stuck in traffic-”
“Yes, coming in from the airport. You didn’t even bother to call to say you were running late.”
“Because I lost my phone on a safari in Tanzania! I didn’t have time to buy a new one before boarding my flight and I couldn’t remember anyone’s phone number to call from a pay phone. I mean, who memorizes phone numbers anymore? See, I had a good excuse.”
“Charlotte.” My name comes out on an impatient sigh. “You always have an excuse. Nothing is ever your fault. Listen to yourself. This type of stuff doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
“It can happen to anyone who travels. Mom didn’t even care I was late.” In fact, she was in stitches for a solid hour after watching me crawl up the side of the church pews to get to my spot at the altar.
“What about me?” he quietly asks. “I asked you to be there for me the night I opened my club and you ended up boarding a plane for France instead.”
It’s like his hand had reached through the phone to give my heart a good squeeze.
I know exactly what night he’s talking about. And I had every intention of being there for Jackson’s big grand opening. But after taking a look at the guest list, and seeing one name in particular, I felt a panic attack coming on and asked the driver to head for the airport instead.
I’m not proud of that moment, but I did it out of self-preservation. No way would I have survived that party. And no way can I explain to Jackson why. “That was years ago, Jackson. I was young and stupid. And I’ve apologized multiple times. I’ll say it again: I’m sorry.”
“You just don’t get it, do you? It’s not good enough to apologize if you’re going to keep doing it. Everything Mr. Connors said about you is true. Nothing short of what I’ve been telling you for years, what Dad told you just last week. You’re an adult, Char. Start acting like one. Take some responsibility for your actions, for your life, really. Do something with yourself.”
“Jax, I’m trying. I’m asking you to give me chance here.” I’m begging and I’ve never begged in my life.
&
nbsp; “No, you have a chance and you’re throwing it away because it’s not the one you want. Well, sweetheart, life doesn’t always work that way. Grow the fuck up and own up to your shit.” Click. He hung up on me.
My last opportunity to get out of my own personal hell, gone. Just like that.
Is Jackson right? Am I partially to blame for my horrible first day of work? My initial instinct is fuck no, but thinking back on it...
Okay, so maybe I didn’t react well to my boss’s behavior today. Mr. Connors may be a rude asshole, but that doesn’t make it okay for me to be a rude asshole back. Mom always said two wrongs don’t make a right.
And the examples Jackson gave with Liz and my parents...I’ll admit (begrudgingly) he has a point. If I hadn’t flown off to the other side of the world, just stayed put until my obligations were met, I would have been there, and on time, for both.
And though Jackson didn’t mention it, flying up to Maine in the first place was irresponsible. I used up the last of my savings and for what? To soothe my anxiety for a day? Well, my day was up and my problems are all still here. And worse yet, I’m down the $500 I spent flying up here.
Irresponsible indeed.
I don’t want to be the girl the tabloids make me out to be. My party girl, short-hair-don’t-care attitude is supposed to be a persona, one I enjoy having. It allows me to do what I want without having to worry about what other people say about me. But if the people I’m closest to, the ones I love and care for, believe the act?
Losing them isn’t worth it.
Jackson is right. I have to make a change in my life. The question is, after thirty-one years of this being me, where do I even begin?
Chapter Five
“Charlotte, right?”
Hearing my name pulls me out of my trance. Blinking, I check the time on my phone. Well, shit. I’ve been sitting on this bench for two hours now, going over every detail of the day and what I can do to turn things around. Looking up, I find Mina standing beside me, her whiskey colored eyes wide with concern.
