1
Trevor is determined.
First days on the job are never easy. But when you work for someone like Benjamin Gage, who happens to be CEO of his own built-from-the-ground-up multimillion-dollar PR company, every day is a deeply challenging endeavor to prove your mastery by overcoming the greatest of life’s obstacles.
Like fixing this jammed-up copier, for instance.
“Please be nice,” I beg the afflicted machine, then gently poke the button a twelfth time. The thing beeps at me in protest, then flashes that same dick-shaped icon on the screen. One of the other interns—some hot punk with a slim checkered tie who’s totally not my type—didn’t exactly explain how this evil thing works.
“You got a boner?”
I jump at the voice. It’s yet another intern with perfect hair who carries a stack of his own paper to feed the copier. What’s with all the hot guys at Gage Communications?
“E-Excuse me?” I sputter back.
“You got any toner?” he repeats with a nod at the machine. “It needs more toner.”
My cheeks flush red as I deliberately don’t acknowledge what I thought he said. Also, I refuse to note his distractingly tight dress shirt that encases his big pecs. The hiring department clearly had a certain type in mind when they interviewed applicants at my university. Are hot young college men Benjamin Gage’s type?
“More toner,” I murmur with a self-conscious nod, drumming a little nervous rhythm on my thighs. “Yeah, of course. I knew that.” I pop open the side of the machine and stare into its mechanical guts like I have a clue what I’m doing.
The intern sets down his stack of papers, pops open the front of the machine, slips out a long dildo thing, struts to a neighboring cabinet where he retrieves another, returns to pop the new one in, slaps shut the front, then taps a button. The copier hums to life and produces the copies I need.
I recall his name from the introductory meeting we had a few hours ago at the start of our day. “Thank you, B-Brandon.”
“It’s Brady. Brandon’s the one with the beard,” he informs me with a tiny roll of his eyes, then proceeds to take over the copier for his own task.
I give him a tightened smile, humiliated even further, before grabbing my papers and stumbling out of the room.
This place is filled with distractions, and they all take the form of striking faces, built bodies, and tight business clothes.
What in gay office hell is wrong with me today?
Really, this is so not me. I’m supposed to be the driven and studious one. I’m not the kind of guy who drools over hotties and mourns my abysmal lack of a sex life. I’ve never even noticed until today how insanely repressed I am sexually.
I can’t let it distract me. Besides, none of the others seem to like me anyway. Stop showing them so much damned attention.
I clutch my papers tighter to my chest as I walk past another hot guy. Naturally I notice his rosy cheeks, cute thick glasses, jaw that’s perfectly square, broad shoulders … then narrowly dodge a wall I almost crash into face-first.
I think I’m just nervous because I haven’t actually met the boss yet. Benjamin Gage, the self-made millionaire, is a powerful man whose reputation for success and perfection is known from one end of the country to the other. His multimillion-dollar PR company has represented countless celebrities. He “makes people look good”, as his unofficial slogan promises.
Of course, I’ve also heard Mr. Gage is intimidating as hell, a royal dick, and apologizes to no one.
And now he’s my boss.
“He’s not a man you want to cross,” Rebekah had warned us. She’s our direct supervisor—a woman in her thirties, despite her makeup doing everything in its power to convince you otherwise. Her auburn hair’s pulled back so tightly, it gives her half a facelift. “Mr. Gage does not conduct his business in … the conventional way. His methods skirt the lines of the law at times, but you didn’t hear it from me. Never question him. Just keep up. And if you get on his bad side, well … you might as well kiss your career goodbye.”
What a pair of sweethearts, this Rebekah and Mr. Gage. I’ll be sure never to cross either of them, I had promised myself, making my fifty-seventh mental note for the day.
One more mental note and I’ll need another brain.
When I’m sorting through the papers I just copied, stapling them to corresponding packets a different employee prepared, a hand swats my ass so hard, I shriek and lose hold of the unstapled packet in my hand, the papers flopping onto the floor.
I spin and face my assailant, scowling. “Damn it, Elijah,” I hiss.
My straight best friend and fellow intern grins his dumb grin as he leans on the table. “You’ll need a chiropractor after today.”
“Chiropractor??” I crouch to gather up my fallen papers.
“Yeah. With all the neck-bending you’re doing, bro. I see you checkin’ out the other interns.”
He knows me way too well. “I’m not checkin’ out anything.”
“Wait ‘til you get a load of Benjamin Gage in the flesh. I hear he’s the hottest shit in town.”
I hug all the papers to my chest and shush him, my face going red. “If someone overhears you calling our boss the ‘hottest shit in town’, I swear I’ll permanently disown you as my best friend, Elijah.”
“Trevor, bro, you are way too uptight. You need to loosen up. Besides, boss man isn’t even here ‘til next week.”
My heart sinks. “Really? Where’d you hear that?”
“Rebekah. So don’t worry about being on your game yet.”
An intern walks past our table—another Adonis with buzzed blond hair and a sharp green tie—and I have to peel my eyes back to the packet I’m trying to salvage. With so many hot guys around me all day long, how am I supposed to complete tasks, impress my superiors, and still manage to do a good job?
And if strapping muscular men are Mr. Gage’s type, then how the heck did I fit in here? I mean, I know I’m not exactly the ugly duckling, but I’m certainly nothing like the others. Except for maybe my best friend Elijah, who is sort of my straight twin with a few minor differences. I have short, dusty blond hair while Elijah’s is dark and messy. He has dark brown eyes that almost appear black and beady while I have grey-blue. My build is slender while Elijah has more meat on his bones, having gained (and kept) the freshman fifteen—and the sophomore and junior fifteen as well. He calls it his “all the more to love” weight. I told him once that I think he looks more attractive now than he did in high school, but all he did was make some joke about his nuts being off-limits … while secretly Googling diets. He thinks I don’t notice him ordering a salad whenever we eat out.
But I notice everything.
“Chiropractor,” mumbles Elijah with a teasing smirk after the blond disappears around the corner.
I shove him lightly (he doesn’t budge) then retrain my eyes to the task at hand. “I do my work even when the boss isn’t here, and that means I have more integrity than you, slacker.” To that, Elijah just snorts, but then he joins me in stapling packets together. “How do you even know Mr. Gage is … hot? He keeps himself out of the press so well, I’ve noticed. The only images I found online were suited up and … strangely sterile. He looks forty-something.”
“Try thirty-three. And I heard he’s hot by word of mouth. I’m already picking up on the office gossip. This is good for us.”
“Sometimes, Elijah, you’re gayer than I am.”
“Yeah? Oh, and Pauline at the front desk is having a potluck on Saturday, and the interns are invited,” he adds jokingly, using his sassiest Southern twang. I just shake my head, chuckling.
I wonder sometimes if I was crazy to agree to all of this. I’m not a spontaneous person, yet I suddenly uprooted my safe and quiet life on campus and chose to move in with my straight, beer-guzzling buddy Elijah for the summer in the heart of big, scary, lit-up downtown. I didn’t hit up a tropical beach with sunlight and seagulls like a normal person, nor did I run off to a sweet, peaceful lakeside cabin for weekly barbecues.
No, I opted for Hell.
That’s right; I actually chose to live in Elijah’s cramped, one-bedroom shoebox, which comes with an ugly orange-and-white cat named Salamander who hates me.
But I did it for a good reason. See, Elijah and I both happened to land the same opportunity of a lifetime: being interns for Gage Communications. The campus where I live—sorry, lived—is exactly an hour and nineteen minutes away, so the commute would have been hell for me. Apparently it’s no big deal for Elijah, as he’s been trekking from his place to the campus for years. He lives just two blocks from Gage Communications, so he offered me his “guest room” (i.e. spare storage room full of old, rusted computer parts and Star Wars memorabilia) and I quickly accepted.
“It’s gonna be so much fun,” Elijah had told me a week ago on the car ride to his place with my things in the trunk. I could hear everything rattling around back there, which worried me the whole way. I clenched up every time he ran over a pothole, and dear Elijah seemed to hit all of them. “You and I in the big city. Interning together. Kicking ass. Those other wannabe interns don’t stand a chance of impressing Mr. Gage like we will.”
I sure hope Elijah was right about that last part. I’m eager to prove myself to Benjamin Gage, whenever I finally get to meet him. First impressions are the most important thing. It can make or break an intern; that much I know. I have to impress him come next Monday. If I don’t, the summer and this opportunity will be a total waste. It’ll be back to the university—and back to my daily neck-tightening tedium, long classes, and tasty little helpings of disappointment in my morning cereal.
That can’t happen. No slacking off. No tardiness. No half-assing.
Another intern struts right past my table. I avert my eyes and staple the next packet with conviction, grinding my teeth.
And no distractions.