20
Trevor is full of sexy secrets.
Keeping secrets isn’t such a bad thing.
Actually, it’s kind of fun.
“What exactly did she need you to do?” Elijah persisted.
He’s asking me in the break room. Two unnamed interns I’ve never quite gotten to know are sitting together at a table on the other side of the room, so I try to keep my voice low. “Just a little errand. Nothing much.”
“Rebekah sends you on an errand? And that’s nothing much?”
“Nope.” I take a big chomp of my PB&J.
He snatches the sandwich out of my hands, inspiring a flash of indignance from my eyes. “The hell?” I exclaim, muffled by the giant bite of bread and peanut butter in my mouth.
Elijah takes his own chomp—of my sandwich—then says a few muffled words of his own. “You are being really weird with me lately, and I’m not sure if I should like it because it makes you a tiny bit more interesting, or hate it because you’re not telling me something big. Something I know is super juicy big.”
From across the room, one of the guys butts in. “Did you say something super juicy big?”
Elijah looks over his shoulder. “None of your business, Caleb!”
“Anything juicy and big is my business,” he shoots back over his bag of red-hot Cheetos.
Elijah faces me, rolls his eyes, then leans in and mumbles, “There’s a joke about my big, juicy wang being his business that I’m having trouble putting into words, so if you laugh really loud, it’ll have the same effect. Please help your buddy out and laugh.”
After a second of steeling myself, I fake a laugh for him, loud and exclusively coming from my throat, not my belly. It sounds like a rhinoceros trying anal for the first time.
Elijah winces. “Nice try. ‘A’ for effort. You’re not off the hook about the real big and juicy thing.”
I snatch my sandwich back and stuff my face with it, rolling my eyes at Elijah and finishing up my lunch.
He’s not going to make it easy for me. But the joy of the matter is, no one is going to know anything as long as I continue to keep my lips sealed. It sounds so easy, really. The whole sexy situation is completely under my control.
I have nothing to worry about. In fact, it gives me a strange sense of power. All I have to do is sort of lie all the time.
Lie by omitting the truth.
And as I stroll about the office clutching folders to my chest, or humming to myself as the copier groans while it works, or going on a coffee run, I feel like the most interesting person in the whole building. Standing in that line waiting to order drinks for all the higher-ups, I bite my lip and feel like a super secret spy among mortals, sent on some mission to keep a prized treasure protected from unwanted eyes.
There’s power in the mystery I keep.
And power is sexy.
Even Brady gives me suspicious eyes when he passes by me on his way to the supply closet for some staples. I just keep my chin up, ignoring him and his annoyingly perfect hair, and continue toward the computer terminals to resume my task of separating positive and negative reactions to some client’s recent article. I even have fun while I work now, no matter how tedious the task.
And the supervisor Rebekah, for some completely separate and unknown reason, adores me. “Really great report on those reaction numbers,” she murmurs over my shoulder. “You’re the only one who didn’t manage to destroy the Excel formulae. Can I send a couple more your way to process before end of day?”
I give her a curt nod. “Thank you very much, and yes.”
“I can always count on you,” she whispers, then sashays away, her hips swaying as she goes.
Something must be going right for me. Even Rebekah the Ice Queen has melted in my presence.
I didn’t see him come in at all, so engrossed in my subversive and sneaky act of pretending that nothing subversive or sneaky is going on behind the scenes. But when five o’clock comes around, I happen to be caught in a daze, staring across the office as I decide whether a comment I just read can be classified as positive or negative, and my eyes catch Benjamin Gage’s office door open.
He wears a grey fitted dress shirt with black slacks. He strolls right out of his office with his briefcase at his side, and he moves with his usual brisk speed and curt demeanor.
I’m drawn completely out of my daze, watching as he moves along the perimeter of the office. He couldn’t be farther from me unless he chose to scale the outer windows of the building with a harness and suction cups.
For a moment, I picture exactly that. And it makes me smile. He’d look sexy in a harness with suction cups on his palms.
But then he rounds a corner and is gone for the day.
Just like that.
I remind myself that we agreed to this secretive arrangement. I lift my chin. He told you he wants this, too. Ben looked you in the eye and said he wanted to pursue this thing between you and him.
Just because he doesn’t look at me or acknowledge me or act like I exist at all doesn’t mean anything bad.
I stare back at the screen, trying not to scowl.
Positive or negative?
I narrow my eyes, then mark the comment as negative.
My back is slapped the next instant, scaring the crap out of me. “Buddy! It’s time to go,” comes Elijah’s loud voice. “No workin’ overtime for you. Dinner awaits at Mi Casa De Pizza!”
I snort. “You mean we’re going back to the apartment and ordering Papa John’s.”
“Hell no. You crazy? Dominos all the way.”
“I just have one more page of comments to sift through,” I tell him, “then I’ll meet you out front.”
Elijah sits on the desk by my keyboard. “Yeah, and then you’ll be kept late for some other ‘extracurricular task’. Sure thing. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice—”
“Then shame on your choice of pizza. I’ll see you downstairs.”
He punches me in the arm. “I’d better, bro. See ya.” Then he takes off, leaving me to my last handful of work.
In a matter of minutes, the office is eerily quiet, all the other interns and half the staff having gone home. And then there was one. When I finally complete my numbers and turn them in to an uncharacteristically cheery Rebekah, she thanks me, then says, “See you tomorrow, Trevor. Good work today.”
I hesitate before leaving, then ask her, “Why me?”
She blinks and looks up from her computer. “Excuse me?”
I may be riding a wave of coolness lately, but I still cower a bit in her presence. She’s used to cracking the whip on dozens of interns every summer, anyway; she’s got the icy eyes for the job.
“What I mean is, you compliment my work a lot,” I clarify. “And you chose me to sit in on that meeting. And then there was the errand of dropping off the box of files to Mr. Gage’s—”
“Trevor Woodard.”
I jump, lifting my eyebrows with surprise. “S-Sorry. I just—”
“It’s a good thing,” she cuts me off, lowering her glasses to ensure her eyes are on me completely. “And when you have a good thing going, why question it? Accept it.”
I swallow hard, lick my lips, then give her a short nod. If only she realizes how poignant and relevant her words are to me, in more than just the way she intended.
“Thank you, Rebekah.”
“No need for thanks. Just keep doing the good job, and it’ll keep being a good thing. See you tomorrow.” She returns to the computer and clacks away, her long fingernails scraping the keys.
“Tomorrow,” I agree with another nod, and then I’m off.
Halfway out of the building, my phone buzzes. It’s a text:
B
Dinner. My place. 7 PM tomorrow.
Totally appropriate work meeting.
Attire: business casual, or naked.
I bite my lip to keep from grinning like an idiot.