25
Benjamin doesn’t smile this much.
Normally, when I walk into my office, I feel the cold rush of winter enter with me. Chatter dies a quick death. Ties straighten upon their masters’ necks. Keyboards click and clack a bit louder.
Today, I hear none of it. Today, I wear a smile.
“Morning, Dana,” I say to the front receptionist, whose wide-eyed stare of shock tells me I neither greet her nor refer to her by name enough.
Rebekah has ten reports to give me, but instead, I turn to her and ask, “When’s the last time you took a vacation with little Jax?”
She blinks. Maybe she’s shocked that I remembered her son’s name. “I … I’m, um …”
“That long?”
“I’m trying to remember the year,” she confesses.
The year?? I sigh. “That needs to be remedied posthaste. Get your calendar. Next report I want on my desk is when you’re taking your vacation. It better be before the end of the summer.”
She gapes. “B-But Hawk the Jersey boy … the interns … the—”
“It’ll all be covered. How’s Disneyworld sound? My treat. You work too damned much, and for as sheltered as that poor Jax is, he’ll probably think Mickey Mouse is a Pokémon.”
“He probably already does,” Rebekah agrees sadly.
Across the room, I catch sight of the interns gathered around their table. They all look the same to me except for the one bright-eyed exception with the dirty blond hair, perpetually flushed face, and determined look about him: Trevor. He seems to be in the middle of talking excitedly with three others. I can’t imagine what exactly he’s discussing, but a humored part of my brain pretends he’s bragging to the others about the amazing night he just had, how he got to ride on the boss’s private jet, soar across the country, and stop a client’s life from exploding. The thought is enough to make my smile deepen despite myself.
“I knew you’d like them,” murmurs Rebekah, giving me a tiny nudge of her elbow.
I’m pulled from my little dream. “Sorry?”
“The interns.” She gives a nod in their direction. “Best batch I’ve concocted in years. You don’t have to thank me,” she adds quickly, lifting a hand. “I know. I’m brilliant.”
I want to play off my staring and say something dismissive at once, but it occurs to me without question that, had Rebekah not hired Trevor, he likely would never have crossed my path. He’d be spending his whole summer filing papers in some tiny office somewhere else, or taking orders from a tired thirty-something retail store manager, or dunking baskets of fries in his hometown.
The outlook of my summer might be marginally different, too. I might have brought some tough, boring contact along last night, or gone totally alone, not following my own advice. I might have taken someone else home that Friday night at the club, probably some guy who, like, says “like” every other word and makes the porn face whenever I fuck him. You know the face—it’s when a guy can’t close his mouth because of the “unfathomable ecstasy” he’s supposedly feeling as he’s being fucked, appearing like he’s about to bite down on something, but never actually closes his mouth for a solid hour. The face intensifies when he nears orgasm, of course, and the sound he emits is what you hear in every porno ever: a cross between a ship horn and a donkey being inseminated.
Instead, Rebekah hired Trevor. And Trevor is in my life.
A twenty-year-old with an old soul.
Maybe I’m a thirty-three-year-old with a young soul. I give a considerable amount of thought to how out-of-the-loop I’ve been in the dating world since my early twenties. I’ve had a lot of ass and a number of hook-ups, even ones that didn’t go all the way, but nothing substantial and nothing that stuck. I always saw the men who go to clubs as slippery, like fish. You catch them, you delight in them briefly—snap a duck-lipped selfie—then watch as they slip right through your fingers, crash back into the lake, and vanish. You never seem to see them again either, no matter the clubs you frequent. It’s like gay magic, how they disappear.
Trevor might be the fish that sticks.
Assuming I can control myself and not eat him whole.
“That Trevor, though …”
Her mention of his name pitches an icicle through my gut. I face her sharply. “Sorry?”
“Trevor. The one I know you’re looking at.”
I’m defensive instantly, my smile crumpled up like a ball of misprinted copy room paper. “I was looking at all of them. I don’t play favorites.”
“Oh, I know. I didn’t mean—”
You’re reacting too much. Cool it down. “Trevor is outstanding,” I note casually, “but so is Jimmy, who’s showed great promise. And Ashlee, who is quick as a whip. And the tall one, Brady.”
Rebekah winces a bit. “Well, that Brady seems a bit inflated.”
“Sometimes we have to puff up to scare the smaller fish away. Or the bigger fish.” I glance at the interns again. Trevor’s back is facing me now, his tight tush perfectly in my line of sight.
Of course he’d unknowingly torture me with that ass when I’m in the middle of playing emotional hopscotch with my career.
Rebekah’s smile is tight. She lifts her pointy chin with a pinch of mustered dignity. “I didn’t mean to compare Brady to a blowfish, Mr. Gage. I just meant he comes off a bit strong, a bit … pushy.”
“We all do,” I point out, thinking about how I want to push into Trevor right about now.
“I’m just saying that Trevor, however—”
“He will have to prove himself, just like the others.”
“Of course. Right.”
I make my way toward my office, inwardly aghast with myself while keeping a perfectly straight face. I can’t even believe what I said to her. Am I that terrified of our little secret getting spilled to the office? Do I really have to show such staunch impartiality by acting like Trevor Woodard means as little to me as any of the other interns? If I wasn’t involved with him, I would be noting his good work ethic and teamwork, and then making light of his first impression to me: crashing to my feet with an explosion of copier toner down his front. Trevor is, above and beyond, my best.
And here I am, conveying to Rebekah that he still has yet to impress me.
I shut the door heavily at my back, flip on the lights, and drop into my office chair. Or, more accurately, I aim for my office chair, miss completely, and crash ass-first onto the ground.
Yes, the blinds are open, and the whole floor can see me on my ass through the floor-to-ceiling glass.
I climb to my feet, entirely unable to play off the act as some clever little dance. With a glance at the window, I see twenty faces quickly turn back to their work, pretending they totally didn’t just witness my … miscalculation.
But I have bigger balls to bust. Namely, my own.
Trevor isn’t the enemy. I have to remember that. When I shut my eyes, all I see is Trevor’s face as we talked on the way home for hours and chatted away about everything last night. I expected Trevor to be pooped when we got to the airport, but instead, he was invigorated. He was like a kid who couldn’t stop going on about some amazing movie he just saw—except he had a role in it. He curled up with me on the small leather couch on the jet and spilled stories of his life at college, telling me about all his classes. I listened as we casually cuddled, caring about nothing to do with clients or computers or Beverly Hills’ teenaged tools. I was fully invested in him, and he was lit up like a Christmas light.
And then the flight landed and our night ended. We drove to his place, shared a sweet kiss, then I watched him step inside. When I got home, I worked out my sexual aggression for a solid hour in my gym, took the steamiest shower I’d taken all week, then slipped into bed and slept like a brick at four in the morning.
I have to be cool whenever Trevor’s name is mentioned in the office. He’s one of my top interns, and he caught Rebekah’s eye. It’s inevitable that he’s going to be noticed by others, too. I have to be okay with that and treat him just like I would anyone else who’s receiving due praises, regardless of my intensifying feelings.
No special treatment. And no not special treatment.
Didn’t Trevor say that himself, once?