Chapter5
Celeste was on her way into the office the next morning for her first day at work when her phone rang and she saw that it was Kevin. They’d had a very late night that had spilled into an early morning, and she was a little surprised to hear from him, but not too surprised. They had bonded the night before in many ways, particularly over agreeing to become intimate partners.
With a bright smile and a lightness to her voice, she answered the phone.
“Good morning! I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Did you get any sleep?” she asked, knowing that neither one of them had really gotten all the sleep that they probably should have.
“Yeah, I got enough. It’s not going to be a long day anyway, so it’ll work out all right. Listen… I wanted to talk with you about something before you made it in to the office this morning.” His tone sounded serious, and not at all the sexy playful voice she had expected to hear.
Blinking in slight surprise, she drew in a breath. “Okay, what is it?” she asked curiously, wondering if he had decided against them being regular lovers.
“Nothing big really, but I wanted to share something with you. I would really rather prefer to keep my business life and my personal life separate, especially at the office. I think it would be best if you don’t try to seek me out at the office. Let’s keep our distance there so that we can focus on our work and maintain our professional lives separate from one another. It’s not anything wrong, it’s just a separation of church and state so to speak. I would just really like to keep our distance there. I hope you don’t mind.” He spoke with all seriousness, but it was not unkind. There was compassion in his tone.
She had been holding her breath as he spoke and she let it out slowly as her mind wrapped itself around what he was asking of her. She nodded, though he couldn’t see her do it. “I get that. I definitely understand. You’d certainly be a distraction there if I ran into you. So, I guess that’s fine. Yeah. You can stay in the accounting department and I will stay in Hector’s offices, and we will keep the nighttime visits separate from the daytime work. That’s okay with me.”
Celeste heard him sigh with relief. “Good. I’m so glad to hear that, and I’m really glad that you understand it. It’s just really important to me. So, there’s that, and I also wanted to tell you good luck on your first day at the office. I know that you’re going to do really well.”
She grinned. “Thank you! I hope that it’s a good day. I’m certainly going to do my best. I’m really excited for it.” She had been far more than excited as she had gotten ready for work. It was closer to giddiness.
“I can’t tell you how truly happy it makes me to hear you say that. I really admire your passion and drive. You are a rare, rare woman, Celeste. I feel lucky that I found you.” He sounded completely genuine.
“Thank you!” A rush of bliss washed through her and she knew that he was going to be as good a friend to her as he was a lover.
“Okay, I have to go, but have a great day and we’ll talk later, because I want to hear all about it.”
A little laugh escaped her. “Sounds good.”
They ended the call and for the rest of her drive in to the heart of the city, her mind volleyed between him and their passionate affair and her new job. By the time she reached her new desk, she was much more focused on the job, but that train of thought was quickly derailed when she saw that her new desk had a big bouquet of colorful flowers on it, waiting for her.
Taking the card from the bouquet, she pulled it from the envelope and read it with a widening smile the further she got. ‘Open doors lead to new roads, best of luck. -K’ it read. Her heart flipped over in her chest and she squealed softly and held the card to her heart for a moment before putting it back into the envelope and tucking it into her purse. She put the beautiful floral arrangement off to one side of her desk and took her seat.
She had made it in to work early so that she could learn whatever office basics she needed to in order to begin doing her job as well as she could. Hector saw that she was there and walked out to her desk with an armload of files.
He planted them unceremoniously on her desk and gave her a stern look. “You’ll need to go through all of these, enter the information in them into the computer, it’s the Avatar program, check for any errors and correct them, and then leave the files over there for me to pick up later on. You’ll be contacting some of these people at different points, so it would be good to learn their names and to study their files so that you know what’s going on with them and their business with us.
If you do well here and show me that you can handle it, I will have you working with some of these clients, so this first step in familiarizing yourself with them and their business history with us is vital. This is a trial run for you, Celeste. Show me what you can do, and I’ll decide if you will be doing more or not.”
She was astounded that the warm and welcoming man who had interviewed her just the day before had seemed to cool somehow overnight and become a bit of a task master. He seemed determined to find out what she was really made of by putting her through the ringer. She made up her mind right then and there that she was not only going to match his requests with the quality work that he was looking for, but to exceed his expectations and show him just how valuable an employee she could be. If he was going to test her, she thought to herself, then she was going to ace everything he threw at her and prove to him that she was more than whatever he might think she could be.
“I’ll have them back in to you as soon as I can,” she told him, wondering how long it would really take her to get the information into the computer system and examine the files. She felt some relief that she had a special talent for remembering things that she had only seen once or twice. She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that that skill was going to become essential to her success at the firm.
Hector eyed her curiously, and with a silent nod, he turned and walked back into his office, closing the door behind him. She started up the Avatar program on her computer and flipped the cover of the first file on the top of the pile open.
After some time consuming trial and error learning in the computer program, she figured out how to get into it and enter the information that needed to be entered. As she entered it, she read it out loud off of the file with a soft voice, and then said it again as she typed it, reinforcing the memorization of it by reading it, speaking it, and hearing it.
When lunchtime came, she saw that if she left for her lunch, she would not get the stack of files done in time before the end of the workday, so she called out for delivery and had her lunch brought to her at her desk. She worked straight through, only taking a few minutes to eat a sandwich and drink some water, then she was right back to work again.
Working as hard and as fast as she could while still learning and still doing her best to memorize every person and every file, she managed to finish just before she needed to leave for the day.
With a sigh of relief, she set the files down on the small table behind her desk where Hector had requested that she place them. Hector came out just a minute later and saw the pile. He picked it up and frowned slightly, looking at it and then shifting his gaze to her.
“You did the whole pile?” he asked in disbelief.
“I did.” She gave him a nod as she stood up and faced him.
“You entered all of this into the computer and studied the clients and their business with us, and you got it all done today?” He looked enormously doubtful.
“Yes,” she told him with complete confidence.
“Name one of the clients,” he challenged her.
Her mind went blank for a moment and he looked as if he was just about to give up on her when a flash flood of information crashed its way through her mind.
“Garrison,” she answered. Everything that she had looked at that day was coursing through her thoughts at a million miles an hour.
He raised an eyebrow. “When did Garrison sign with us?”
She didn’t even blink. “Five years ago.”
He raised both of his eyebrows. “And why are they currently in our active business files?”
Celeste felt her heart soaring. She knew that she was impressing him, and it made her feel so proud and confident. “Because they are considering purchasing a smaller company by the name of Waterstone Inc.”
Hector tried to hide the surprise on his face, but she saw it, and it gave her tremendous satisfaction.
“Good. Well, we have more to do tomorrow. Good night.” He turned then and scooped up the files, taking them into his office and closing the door behind him.
She lifted her chin and slung her purse over her shoulder, heading for the elevator with a triumphant grin on her face.
An hour later she was pulling the old apron on over her clothes and heading to her cash register at the grocery store. She wished that her two weeks were up, or more than that they didn’t have to be done at all, but there was just simply no way around it at all.
Tonia and Keisha were there, and they asked her how her first day at the new job went, though Keisha was completely skeptical about it. Not wanting to have a big discussion or an argument, Celeste replied offhandedly that it went fine, and then she turned to her register and busied herself with work there until customers came to her line and she was able to work rather than be grilled about her shift in employment working on the other side of the tracks.
The time seemed to drag by at the grocery store until partway through her shift when her phone buzzed. She excused herself to the restroom to answer it so that she wouldn’t draw any attention to that either.
It was a message from Kevin, and the sight of his name and an unopened message on her phone made her heart skip a beat as happiness shot through her. She tapped on it and read it. ‘How was your first day at the new job?’ he had asked.
She messaged him back. ‘It was great. Hard work, but good work, and I think I’m going to do really well with it. I’m still very excited about it, and I love the flowers, thank you!’ She sent it off and squealed quietly to herself. There were changes happening in her life, good changes, and she was enjoying the hell out of all of them, especially Kevin.
Celeste went back to her register beaming with happiness. Keisha and Tonia both saw it and Tonia smiled at her, but Keisha studied her curiously. Celeste ignored her and began straightening the magazines in her area.
Her phone buzzed and she pulled it from her pocket, seeing that it was Kevin. He was answering her back, sending a reply message, and making her feel excited and happy all over again. ‘So glad to hear that it went well! I’ve been thinking about you all day and wondering how it went. I’m really happy that it was good for you.’
She replied to him. ‘It was, and tomorrow is going to be even better. Thank you again so much. It means everything to me.’
Celeste hadn’t noticed that Keisha had walked up and was standing just behind her. “Who you texting?” she demanded with her hands on her hips.
Tonia came over as well and stood near Keisha and Celeste. Both of the other ladies were eyeing Celeste curiously.
“Just a friend. Why?” Celeste asked, hoping that by talking about it like it was nothing, they would believe that it was nothing and leave her alone about it. She had no interest in sharing any information with them about Kevin or in truth, about her new job. She knew that they disapproved of the job, and if they found out about Kevin she felt that they would disapprove of him as well, especially if they discovered that it was him who had gotten her the interview for the job.
Keisha narrowed her eyes cynically at Celeste. “A friend? Are you sure about that? Because you got a look on your face like you’re texting a boyfriend or something.”
Celeste shook her head. “No, listen… it’s just a friend, that’s all.”
“Uh huh. I ain’t never looked like that with just a friend.” Keisha broke into a laugh and shook her head. “Who is he? What’s his name?”
With a sigh of exasperation, Celeste headed back over to her register. “It isn’t anyone like that, Keisha. Don’t get on me about this. It’s nothing, okay? It’s nothing.”
She pushed her phone down deep in her pocket and was grateful when a customer came to her register just then. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
They brought it up once more that night before Celeste was done with her shift, but she waved them aside again with disclaimers that it was no one of consequence, and they finally let it go. She left the grocery store in total exhaustion and went straight home to try to get as much sleep as she could.
The next morning, she was up early again and headed for her new job in the city, feeling a little sleepy but very excited for the opportunity that she had been given, and she realized that she was fired up with determination in surpassing Hector’s expectations for her. She was going to prove to him beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was in fact the best person that he could possibly have hired for the job. She was going to make him say that he was glad that he had hired her, come what may.
When she came off of the elevator into her office she saw that there was an even bigger stack of files than there had been the day before. Feeling only slightly daunted by it, she reminded herself that it might have been a shorter stack the day before, but she hadn’t known the computer system or what she was doing the day before, and she had learned most of what she had needed to learn already.
She knew that there would be the remainder of a slight learning curve, but she would be working much faster at it on her second day, and even faster than that on her third day, so even if the piles of files were bigger, she refused to let that fact intimidate her. She was going to do them all and impress Hector again, just like she had the night before.
She sat down and got straight to work, and not a few minutes later, Hector came walking through the office, gazing over at her to see what she was doing, how she was doing it, and he didn’t bother to hide the fact much. She didn’t mind. Celeste told herself that if she was in his shoes, she’d be watching the new employee too, to make sure that she was doing things right, at least for the first week.
At lunchtime, she could see again that if she took an hour off for lunch, there would be no way that she would get all of the files finished before it was time to go that night, and she didn’t want to give Hector the satisfaction of seeing her not complete the task he had given her. She knew that it wasn’t that he didn’t want her to complete, and that he was hoping that she would fail, but it was instead that he just didn’t fully believe that she could do all of what he was giving her so early into her new job. He expected her to come up short.
It made sense to her. How could someone unfamiliar with the business environment that she was in walk in brand new, pick up the work and get it all done right and done within the allotted time without mistakes; she was sure that was what he was wondering, and possibly trying to stump her on, but she was hellbent that she wasn’t going to let him get the better of her.
Celeste ordered out for lunch again and ate as she worked. It was the slowest that she went during the whole day, and she still had her lunch gone in less than ten minutes and was back to supersonic speed on the files once more.
Hector had made it a new habit to walk through the office several times, eyeing her and seeing what she was doing. He saw that she hadn’t taken lunch outside of the office, but rather ate at her desk, but he said nothing about it. He let her work in peace and quiet, watching her from the distance of his repeating trek from his office to the restroom, and his office to the water cooler, and his office to the elevators, and back again. She knew it was all about his curiosity about her work, and she ignored it and focused on what she was doing.
Late in the afternoon, he came out and stopped at her desk. She stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. “Yes?” she asked politely.
“Did you finish the Epstein file?” he asked in a challenging tone.
She nodded and reached for the file off the table behind her where she had placed all of the finished files. “I did, here you are,” she answered with a smile, handing it to him.
He nodded silently and flipped it open, looking at it, and then snapped it closed again. “What about the Henderson file?”
She leaned back again and pulled it from the stack of finished files, knowing full well that he could just as easily have taken the stack of finished files to his office and pulled out the ones that he needed instead of asking her for them, but he was testing her, and she felt ready for him. She knew that he would be, after her first day with him, and she was prepared for it.
Hector examined the file and sighed in resignation, but he didn’t give up. “Fine. What about the Davidson file?”
He finally had her. She shook her head and looked through the shorter stack of files that she was still working on. “I haven’t gotten to that one yet,” she answered, knowing that she shouldn’t feel bad about it, she would still have had it done before the day’s end, and she knew that he was probably just going through the list of names of the files that he had given her until he could hit one that she hadn’t done yet.
“I’ll have it to you right away,” she told him, opening it up and setting it on top of the other files.
“I need it immediately,” he told her sternly. Then he turned and walked into his office, leaving the door open.
She focused with laser beam intensity on the Davidson file, and just a few minutes later, she stood up and walked with it into Hector’s office. He looked up at her in surprise from behind his desk and took it from her gently when she leaned over his desk and handed it to him.
“Here you go,” she said pleasantly, then she turned and began walking out of the room.
He called out to her. “Thank you.” She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, giving him a smile and a nod, and then she returned to her desk, feeling as if she was on top of the world. She felt as if she was definitely going to be able to do the job that she had been hired to do, and that in time she would be able to advance in the company, and the changes in her life would just keep on getting better. It was almost too much for her to believe, but she was willing to put all of her faith in herself and in the possibility of a very bright future ahead.
Even though she was feeling good and working hard, she barely managed to get all of the files done before she had to leave for the night and head over to the grocery store. The only good sign at the end of the day was that Hector did not come out to review her work. He stayed in his office and only waved at her when she poked her head in the door and said that she was leaving for the night.
Celeste felt an increasing dread in going to the grocery story to work. It was the last place in the world that she wanted to be, and she had no other choice but to be there. She couldn’t afford to have a bad reference in her work history, and nothing would stop her boss from doing just that if she walked out and quit cold turkey.
She greatly disliked that he was forcing her to work when she didn’t want to or need to, and more than that, she hated that she was missing school and flunking out of her class because her boss was making her work at a job where she wasn’t going to stay. She knew that if she wanted to get her degree, she was going to have to take the class again and pay for it again. It seemed unfair to her, when she should have been able to attend it, and she should have been able to just walk out of her job.
Trying to keep a pleasant look on her face, rather than the dark expression that she was actually feeling, she walked into the store and slipped her apron on over her head. She wasn’t at her register more than five minutes when Tonia and Keisha arrived at their registers and began to bother her about the things going on in her life outside of the grocery store.
Keisha, who was on her right, leaned over closer and spoke a little too loudly. “There she is! I been waiting to hear what’s going on with your secret boyfriend!”
Tonia chuckled and turned around to face Celeste where she was working at the cash register to the left. “Yeah, I want to know about him too. We know you got somebody, and we just want to know who he is!”
“Yeah, who he is and what he do, and where you met him, and all of it. The whole story. So, spill it!” Keisha laughed, but her face was serious. Celeste could see that she fully suspected that something was going on, and she wanted to know all about it.
“Don’t leave anything out!” Tonia chimed in again.
Celeste sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know what you two are going on about, but you’re acting like fools. I don’t have a secret boyfriend!” She wasn’t about to give them any information at all about Kevin. He was her secret, and hers alone. She knew that they would try to shred him just because she was hiding him, but if they actually knew anything about him; that he was from the other side of the tracks, that he was a successful accountant and had helped her to get a job, and that he was white… especially that. If they knew that he was a white man, they would never let her live it down.
Keisha’s mouth twisted into a frown. “Well that’s just another cover-up. You can’t fool me, I know you have someone on the side. I’m not gonna quit asking you about him until you fess up and tell us what’s going on. You can’t hide him from us, Celeste.”
Celeste leveled a hard look at Keisha. “I’m telling you, there is no secret boyfriend, now drop it!” she snapped. Keisha blinked in surprise and stood there dumbly for a moment, and then raised her hands in the air with her open palms toward Celeste.
“Whatever. You keep on telling your tales like you are. Whatever. I don’t believe a word you’re saying.” Keisha waved her hands dismissively at Celeste, and then turned back to her register, where a customer was just putting their groceries up on the counter to be rung up.
The minutes there at the grocery store seemed to drag on for hours, and every time Celeste looked at the clock, it looked like it hadn’t moved more than a few minutes, though it felt like those minutes had dragged on for hours and hours.
Midway through her shift, while Celeste was wiping down her register and counter, she became aware of an eerie feeling, as if she was being watched, and she lifted her head and looked around.
Her heart nearly jumped right out of her chest when she saw Wendell standing nearby, eyeing her with unwavering attention. Their eyes met and her heart began to race. Her face grew warm and her palms began to grow clammy. She looked away from his intense gaze and focused on anything else that she could around her work area, while still trying to watch him subtly from the corner of her eye to see if he was going to approach her.
He walked away with a soft chuckle that she could hear, and she sighed and went back to her work, her whole body tense with anxiety over having seen him. Ten minutes later, she was ringing up a couple who were trying to corral their children and buy their groceries, when he came and stood in her line, right behind them, his eyes locked on her.
Everything in her began to race, and her heart pounded wildly as she tried to keep her focus on the sale at hand and not look at him or think about him standing right there in her line. He stared at her. The couple paid for their purchases and left. He came to stand directly across the counter from her and then he leaned forward and she struggled to maintain her composure.
“Hey baby,” he began in a quiet voice, his eyes still steady on her face.
She didn’t look at him. Instead, she looked over at the single item that he was purchasing. A donut. She thought about what a trite purchase it was as he was standing there in his uniform. Cops and donuts.
“That will be seventy-five cents, please,” she said without raising her eyes to look at him. She bagged his donut and waited.
He leaned over even closer to her. “Look at me.”
“Just pay for your donut and leave.” She spoke as evenly as she could.
“Don’t be like that, baby. Now, I just thought that I’d come in here and have a little friendly conversation with you. I was just curious to know where you been the last couple of mornings. I go by to check on you, and you aren’t anywhere that you’re supposed to be.”
Tiny beads of sweat formed around the edge of her hairline and she swallowed and did her best to look as if she was in some kind of control. “Pay for your donut.” She refused to look up at him, but kept her eyes on the counter in front of her.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just watched her and stayed where he was, leaning halfway over the counter toward her. After several long and agonizing moments, he spoke again.
“You bedding down with someone? You stayin’ over at some other man’s place? Is that what you’re doing? Because I don’t like that. I want you where I know you will be. I want you here where you work, I want you at your school, or I want you home, and that’s it. I don’t want you thinking that you can just run off to any old place like that. I don’t want you disappearing every morning. I sure as hell don’t want you thinking that you can bed down with any other man but me, and I am going to make you a promise right now, baby, you’re mine, and if I find out you seeing someone else… some other man, baby I’ll kill him dead.”
His voice was stone cold and she could hear the reality and truthfulness in it. She swallowed again and looked up at him, sticking her chin out defiantly. “It’s none of your damn business where I go or what I do or who I do it with. Now pay for your damn donut and get the hell out of here and don’t ever come through my line again,” she spat at him.
As fast as a snake striking a victim, his big hand shot out from his side and he grabbed a hold of her arm, closing his fingers around it tightly. He pulled her forward to him and she gasped as their faces nearly touched. Searing pain blazed through her arm.
He gritted his teeth and glared furiously into her wide and terrified eyes. “Now you listen to me, you mouthy little bitch. Everything you do is my business, and if you try to hide anything from me, I’m going to make it my business to find out what you’re hiding. You don’t keep nothing from me, not never, do you understand me? Never! You are mine, and everything about you is my business, forever, and don’t you forget it.”
Wendell released her arm, shoving it back toward her roughly. She cried out softly and closed her own hand softly around the area that he had held so tightly to, massaging it gently. She kept her eyes on him, watching him to see what he would do next.
He reached into his pocket and pulled a one-dollar bill from a stack of money, and then threw it on the counter near her. Picking up the sack with the donut in it, he turned and walked out of the store and she locked her register and slammed a closed sign down on her counter before rushing to the bathroom to be sick.
Celeste washed her arm with cold water and splashed her face a little as she tried to catch her breath. When her heart had slowed and was beating normally again, she steadied herself and walked back out to her register once more.
Keisha whistled low and shook her head with a big grin on her face. “Ohhhhh girl, if I had a man that fine after me, I’d be all over him! If you had a brain in your head, you’d be with that cop in a heartbeat! He is hot, sister! I don’t know what your problem is. It’s so obvious that he wants you! If you don’t take him, you crazy!”
“I’m not crazy,” Celeste answered in a monotone.
“Well if you’re so crazy that you don’t want him then give him to me, ‘cause I’ll sure take him.” Keisha made no secrecy of her growing and heated interest in Wendell.
Celeste didn’t even look over at her. “Take him then.”
Keisha stared at her in stunned surprise then. “Fine, I will. I’m gonna make that fine man all mine.” She was quiet a moment and then she eyed Celeste skeptically. “That secret boyfriend you got must be something else if you’re gonna pass up a hunk of a man like that cop.”
Finally, Celeste turned her head and gave Keisha a serious stare. “I don’t want to talk about it. If you want Wendell, then have him, but I’m not interested in talking about anything else so let it go.”
She turned her back to Keisha and waved at a customer who was looking for an open checkout lane.
Neither Keisha nor Tonia said anything else to Celeste for the remainder of the night, and when it was time to leave her shift for the night, Celeste said nothing to them. She just walked outside to the parking lot and kept her eyes wide open for any police squad cars that might be nearby.
Not seeing anyone, yet knowing full well that he might be watching her from some unseen distance, she got into her car, locked the door, prayed with all her might that her old clunker would start, and when it did, she drove off to her home.
After two hours of homework done through exhaustion, she shut her laptop down and went to her bed to collapse and get some kind of rest. Her dreams that night were dark and dangerous, and though they haunted her while she slept, keeping her from getting a restful slumber, when she woke up, she could not remember them.
Celeste got to work at the office early the next morning, but she didn’t go to her desk. Instead, she went directly to the coffee pot in the staff room that was just down the hallway from her desk, behind one of the closed doors.
She made a full pot of coffee, and when it was ready, she poured herself a cup of the dark brew in the biggest mug that she could find, and then she went to her desk.
Seeing that there was already a stack of files waiting for her, she sat down and got to work on them, going for the mug of coffee every few minutes and trying her best to stifle a yawn. Hector was in and out of his office, but not as much as he had been on her first two days. He studied her briefly each time that he walked by, but it didn’t seem as sharp a look as he had been giving her previously.
Celeste worked hard and did her best to focus on the details of each file, though she was completely exhausted and the gallons of coffee that she was drinking didn’t seem to be helping her much.
Lunchtime came and she didn’t even give the clock a look, she just kept right on working through, and hoping that she could finish all of the daunting work on her desk before the end of her workday.
Hector came out of his office and stood beside her desk at about five minutes after she should have left for lunch. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned slightly. “Are you leaving for lunch today?” He spoke with an even tone.
She shook her head and turned to look up at him. “No, I have too much work to do.”
He pushed his lips out thoughtfully and tipped his head. “You’ve been working through your lunches since you started here. You haven’t left for a lunch yet.”
“I want to get the work done. I ate, you know.” She blinked a few times. “I ordered lunch and had it delivered here.”
He nodded and pursed his lips. “Yes, you ate, but you didn’t leave. I think it’s important for healthy brain function to leave for a while during the day and get some fresh air, walk around, step away from your desk.”
She shook her head. “Not when I know that I will need my lunch hour to get through the files that need to be done.”
“Why don’t we agree to a compromise then. If you work through lunch, I will buy lunch for us both and have it delivered.” He eyed her optimistically.
Celeste couldn’t help but smile a bit. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I don’t, but I want you to know that I appreciate all that you’re doing around here. You’re working hard to prove yourself to me, to get acquainted with the systems and the files here, and especially with the clients, so I just wanted you to know that I appreciate that. It’s hard work. So, we agree that if you work through your lunch, which you will not be doing every day, then I will buy lunch to compensate for it. Agreed?” His expression was pointed.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to back down and that he had at least offered a compromise, she realized that she was going to have to meet him halfway. “Fine. If I work through lunch, then you buy lunch.”
“Good!” He nodded and grinned. “How does Chinese sound?”
“Perfect!” she answered with a widening grin.
“I like Chicken Chow Mein. Order it from anywhere you like and when they ask for the card number to pay it, transfer the call in to me.” He gave her a nod and then turned and walked back into his office.
Celeste chuckled softly, thinking how very nice it was to have a boss who actually cared if she took a lunch or ate or worked too long or too hard. It was a huge change from any other place that she had ever worked.
She picked up the phone and called in her order, and then transferred the call to him so he could pay for it. Half an hour later, they were both working through lunch and eating some very good Asian food on the side.
It was the same routine as the previous two nights. She left the office with all of the files done and a great sense of satisfaction, and drove her jalopy to the grocery store where she made herself get out of the car and go in, slipping the apron over her head, and slipping herself back into the old life that she was hellbent on leaving.
Halfway through her shift, she got a text message and she felt her heart flip in her chest when she saw that it was from Kevin. ‘How is it all going?’
She texted him in return. ‘It’s all going really good!’
‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I really want to see you,’ he answered, and she felt her body warm and her pulse quicken.
‘I want to see you too,’ she typed and she couldn’t stop a grin as she pressed the send button.
‘When?’ he asked immediately.
She knew that there was no way she could skip a night of sleep and try to keep up with the schedule that she was keeping. She’d have to catch up on sleep and laundry and her own grocery shopping and a few other things on Saturday when she wasn’t working both jobs, but by Sunday she would be rested, her chores would be done, and she would be able to enjoy a lot more time with Kevin.
‘Sunday.’ She bit at her lower lip and hoped with everything in her that he would be able to see her then.
His rapid-fire response made her heart soar. ‘Done. I’m all yours on Sunday. Same place, three pm.’
‘See you there. Can’t wait!’ she replied. It was the truth. Out of everything happening in her life at that moment, the one thing that she was looking forward to the most wasn’t the end of the two weeks of hell at the grocery store, it was seeing Kevin on Sunday.