Chapter Thirteen
Liz
I’d sat down this morning, half-afraid to check my email. But there’d been business as usual in my inbox—no nasty messages. Thank goodness. I needed less drama.
All morning, I’d been working hard. Jamie had asked the romance app team for a progress meeting, so I was preparing a few slides for our presentation, just to discuss how I was approaching the app from a project management angle. Nothing I liked more than showing off my creative and organizational skills in this way.
Besides, it was so much easier to focus when I didn’t feel like every set of eyes in the office was staring at me. There were still whispers about Jamie’s and my relationship, but the rumors had died significantly since yesterday. It helped that I had a vase of flowers on my desk, the card in plain sight with, Love, Tom, written in big block letters.
Marta, another project manager, came by my desk. She sometimes grabbed coffee with me and Amy.
“Hey, Liz,” she said, eyeing the bouquet of long-stemmed roses.
“Hey, Marta.”
“I heard you landed yourself a hunk? Word is the affair is heating up in just a matter of days.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Tom and I met a couple of weeks ago.”
She gave me a wicked grin. “Are these roses celebrating some momentous point in your relationship?”
“Mm, I’m hardly likely to admit to something like that,” I said, laughing. But I thought about making love with my “dream boyfriend” last night against my kitchen counter, and I felt myself blushing.
Marta laughed, a loud, high-pitched laugh that caused several other people to turn in our direction. “You don’t have to say a thing when your face is that color, honey.”
Amy came over to join us. “I can tell from Liz’s face that you two are talking about Tom, aren’t you?”
She was already in on the story, that I had a pretend boyfriend named Tom who I’d been seeing for a couple of weeks.
“So, tell me about Tom,” Marta said.
I looked around. There was plenty of time for my presentation, as I’d finished it and was just going through, checking for typos and moving images from side to side for the best visual punch. And telling this false story was going to do wonders for dispelling the rumors about Jamie and me, because Marta would make sure every single person in the office knew about Tom by the end of the day.
“Well,” I said, “our first date wasn’t to a restaurant. He took me out to Alcatraz.”
“What?” Marta said, shocked. “That’s hardly a date.”
“Well, I hadn’t been before, and he’s writing a book and needed to check the place out for research.”
Marta gave me a narrow gaze. “He took you out for research?”
“Shut up,” I said, “it was fun. It’s not like he took notes or anything. We just went on the tour and soaked up the stories and the intrigue.”
“Liz, stop messing with Marta,” Amy said. “You know that was only the first half of your date.” Amy turned to Marta. “I know, because I helped her get ready beforehand. She wore this smashing little black dress with crisscross straps and these amazing heels that I’d steal in a heartbeat if my feet weren’t two sizes off. After Alcatraz, he took her to this tiny little Peruvian bistro, Mochico, and then out to a jazz club for drinks and dancing.”
“I was getting to that part,” I said, feeling my face get hot again. Damn, Amy was way better at fabricating fake dates than I was.
Also, a jazz club sounded like a great time. I was going to have to make my real boyfriend take me to all the places my fake boyfriend had taken me.
After Marta made me describe Tom in detail, from his smoldering brown eyes and his sexily messy hair, to his tight, perfect butt, she said, “Look, I’d love to keep chatting, but I have to get back to work.”
I smiled to myself. Back to work, yeah, right. She was going to make her way around the entire office, telling everyone everything she knew about Tom.
“Of course,” I said. “Me, too.”
“Did you hear about the Japanese businessmen who are going to be touring the office?” she asked.
“No way,” Amy and I said together.
“Yes way,” Marta said. “They want to make a Japanese version of the romance app.”
“That’s awesome!” I said. “Okay, yeah, we should all focus.”
Marta sauntered away. Amy and I exchanged a secret fist bump and she went back to her table, too.
I returned to my work with renewed focus. I didn’t want to let Jamie down.