Natalie and I meet up at Agave in the Lower East Side for dinner. 8 pm on a Monday night—I know, I know, we’re stupid. The Agave is going to be packed to the gills with every margarita-loving woman out there, and every man who loves women who are drunk on said margaritas.

But when I show up, Natalie is already there (she's annoyingly on time all the time; I guess not everyone is perfect, right?) and has talked the waiter into squeezing us in right away. He takes us back to a far table, a tiny thing that just barely fits the two of us, and disappears with our drink order for two lime margaritas.

“Tell me. Tell me all. You said on the phone that you ran into him again in the elevator. What happened? Did he shove his tongue down your throat? I want all the deets.”

Another waiter, in the Agave uniform of black from head to toe, slips in between us for just a moment to deliver their world-famous chips and salsa and our margaritas, and then disappears again. They’re nothing if not discreet around here.

I take a big sip of my margarita and then try to figure out what to say, what to do. Earlier, in the panic of hearing Apollo’s voice come through the speakerphone, I’m not entirely sure Natalie heard the words coming out of my mouth. How do I tell her that she may not have a job tomorrow? I may not have a job tomorrow.

“Mrs. Sanders interrupted our little—” I wave my hand in the air dismissively, “discussion—” Natalie snorts and I ignore her, “—to remind Mr. Kane that he has to decide which departments to fire before his meeting in 15 minutes."

I continue, “Natalie, we may not have a job tomorrow. How can you fire whole departments at a magazine? Which department are you going to cut? Editorial? Marketing? Or!” My voice is getting a little louder now but I can’t help myself, “Production?”

I dropped my voice and lean forward to whisper, “I think he’s going to take the company apart and try to sell the pieces for a profit.”

She sits back and eyeballs me speculatively, nibbling on her lip as she does. I’m the emotional one out of the two, while she’s the analytical one. She never panics until she has to, and there’s a small—okay, very large—part of me that wants to hear it from her that there’s no reason to panic.

“What else did Mrs. Sanders say?” she asks.

“Nothing.” I take a sip of my drink, enjoying the warmth flowing through me from the liberal amount of alcohol. Something to calm my nerves.

“Is this what you talked about with Apollo after work?”

“Yeah, we both ended up on the same elevator, and I…took the opportunity to chew him out.” I laugh quietly while staring down at my hands. Thinking back on it that was a really stupid thing to do, really. I mean, he is my new boss, however long the job lasts, and certainly chewing his ass wouldn’t prolong my career at Blush.

“His response?” Her voice is just a touch exasperated.

I shrug. “I didn’t exactly give him the chance to give me one. I chewed him out and stormed off.” I’m squirming in my seat now. How is it that Natalie knows me so well? Can’t she just pretend that I’m always right and fuck the rest of the world?

“Well, I say we don’t panic just yet,” Natalie pronounces with an air of authority that, I’ll admit, I love hearing. “It could be that he was simply supposed to look at the departments before the meeting, and Mrs. Sanders misspoke. It could be that he looks at the departments and decides to only cut one or two people. I mean, we really don’t know, right?”

I nod my head miserably, realizing that if Natalie is right, the magazine as a whole will survive, but no matter what, I’m pretty fucked.

Fuck.

“So, let’s just hope that you overreacted, he’s not going to fire anyone, or if he does fire someone, it’s Janice in Accounting—that bitch has had it coming for years—and that he has selective amnesia and will forget that you yelled at him. Twice.”

“Perfect,” I laugh, and we clink our margarita glasses together. “That’s an outcome I can get behind.”

We enjoy our dinner of seafood soup and lots more chips and salsa, and then decide to head over to the SoHo to really get our drink on. I mean, yeah, I spent way too much on the cab this morning and I’m spending way too much on food and drink tonight, but fuck it. My job is going down in flames. If there is ever a time to say, “Fuck you, world, I hate you!” and get blitzed, this is it.

Not that I usually need much of a reason, let’s be honest, but today is giving them to me in spades anyway.

After taking a cab over that Natalie mercifully paid for, we wander into a swanky dimly-lit bar that looks like it attracts the power-suits kind of men that I always find my panties getting wet over. Drinks will be way too expensive, but I don’t care. I’m on a mission—to get buzzed, or to get fucked, and preferably both. Anything to end my six-months-and-one-day losing streak but barring that, at least get fucked until my eyes cross.

We settle into the corner booth to better be able to scope out the guys coming through, and begin sipping our strawberry margaritas.

“Ash, you just need to be honest with him,” Natalie pronounces out of nowhere.

“Honest? With who?” My mind is a little fuzzy around the edges at this point; I’m like three margaritas in and feeling loopy as shit from it, which is exactly the point. Except, it does make it hard to follow conversation topics.

“Apollo. Mr. Kane. Tell him that you’re sorry and that you want to stick your tongue down his throat.” She picks up her drink and sucks on the salt rimming the edge. “I’m pretty sure he’ll figure out how to handle it from there.”

“I already told him I was sorry, and I can’t just tell my boss that I want to stick my tongue down his throat!”

Petulance warning ahead: I’m, like, the worst at saying sorry. No, I’m really, really bad at it. I already swallowed my pride enough to do it once today; I cannot imagine saying it again. I’d rather eat raw caterpillars than say I’m sorry twice. That’d be, like, awful.

Natalie glares her evil, do-what-I-say eyes at me. “Ashley, I know that you’d rather streak naked down Broadway Avenue than tell someone you’re sorry” — she’s right about that — “but in this case, I think it’s necess—”

She gasps and then her eyes cut straight over to mine. “Don’t look over there,” she hisses, her eyes darting back and forth between mine and something over my left shoulder, “but your Mr. Kane is heading our way.”

“What?” I whip my head around, which makes Natalie jerk my shoulder and turn me back toward her again.

“I told you not to look!” she hisses, staring deep into my eyes. “Just look at me. Don’t look around. Just stay calm. Nothing is wrong.”

Which, of course, makes me want to do nothing but look around and panic and freak out, but Natalie’s pinning me to my seat with her eyes so I just stare back, unblinking.

And then, he’s passing us. I can feel him even before I spy him out of the corner of my eye. He’s headed to the adjoining banquet hall. He must be a big man around here because they only use that place for large parties and there aren’t any today. So this guy can pretty much do what he pleases, I guess? Makes sense with a name like the Wolf of New York. The air just gets all electrical and hot and sparkly and I have a hard time breathing and I think that I should take a sip of my margarita, if only to have something to do with my hands while waiting for him to go, get out of ear shot, go somewhere else, which is when I swallow and send the margarita mix down the wrong tube.

Which is how I end up gasping, crying, and Natalie pounding and whacking me on the back as I try to learn how to breathe again.

Thank

Fucking

God

Apollo has already passed and thus missed his opportunity to perform CPR on me.

Or…

I think for a moment, as I’m hacking up a lung, that a mouth-to-mouth session with Apollo might just be worth sucking tequila and ice down into my lungs for.

Finally, when I can breathe again and the daggers of pain in my chest have eased, I grin at Natalie, wiping the tear off my cheek. “You, ma’am, have a full-on disaster area as a best friend. I hope you know that.”

She grins back. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

We suck at our new drinks for a minute—the waiter apparently taking my attempt at Death By Inhalation as being his cue to deliver more yumminess to our table—and then Natalie says, “So, what’s the chances that we run into our brand-new boss here tonight? I’m starting to feel like I’m in the middle of a romance novel.”

“Hmm…” I say contemplatively. Despite the cold of my drink, I’m happily warm and relaxed now. “This can’t be a romance novel; I’m not falling in love with Mr. Kane. I’d rather like to stick my tongue down his throat though, or at least have him spank me like the bad girl I am.”

“So more like one of those super sexy, insta-lust kind of novellas?”

“Yeah,” I say, nodding my head vigorously. “Definitely one of those. Lots and lots and lots of sex.”

Nat and I stare at each other for moment. “What are you still doing here?” she finally says and I stand up quickly, wobbling on my feet as I go.

“The heroine is off to fuck the hero,” I say, snagging my drink from the table and waving it around grandly.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want full deets in the morning.”

“Not a moment left out,” I promise, and then follow Mr. Apollo Kane.