CHAPTER ONE: Candice Carlson
I was sitting at my desk munching on a take-out salad from the cafeteria downstairs, when the email from my boss came through. I glanced at the large computer monitor sitting to my left, but didn’t bother opening the email. I already knew what it was.
I had been expecting the email since earlier in the day when my boss told me that our company, Goldman & Stern Management Consultants, had won a ten-million-dollar management consulting contract with Wright Enterprises, and that I would be one of the management consultants on the team.
I chewed a mouthful of lettuce and leaned over to read the subject line: Confirmation of Meeting Scheduled with Tanner Wright at Wright Enterprises.
I clicked the link that would automatically add the meeting details to my electronic schedule and went back to eating my salad.
A year ago, I would have been jumping up and down at the thought of meeting with billionaire entrepreneur, Tanner Wright, and his team. Now, this would be just another in a long line of boring meetings with rich douchebags who used Goldman & Stern’s management consultants – like me -- to do their dirty work.
Wow, sometimes I was amazed at how tarnished I had become in just one short year at Goldman. I don’t remember what I expected this job would be, but this wasn’t it.
Still, it was better than slaving away at a non-profit for twenty-grand a year. That was more fulfilling, but this allowed me to buy a lot cooler stuff.
I sighed as I stabbed a cherry tomato and bit it in half with my front teeth. I had already Googled Tanner Wright in anticipation of the meeting. Not that I didn’t already know who he was. Everyone in business knew who Tanner Wright was because he was the stuff of legend.
Thirty-five years old, single, tall, dark, and handsome; with the build of an athlete and the brain of a Rhodes Scholar.
He started Wright Enterprises as a little computer fix-it service in his parents’ basement fifteen years ago, and the company did six billion in revenue last year.
Wright was in to everything now: from computing to networking to cyber-security software to fiber optics. But it took more than generating a ton of revenue for a guy to impress me these days. In my mind, I already had him pegged as just another billionaire playboy who thought he could buy the world and everyone in it.
I took a sip of the watery iced tea that came with the salad and looked out the twentieth-floor window at the hazy Chicago skyline.
“I’ll bet he’s a major douchebag,” I heard myself say.
I couldn’t help it.
Whenever I thought about men these days the word “douchebag” automatically came to mind.
In fact, the word “douchebag” was becoming synonymous with the word “man” in my mind.
Man, douchebag.
Douchebag, man.
Call me jaded, but in my mind, they were one and the same.
I took another bite of the lettuce and munched as I sighed. Why do men have to be such douchebags, I wondered. Aren’t there any good men left in the world? Surely, they’re not all gay or married.
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a little bit. Maybe not all men on planet earth are douchebags. Maybe it’s just the males of the species that I have personally met over my twenty-four years on the planet were douchebags.
They didn’t all start out that way, of course. Some of them were perfectly nice in the beginning. They seemed to evolve into douchebags after they met me. Maybe that was it. Maybe I was the common denominator. Maybe I took perfectly nice guys and turned them into total douchebags. I was patient zero!
I licked the dressing from my lips and reached for the tea. Maybe that was my special power, I thought. I had the power to turn perfectly nice guys into douchebags.
Nah. Who am I kidding.
I don’t have special powers.
Men are quite capable of becoming douchebags all on their own.
They certainly didn’t need any influence from me.
The most recent douchebag in my life was my ex-boyfriend, Scott, who dumped me after dating for five years because his mother didn’t think I was good enough for him.
He actually said those words to me.
“I’m sorry, Candice, but Mother doesn’t think you’re good enough for me.”
“I’m not marrying your mother, Scott,” I shot back. “The question is, what do you think?”
The prick didn’t hesitate. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “I think Mother is probably right.”
And with that, he turned and walked out the door and never looked back.
I was like, are you kidding me, mother f*cker?
I’ve dated your douchebag ass since freshman year at college, saved my virginity for our wedding night, and two months before the wedding, I’m not good enough for you?
Seriously?
F*ck you!
And f*ck your mother!!!
I felt my cheeks getting hot. Even though it’s been over a year since Scott dumped me, it still makes me fume.
Granted, I didn’t come from money like Scott’s family did. The Carlson family was lower middle class at best, but I worked my ass off to get through college and then graduate school. I graduated with an MBA from Harvard last year and was recruited by Goldman & Stern to join their management consulting group before the ink on my diploma was dry.
I have a windowed-office in a Chicago high-rise, and pulldown one-fifty a year plus bonuses. I have a killer apartment downtown, and am on the fast track to make partner within five years. And I’m not good enough for your piece of shit son?
Again, dear mother, f*ck you!
I frowned at my own thought. I never used to cuss like this. Granted, this conversation is only going on in my head, but now I have the vocabulary of a drunken sailor.
And I blame it on Scott and his mommy.
Scott said his mommy thought I was a bad person. She didn’t like the way I treated her little boy.
Fine. Whatever. Sure, I can be a little abrasive at times, and maybe I bossed Scott around a bit, but come on, the guy could barely wipe his own ass without mommy’s help.
If he didn’t have me telling him what to do he would have spent most of his days bouncing through life like a pinball.
Not good enough for your son.
F*ck you, you old bat.
Your son wasn’t good enough for me!
I chewed on a chunk of lettuce and scolded myself for even thinking about this stuff. I mean, it had been over a year since I last saw Scott. Why was this still sticking in my craw?
And why didn’t I want anything to do with men in general now?
Had Scott scarred me for life?
Was I destined to be an old maid?
Or maybe a lesbian?
Hmm, no, I didn’t swing that way.
At least not yet…
I was young, healthy, and horny as the next girl. The fact that I was still a virgin irked me a bit. After all, the whole “saving myself for Mr. Right” crap flew out the window the day Scott dumped me. I’d jump Mr. Wrong’s bones if given the chance.
It’s not that I haven’t had opportunities to have sex. Jesus, you can’t walk down the hallway here at Goldman & Stern without running into a swinging dick. It’s just that I don’t want to be bothered by a man at this point in my life.
And as I said, men are douchebags.
I’d never had a cock inside of me, so maybe I didn’t know what I was missing. But I had long, nimble fingers and the foot-long vibrating dildo I bought online that I called “George Clooney”. George was always waiting for me in my nightstand. What the heck did I need a man for?
No, better for me to focus on my career rather than my love life. I was only twenty-four. I still had plenty of time left on the old biological clock, although some days I could hear it ticking louder than others.
I had my entire future all mapped out. I would find a man after I made partner, probably when I was thirty or so, squeeze out a couple of cute babies by the time I was thirty-five, and find a nice French nanny to raise them for me while I went back to work.
A solid plan, if I do say so myself.
Why would I let a man screw that up?
I finished the salad and wiped the dressing from my lips, then clicked on the email to find out when I’d be meeting with Tanner Wright, who I knew would be a douchebag, albeit a douchebag worth billions of dollars.