Love Interest(6)

How’d it go?

I blow out a dramatic breath. Of course Brijesh already texted her that I was hearing back about the job this morning.

I made the B-team, I type back. They gave the job to someone else, but I get to do finance stuff for BTH. Consolation prize.

Miriam’s response comes through right away: dang, sorry. Better than the bench tho, right?

I tilt my head from side to side in consideration. Right, I send back.

We could just kill whoever got the job, Brijesh sends.

A laugh slips out of me, but I cover it with a cough. Fari gives me a weird look, but I brush off the question in her eyes and take a sip of my stale Diet Coke from yesterday.

My cubicle is a wreck, but what else is new? I keep myself together just fine—clean hair, fresh clothes, charged phone, enough sleep to get me through the day—but the caveat is everything around me remains in a constant state of chaos. Pink sticky notes litter my whiteboard. The trash can, which gets scooped only once a week (on Wednesdays) by the Facilities department, is already overflowing with take-out containers. Highlighters, notebooks, report printouts, and cups of various beverages blanket my desk—including a half-dredged coffee mug that says BITCH I MIGHT!

On the corkboard between our desks, Fari and I have erected a physical meme wall. Be strong, I whispered to my Wi-Fi signal is superimposed over the Wi-Fi logo with one bar. On a workplace translation guide: Per my last email = Can’t you fucking read? There’s even a picture of our CFO Tracy Garcia with a thought bubble coming out of her head: I dream of EBITDA <3. (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. Duh.)

My gaze catches on the dusty, framed photo of me and Dad, shoved behind my double-monitor setup. In it, we’re lounging in beach chairs on the coast of the Florida Panhandle.

God, I really need to call him back.

I’ve only just booted up my computer to check through morning emails when Don materializes beside my desk, frazzled as always. He never fails to remind me of a suburban dad who gets roped into coaching his son’s peewee soccer league every year. I’m pretty sure he’s in his midthirties, but he’s nearly bald already. Not sure if the job has anything to do with that.

Don sits on the plastic stool I bought from Target just for him. (Before, he would kneel by my chair, which always made me feel like he was about to propose.) On a winded exhale, he says, “I need you to do that thing where you make the data beautiful.”

My lips purse into a smirk. “What data?”

“Just shot you an email. Last-minute meeting with the big boss in twenty minutes.” He shakes his head. “She loves the way you make numbers look.”

By she, Don means our chief financial officer, Tracy Garcia—an absolute bad bitch and my personal barometer for success.

“After that,” Don says, “can you help Fari do a sensitivity test for subscription price increases on that fashion mag?”

“Frame?” I raise a single brow.

“Yeah, that one.”

For a seven-year employee, you might expect Don to have long memorized the names of all the magazines in our portfolio, but he cares too much about the profit-leverage effect and debt restructuring to let anything else live in his head rent-free.

I click my ballpoint pen against the desk and say, “You got it.”

“Thank you, Casey.” Then his face changes, and he adds more quietly, “This afternoon, we’ll talk about Bite the Hand, okay? Just block thirty minutes”—he winces, eyes blinking closed—“actually, block fifteen. But we’ll talk. I promise.”

The smile I give him is genuine, because Don is an all-rounder. Great first boss, great human being. I hear a lot of first-boss horror stories—especially in the finance world—but even though we’re probably all a little overworked, I’ve never regretted accepting this position.

He leaves, and I make his data (a three-year comparison of ad sales for Garden Girl) beautiful. Colors, conditionally highlighted cells, pie charts, pick-your-own-poison drop-down lists. After I send off the edited report, I wheel over to Fari’s desk and show her how to model a sensitivity test. We make nerdy Excel jokes that would send a right-brained person to therapy and put in emoji qualifiers beside all the variables. Sad face for 20 percent increase. Throw-up face for 30 percent. Sunglasses guy for negative 5, even though there’s no way that’s happening.

By the time I’m back at my own cubicle an hour and a half later, there’s a message from Brijesh blinking in the bottom right corner of my screen.

Come down to thirty-seven. Dustin needs a Nashville native to taste test his healthed-up hot chicken. It’s criminally good, but you be the judge.

Oh baby. Ten A.M. hot chicken? That is … exactly what I didn’t know I needed right now. He sent the message fifteen minutes ago. I toss up a prayer I’m not too late.

“You’re still a vegetarian, right, Fari?”

“Last I checked.”

“Cool. I’m going on a walk.”

I grab my phone and badge and head for the elevators. On my way, I pass the executive concierge, Benny.

Benny has only two moods: over-the-moon incandescently happy (usually following a successful night’s drag performance) or churlish and malcontent (usually following several days in a row he hasn’t gotten to perform). Right now, he’s on the desk phone, eyes closed, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. So, the latter. I bet he’s on the phone with our COO’s ex-wife. She calls several times a week, demanding Benny put her through to her ex-husband. (Benny has been explicitly told never to do so.)