Outside the Lines(36)
“Slow,” she replies. “Which is kind of nice. This weekend is going to be crazy with orders. Someone ordered a five-hundred dollar Ninja Turtle cake for their kid’s first birthday.”
“I’m kind of jealous.”
“It’s an awesome cake,” she says. “But that much for a one-year-old?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty crazy. Don’t babies smash and drool all over their first cakes too?”
“Oh, they ordered a separate ‘smash cake’ for the kid.”
“Entitled little asshole.”
“You’re telling me.” I take a spot in the back of the parking lot, knowing it’s not even worth driving up to the doors to look for my spot I had earlier. I swear there are parking vultures around here, watching for anyone a row up to move their car. Maybe they can’t do simple math, because walking out to move the car, then back in, then back out, comes to more walking than just in and out like a normal person. “All right, later, bitch.”
“Bye, hun,” she says and we hang up. I gather my stuff, grab my pink lemonade, and go into work. I sit at my desk for all of two minutes before Cameron’s assistant calls me into his office. I get a few stares from my fellow employees, and Mariah tries to meet my eyes. They think I’m in trouble. I can’t look at her. I’m not ashamed, but I can’t contain this either. If Ben’s plan goes as, well, planned, I’m basically being summoned for a booty call.
That’s kind of fucking epic.
“What’s up, Jason?”
“Some girl named Mindy called from that gallery you went to last week.”
I can’t help the abhorrence that shows on my face and the nausea that twists in my stomach. Mindy fucking Abraham is even worse than the aftertaste of grape-flavored cough syrup.
“Oh, and?”
His thick eyebrows push together. “She couldn’t even explain what the problem was, just that there was a problem. And she’d like you to come back and help fix it, since you installed new software or something.”
Jason is an older man, rocking the dad-bod. He rubs his head. “Good luck with this one. I couldn’t get a decent answer out of her. Can you head over and see if you can handle it?”
I sigh. “I guess. Want me to leave now?”
“Yeah, just get it taken care of. Hell of a day for Cameron to get sick.”
“You’ve been busy?”
“Just one of those days, ya know?”
“I do,” I say and feel a little guilty. I didn’t want to stress anyone out. “I’ll go now. Don’t worry. I can handle it.”
“Thanks.”
I was hoping he’d say to leave once I was done, but it is early in the second half of the work day. I keep my eyes down as I walk to my desk, which probably furthers everyone’s thinking I got yelled at.
“Follow-up customer service,” I quickly explain to Mariah. “Still covering those.”
Her mouth forms a little “o” and she nods. “Have fun,” she says.
“It shouldn’t be too bad.” Hell, it’s going to be good.
*
I step into the gallery, having almost forgotten about Mindy. Seeing her sitting behind the desk with her perfect blonde hair in perfect curls, and her perfect silk blouse perfectly showing off the right amount of perfect fake cleavage is like a sucker punch.
“Felicity,” she says, lipsticked lips pulling back into what she would call a smile. “The computers aren’t working. Ben’s isn’t working at all.” She says each word slowly, and blinks several times. Are her eyelashes real? No one has eyelashes that long. Though, if anyone did, it’d be her.
“Then I better go up there and get to work.”
“Yeah, you better. I thought you were supposed to be like super smart and you can’t even do something simple like this,” she says with a sigh. “No wonder you failed out of MIT and had to go to that little community college.”
I push my shoulders back. “I didn’t fail out of MIT,” I say, not even addressing the fact that she insulted herself by insulting the college we both graduated from. “And it’s none of your damn business.”
She opens her mouth and puts her hand to her chest. “Stay professional,” she says. “We are paying your salary, after all. Wait, you probably get paid hourly, not salary.”
I’m fuming, and I don’t want her to ruin things for me. She will not be on my mind when I’m screwing Ben in a few minutes.
“And it is my business,” she goes on. “Ben will want to know if someone incompetent is coming in. Maybe we should have requested someone else.”